All of the recent coverage of this film in the mainstream print press has inspired the expectation in many (myself very much included) that it has somehow transcended its origins as a film that cost 40 quid to make. It hasn't.
Looking exactly as you'd expect a £40 zombie movie to look (replete with a complete disregard for cinematography, alarmingly hammy acting and plenty of unconvincing, off- colour bloodletting) Colin is an extraordinarily hard slog. This is particularly true of its opening half hour, which is almost totally bereft of dialogue and filled with way too many ugly and aimless shots that last at least four or five times longer than they need to, without any justification.
Despite the odd moderately impressive exterior shot, Colin's "story" is one constructed around the constant need to justify the shooting locations - which are all, for the vast majority of the time, someone's drab and under-lit living room. The finale, which bucks this trend by taking place in someone's garden, is five utterly exhausting minutes of ketchup, shaky-cam and non-stop shouting; the sheer, belligerent pointlessness of which angered me so much that I almost flung a shoe through my TV.
Spades of kudos must go to the enterprising young sprouts who clearly worked like dogs to get this film made, and I'm thrilled to live in an age where filmmakers of this level can get their work seen and distributed nationally on DVD, but to be brutally honest this is film-making of an extremely sloppy vintage, and the complete lack of plot renders it monumentally, deadeningly boring.
A friend of mine remarked that he'd rather sit down in front of a decade's worth of his neighbour's holiday videos than sit through Colin again.
Ditto.
