REVIEW: Fenris Unchained

The story of Fenris Unchained is of the beginnings of Ragnarok, starting in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, with the possibility of the Norse god Fenris being released from his prison. It’s never really stated why Norse gods are battling in Wisconsin and not keeping their fights in Valhalla or wherever it is Norse gods typically fight, but I think it has something to do with our main character Peter Vidar (Ryan McDaniel) and his disturbing dreams. It seems that, here on Earth, there’s a few gods (or servants of gods, or demigods, or something) living as mortals, and with Fenris about to be released, Tyr (William Miller) and Loki, who are on opposite sides of the battle, are awakening average people on Earth to their true identities as Norse legends. Peter, a slacker bartender who gets drunk every night and lives in squalor, is reluctant to listen to Tyr but is intrigued when he says he can help him with his dreams. And from there the battle, and our story, really begins.

It seems Norse gods and mythical beings have a thing for bars (which makes sense I suppose) as half of the set locations are bars. There’s lots of drinking and, curiously, as I mentioned earlier, smoking. Now smoking isn’t strange at all for bars, but the way that the movie constantly points it out was off-putting. Not to mention, the way the actors themselves smoked, as if they’re not real smokers. They didn’t even inhale for Christ’s sake. I am a smoker and that took me out of the movie a bit. I can understand faking gunshots, or knife wounds, or something, but this is just a drag of a cigarette, no special effort is required. Just smoke the thing. At one point in the movie, a couple (good) guys are trying to get into an apartment where a girl is being kept safe, and after some arguing through the door, the deciding factor to their entrance is that they have smokes. I don’t know if it was meant to be funny but to me it came off as a bit much.

Not that the movie isn’t funny elsewhere. It’s described as a dark comedy, and although I’m not sure that really fits here, it isn’t entirely far off. For instance, there’s an amusing subplot about a drunkard who realizes he’s actually a dwarf (“Shorty,” played by Jordan Heckman), going around gathering strange ingredients to make a magical bond. At one point he has to sleep with a bearded lady to get the “beard of a woman” and realizes that, hey, it’s not so bad to rock her van. There’s some quite funny dialogue sprinkled throughout and I found myself laughing out loud several times, and found myself smiling even more.

Let’s get to the thing we all care about here the most, though: THE ZOMBIES. Unfortunately, the zombies make their first appearance at 65 minutes into this 89 minute film, and then it seemed mostly for having-zombies-for-zombies’-sake, like they threw in some zombies to have the movie show up a bit more on low-budget horror radars. Let’s face it, most people that watch these no-budget flicks are zombie fans, and perhaps the filmmakers were playing to that. I think there might be something about the dead coming back to life during Ragnarok, though, so I could be entirely off base here. But even if the zombies did seem a bit gratuitous, at least they were done right: these are slow shamblers that eat human flesh. For 10 minutes or so, Fenris Unchained felt like a classic survivors-trapped-with-zombies-outside-the-door zombie flick. The make-up on the zombies was decent for the budget; nothing spectacular, but you can tell they really put a lot of effort into it. About the only

explanation we get to their arrival is “Loki made them that way.” Fair enough, I suppose. That Loki and his tricks. I would have liked to see the zombies get a bigger role in the story, but that could just be because I’m a zombie geek. It was like we just got a taste of some zombie goodness, and then they yanked it away, and the movie was over (a bit anticlimactically) with no zombies to appear again.

I have got to talk about one more thing that I usually avoid in reviews: the DVD packaging itself. What the fuck guys. There’s a sticker on the plastic covering the case stating “parental advisory / live action film / contains mature content.” Usually those kinds of stickers are just a gimmick, but it might actually be necessary in this case: the cover looks like a child’s cartoon, with a stoned-looking cartoon sun in the sky and the silhouettes of two children playing in the grass (there’s also a plane crashing and fire along the horizon). The tagline “made with two scoops of violence” gives the potential buyer a hint of what he might be getting into if the sticker didn’t already, so I turn it over to the back to see if maybe there’s some screenshots of the movie like they sometimes have, and instead of screenshots there’s THREE MORE DRAWINGS (though in a different, darker style). As far as I can tell, none of the drawings on the front or back covers have anything to do with the movie, at all, and I’m scratching my head trying to figure out what they were thinking when making this decision. Even the DVD menu and the DVDs themselves have cartoons on them. However, in the opening and ending credits, they have this cool runic font that I think would’ve gone nicely on a more Norse-themed cover.

Make no doubt about it, this is a no-budget production, and the acting reflects that. There was obviously budgetary restraints and writer/director Kristopher Bishop had to do the best with what he had. I think he and his crew managed to pull this off though. For what it was, it worked, and I’m glad I watched it. I would love to see Kristopher do something with a little bigger budget. It was made with genuine passion and effort, and despite having a rather loose and unfocused storyline, it was still an interesting story that kept me paying attention. Fenris Unchained is a micro-budget movie that tries really, really hard, and, despite its strange preoccupation with cigarettes, mostly succeeds. If you’re looking for some good old-fashioned zombie mayhem, it has it, but not very much, and this probably isn’t the movie for you. However, it is funny, original, well-edited and moves at a fairly decent pace. I’ve seen my fair share of no-budgeters, and Fenris Unchained is how it’s done. Maybe next time Kristopher Bishop can do a full-fledged zombie movie? One can hope. I give Fenris Unchained 7/10 packs of smokes.

You can get Fenris Unchained at the Eight-Foot Squid Productions store here — 2 discs for fifteen bucks. Not bad.