"Who Watches Short Shorts Series" Chemical 12-D is Zombie Greatness

I’m a huge fan of the short horror movie when done right. While there is a lot of dreck out there, a great short can quickly establish a mood and leave the viewer with an overwhelming feeling of dread for a much longer time than the film actually plays. I want to thank two sites The Vault of Horror and Day of the Woman, for spotlighting this outstanding short, otherwise i may have never seen it.

See, Chemical 12-D  (dir. Mac Eldridge) is an example of the short horror film done to perfection.
A viral outbreak has resulted in the general population being turned into zombies. Dr. Michael Frank has not been infected, and finds himself on a one man quest to find a cure for the outbreak. Patrolling the streets on his own, he captures lone infected, bringing them back to his workspace where he experiments on the bodies, hoping for, but failing to achieve a cure. Can he find a way to expel the zombie parasite from the infected, or is his research doomed from the start?

In less than ten minutes, Chemical 12-D manages to hit on all the right horror notes, more so than many features I’ve seen. As Dr. Frank, Bill Stoneking manages to wear a number of emotions on his face: the weariness of his bleak situation, the desperate hope that the next operation will bring the solution, and the resignation when another one of his efforts go for naught. Stoneking carries all these moods off effortlessly. The sag of his shoulders after a failed experiment says more than a thousand words of exposition. Complimenting the action on the screen is an evocative piano score which never feels manipulative, but adds to the feeling of hopelessness and loss.

The special effects and makeup work in the movie are stunning. The attention to detail whether it be the open infected sores or the bluish colorization of the skin look better than many features with much higher budgets. While the movie’s playing time and budget make an army of undead unfeasibly, the few they do show here look amazing. I’d argue that the barren streets with a few roamers make for tenser atmosphere. In the opening moments, Chemical 12-D makes the world feel completely desolate, which is something every bit as terrifying to me as zombies. The film’s centerpiece-the autopsy of the captured pre-teen living dead manages to be both beautiful and gruesome. It helps that the disc’s transfer is amazingly pristine. I honestly thought I was watching a blu ray and not standard definition disc for a while. It’s hard to believe that this came together as a student film project.

I was lucky enough to pick up my disc during the one week Water Cooler Productions put this film up for sale. The film just came in this evening and I could not get it out of the package and into the DVD player fast enough. It was a real "Ralphie and his Little Orphan Annie Decoder Ring" moment for me. Head over to their site to get the latest news and availability of the film. It has just started to make the festival rounds, and could be playing in your area soon. In our own upcoming screening program, we plan on showing this amazing short film in Boston no later than our second event.