Review by Joshua Gravel |
Written and Directed by Doron and Yoav Paz
Starring Yael Grobglas, Yon Tumarkin,
Danielle Jadelyn, Tom Graziani, Mel Rosenberg,
Steven Hilder Geri Gendel, Ido Di Capua,
Howard Rypp, Sarel Piterman, Yoav Koresh
While on a vacation to Tel Aviv, two twenty something American women meet an anthropology student and accept an offer to join him in Jerusalem for part of their visit. Once there, a supernatural force brings back the deceased as winged hell zombies and government officials are forced to close the walled city’s gates to combat the growing evil.
JeruZalem has a great premise and antagonist as I am partial to religious based horror movies. The acting is consistently good throughout, although the writing leads the characters to make some stupid decisions, I can overlook this however given that the film has bigger problems.
The main problem with JeruZalem is the insistence of showing all of the action through the view of our main character’s smart glasses.
There is no indication that she is ever video recording any of the events nor is it established that the glasses have a live feed back to any capture devise so the use of the glasses is simply more irritating than rational or an advancement of the plot.
The glasses play into one occurrence, which any astute viewer can see coming from the beginning of the film so the effect is totally lost.
Simply put, the reliance on showing all of the events through the view of the smart glasses makes about as much sense as arbitrarily deciding to show you all of the events from the point of view of a red pen that a character happens to be carrying… or their shoe… or any other random object that bears no importance other than to play into the first person camera craze in filmmaking.
If the PAZ Brothers had shot this movie in a conventional fashion they could have had a memorable and enjoyable film rather than what is now a rather frustrating viewing experience.
If you like zombie films, or religious themed horror then you could do worse than JeruZalem, but the first person camera approach is such an unnecessary distraction, I wouldn’t run out and pay premium VOD prices for this one, so wait until it pops up on Netflix or another streaming service.