TOXIC LULLABY starts quite curiously, with a woman travelling with a couple guys across the countryside (why she’s doing this, we don’t know). She goes in and out of consciousness, having realistic dreams of a post-apocalyptic world. The second time she does this, she stays in that world, and the movie basically forms itself into a road movie, with a group of people wandering around a post-apocalyptic rural landscape. This motif has become more and more common lately I’ve noticed; just go off the road a bit into the woods, film around some run-down buildings, and you’ve got your post-apocalypse. Not a bad thing really but the story of these movies seem to be the same: travel along, encounter other travelling people, travel and reveal character backgrounds, encounter zombies, travel, encounter stationary group of people with a crazy leader, etc.

Unfortunately TOXIC LULLABY’s curiousness doesn’t last for long. It tapers off into an average tale with a bit of confusion added in, as we still don’t know if this is the real world or her dreaming. And we’re not exactly on the edge of our seat to find out, either. As the woman is going through this world, she’s not told anything about it; at least, not soon enough. The group doesn’t tell her about “sleepers” (read: zombies) until she lights a small fire while the rest of them are asleep and attracts some. Seems like rather important information, doesn’t it? Also, they wear gas masks, which, while cool imagery, hardly seemed necessary. The characters would take them on and off seemingly at random, not caring about the (what one character called) poisonous air. It didn’t make any sense.

The zombies, or “sleepers” as they call them here, mostly only hunt at night, but recently have been getting more abundant and more adventurous. They seem to be infected with some kind of virus, the nasty effects of chemical warfare from some time ago. Nothing special about the make-up but nothing bad either, it’s mostly just blood on dirty, snarling faces.

The movie wasn’t all bad, just a bit on the boring side. I did enjoy the soundtrack, which was some nice dark industrial techno stuff. Not surprising coming from Germany, I suppose. The direction and cinematography were pretty good, capturing some creepy shots, and I liked the look of the film. The acting was great, had no complaints there. It just didn’t seem to have that little extra “something” to make it incredibly interesting. I give TOXIC LULLABY 6/10 gas masks.