FEAR ITSELF Review: Episode 6 - "New Year's Day"
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What happens when you wake up from a nap and find the world which you knew a few hours ago as human populated, is now overrun by the walking dead? That's the premise of "New Year's Day"..."Fear Itself"'s sixth entry. A woman named Helen returns from a New Year's Eve party and decides to hit the sack early. Upon awakening shortly after midnight...she finds the undead roaming the streets and even her own apartment building....feeding on the living. This is director Darren Lynn Bousman's episode, which he directed and you can tell as the episode has his fingerprints all over it. It has his signature all over the script, the camera angles, and the directing style. And in case you're wondering...yes, this episode is shot in "Saw-vision", with the flashy visuals, angles, and all of that sort of thing.
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The episode's storyline also unfolds like a "Saw" movie would. Dealing with current events, all the while flashing back to past events which have a connection with the current happenings. Even J. Larose (Saw 3, Troy) makes an appearance in the ep. You can really tell Bousman wanted to put his own personal stamp on this one. "New Year's Day" is a fantastic episode nonetheless. It also never answers too many questions too fast. We're given the basic situation, zombies having overrun the world...and we have to watch and see how and why this happened, and can our hottie female lead escape an undead fate? There are alot of mysteries within the episode from a character standpoint as well, such as why was Helen alone on New Year's Eve instead of at the party? Why was one of her guy friends/love interests not with her? And what major anger-inducing event happened between Helen and one of her close female friends?
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The whole story behind all of those things unfolds little by little as the episode moves along and flashes in and out of current events and past ones. The story is a pretty strong one for a made-for-tv piece of work, and alot of the zombie sequences are very intense. Bousman I think should make a zombie movie one day because he really seems to have a very intelligent and good grasp on how a zombie-related piece of work should be filmed and how it should play out. We get alot of scenes in dark, spooky places in this episode such as underground parking lots, dark staircases with flickering lights, darkened apartment buildings, and the like. All of this set to a nighttime backdrop. Bousman really keeps the element of fear and suspense strong within the episode by keeping his main character constantly in peril and constantly in places where anything is liable to jump out or appear. |
What keeps the episode entertaining is not only the wonderful performance of actress Briana Evigan as Helen, and the decent amounts of gore, but also the fact that she comes under attack and pursuit from one zombie in particular the entire episode. This particular zombie is someone very close to her, which I won't give away any names here...but this particular zombie follows her for the duration, and the flashbacks to the party before the outbreak really help the viewer to understand why this one undead continues to follow Helen no matter how far away she runs. The ending of "New Year's Day" is a funny one in some ways, and a redemptive one in others. The ending is very character-driven and quite satisfactory from a viewer and story standpoint. Overall this is a great episode, one all horror fans (and zombie fans alike) should find entertaining.
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