Jeremy Gardner’s post-apocalyptic debut is short on zombies and plot but thrives in its more human moments

I had never met her and I didn’t understand her obsession with taxidermy, but I was heavily invested in Kendall’s quest to find love. No matter what charms she worked or how much she opened herself up, it seemed like her efforts were doomed. And when that reality finally sunk in, I lamented her loss through the laptop screen.

Yes, I’m talking about The Bachelor. About as bottom-of-the-barrel as television can get, but a few years ago — thanks to the fandom of my girlfriend at the time — I was rapt at the screen weekly. It wasn’t for the writing, and it certainly wasn’t for the strength of the characters. My investment came through some kind of sick fascination that lies deep inside us all.

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The winning formula for reality television is right in its name: “reality” is relatable. We all love — some more openly than others — to sit around with pals and mourn the stupidity of New Jersey-ites, Bachelors, football players and housewives. We’re suckers for an opportunity to feel like we’d do better in their shoes, or just for a chance to say thanks that we don’t have to be. We cheer when the likable ones get a win, we moan when evil succeeds and we spend hours on couches, attaching and detaching to someone else’s airbrushed life.

Watching The Battery (2012) recently, I was surprised to find myself reminded of watching The Bachelor way back when. It’s a zombie film, if you want to really simplify things, but more than that, it’s a very human film, and it draws out of a viewer the same feelings of empathy and backseat living that come in waves watching reality TV.

The independent movie marked the directorial debut of Jeremy Gardner, who also stars as the brash, bearded survivor Ben. The film was shot in just over two weeks in Connecticut on about as much cash as you might find in Bill Gates’ couch cushions ($6,000). The plot follows Ben and Mickey (Adam Cronheim), former baseball players, as they traverse a post-apocalyptic, zombie-ridden New England landscape.

But where The Battery thrives really has little to do with zombies. There are a few key scenes where interaction with the undead moves the (loose) plot forward, but this flick is at its best when it’s focused on the living. Ben seems well-adjusted to the lifestyle the pair have adopted, killing zombies with impunity, pilfering what he needs and cracking open canned meals without disgust. Mickey, on the other hand, hides beneath a set of headphones and yearns for things to go back to the way they were, even just for a few minutes.

This dichotomy drives the viewer straight into the film’s world: which archetype would you be? Would you struggle to kill the undead, as Mickey does for so long? How long could you go only interacting with one other person in the world? And if you walked in on said person jerking off to a lady zombie — her bloody chest pressed against the car window — what would you do?

This isn’t the first horror movie to raise such questions among friends. It’s always been a genre of film that elicits strong reactions from an audience, whether that’s directed at the person next to you or at the screen. Horror has always felt like more of an interactive experience than any rom-com or period piece does. But The Battery, partly due to its limited financial backing, highlights these feelings to a new extent: without the money for gory battle scenes, explosive weapons or grand cinematic landscapes, the film relies on that core component of human interaction that makes horror fascinating.

While zombie programming like The Walking Dead seems to spend the slow moments just counting down until the next expensive bloodbath, The Battery peaks over toothpaste. When Ben and Mickey find a pair of brushes in an abandoned suburban family home, the camera trains on the duo leaning against their new ride and brushing the pearly whites for a full minute. About halfway through, Ben gives Mickey an eyebrow raise that says, wow, that feels good. And man, can you feel it too.

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There are other small joys throughout. The ex-ball players held on to some of their gear, and quiet scenes of catch in the woods almost make you forget the greater context of the film. “He’s coming around third, get it in, get it in! WOO! He’s out!” yells Ben as he collapses on the ball in a field empty except for him, Mickey and the birds. Likewise, days spent fishing and picking apples in empty orchards provide emotional respite for the guys and the audience both. Booze disappears as quickly as it comes and cigarettes burn regularly (you’ve gotta think you stop worrying about lung cancer under these circumstances).

Music recurs as a jarring escape. It casts a light mood between darker scenes and gives Mickey — always sporting a heavy pair of noise-cancelling headphones — a place to hide from Ben and the new world he’s living in. It’s a thin veil, however. Despite chastising Mickey for wearing them too often, Ben grabs a bottle of whiskey and a revolver and dances around the room in the headphones after Mickey’s gone to bed. It’s a wild, fun scene, but it’s cut short by the sound of a zombie slamming through a door and Ben realizing he almost didn’t hear death coming.

The Battery strings together these little moments — that make you shake your head or smirk or sigh — to create a picture of life after the death of everybody else. There isn’t really a plot, and the dialogue and acting certainly fall short in moments, but all of that is forgotten in the midst of believable and relatable emotion. The film is a testament to where you can thrive when finances won’t let you run rampant in guts and explosions. For a $5 download on their website, it’s certainly a better investment than any minute spent watching The Bachelor.

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