Automaton Transfusion Review

So far the Dimension Extreme label has been a let down. Not only are their movies NOT extreme, they do a piss poor job of getting the word out to the horror public.

Thats what I was facing when I first heard about Automaton Transfusion, a freshman outing by filmmaker Steven C Miller. Automaton is your run of the mill zombie apocalypse movie with a nice bevy of teen eye candy that at times I was wondering if I should feel like a pedophile admiring them.at the start of the movie (wich starts off with a bang I will admit) our intrepid heroes of nameless and faceless teens are traveling to th next town to see a local punk band. Upon arriving at said unnamed town they find it overrun with zombies and it is up to our intrepid band of teen super stars to return to town to save the ones they love.

Okay, thats the plot... now for the bitching. The film makes no sense geographically. First they are in a major city, then they are in the woods, then a garage, then a house then a school. The problem is that they dont set up the locations, suddenly appearing in the garage after escaping the hordes of zombies in another location, with no warning of the location shift, wich at times left me wondering what the fuck was going on. The special effect are so so, pretty good actually for a low budget film made for 30.000 dollars, but again, the special effects make no sense. At one point one of our teens is in the water (how he got into the water, going back to my previous gripe, is beyond me), saves a cheerleader only to be dragged down into the murk, to then arise again and have both legs ripped off. Im okay with NOT seeing the effect but the effect didnt make much sense at all.

My second gripe and be warned

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SPOILERS

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Like my review of Feast 2, I dont like to see brutality against babies. In fact for the most part it is a total turn off for me. At one point we see a zombie punch through a pregnant woman's stomach, remove the unborn baby and begin chowing down on said fetus. Now I know that a movie under a label that decries itself as EXTREME, it should be pretty extreme, but this sort of thing goes beyond extreme and into the realm of just plain old bad taste.

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Okay... take a breath... dont get worked up....

Now that ive done my bitching, this movie does have a few very fine points.

First off is the special effects. The effects are VERY well done, despite its budget. The blood flows thick and red and freely at many points throughout the film, with many ICK moments to make me happy.
Secondly, the acting on several actors behalf. Especially comming from our Token black man. William Howard Bowman has a bright future in Hollywood if he can get better roles, and according to his IMDB profile, already has two more films post Automaton under his belt with another in production. William delivers some very funny deadpan lines with an ease that belies the Material.

And thirdly, we actually get an explanation for the zombie apocalypse wich pisses you off emotionally. I wont give it away because it is a major plot point in the film, but lets just say my blood pressure rose a few points thinking about the possibilities.

One final gripe about the film is its length. The movie only comes in at an hour and fifteen minutes, and thats including the credits so lets say an hour ten.

All in all its not that bad of a movie, but its not the genre defining and generation changing movie it claims itself to be, and I dont blame the filmmakers for that, I blame the advertising company. Steven Miller is a good filmmaker that is just getting his feet wet and i look forward to what he has to offer us in the future, wich again, according to IMDB is a sequel to Automaton, wich may clear up a few things left in to the imagination in the first movie.

So what odes this all mean, well it means Im gonna give Automaton Transfusion 3/5 geographical confusions. But you dont have to take my word for it.