Project Z (aKa Prosjekt Z) (2021) Review

Project Z (aKa Prosjekt Z) (2021) Review

A group of film students take three out of work actors to an old motel in the mountains to make zombie films. When a mysterious asteroid crashes nearby strange things begin to happen, blurring the line between fiction and reality. The undead have seemingly began attacking the crew and they must fight for their lives – or is it a part of their story?

PROJECT Z feels like it’s ad-libbed – something that I have never been a fan of – and initially it plays like it might follow a similar storyline to that of ONE CUT FROM THE DEAD. It’s not. Essentially it’s a film about making a film, the film in question contains zombies and paradoxically I found the film within the film more interesting than the dull interactions of the student film’s cast and crew. Writer/director Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken’s film needed much more than by-the-numbers character interaction to truly zing, and the dialogue and the lack of genuine incident renders this watchable but unspectacular.

Even when a meteorite landing close to where the students are filming adds next to nothing thrill-wise and the footage from the student’s film is of far better quality than most professional flicks, which didn’t sit right for me. The narrative is sometimes confusing and scenes such as the one where there are numerous takes of zombies lumbering into view may indeed nod to the previously name-checked Stanley Kubrick, who notoriously favoured take after take, but so what, it makes for boring viewing and is arguably not as funny as the director might have intended. Dull, ill-conceived and a far cry from the horror flick that some might hope it to be.