Zombie films have rules, and it seems that many horror fans are very particular about these rules.  Classic zombie fans don’t necessarily like the laws of the undead to be broken either.  Their top ten lists might consist of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead (original), and the Italian classic, Zombi.  The only thing that may change about the actual nature of a zombie is how they underwent the transfer of being a corpse to becoming a member of the undead.  Biohazard like conditions are always a popular result of a zombie infestation as well as the more theistic approach that simply states that when hell is full, the dead shall walk the earth.  God sends so many people to hell that hell overflows…the result…ZOMBIES!  I like it!  Now...what if genetically altered trees reacted with a special type of growth serum that then produced, from the trees themselves, a type of bloody sap that infected all who were exposed to it and thus turning them into zombies?  Does this sound ridiculous?  Good, I thought so too, but the writers of Severed: Forest of the Undead thought it would be, for some reason, an amazing idea.  Here, I’ll give you the names of the writers.  Carl Bessai and Travis McDonald.  They are to blame for this hideous mess of a story, and in the end, the only thing they really accomplish with Severed is further giving, in this day and age, tradition zombie filmmaking a very bad name.

Severed starts out with a struggle between foresters and nature conservationists.  One wants to save the forest and the other wants to chop er down.  The conservationists are lead by a woman, and the foresters are basically led by the man whose father owns a major lumber company.  Naturally, they will have to set aside their differences and fight some zombies in order to stay alive…and…possibly fall in love.  As if we didn’t see it coming.  Anyway…we have more than two main characters in this bunch and at times we’ll have too many characters in order to actually get attached to any one of them.  Doesn’t matter if they’re a tree hugger or a tree cutter, every character is fairly one dimensional and you’ll have a hard time caring one way or another if any or all of them live or die.  If you want good character development and story...watch Dawn of the Dead.  You can't tell me you didn't (or almost did) shed a tear when fly-boy got munched on by zombies in the elevator.  In Severed, when a main character dies; you'll just be upset they didn't show the gruesome details and bloody special effects.

This brings me to the special effects...there are NONE!  Severed is a shot for shot mess of applied gore.  Zombies are constantly being beaten with blunt objects and giant forestry axes, but never, not even once, does the camera let us see a good shot of the gruesome details.  Blood will splatter across people’s faces and nearby shrubs, but that's all we’re going to get from this so called zombie flick.  Thank god there are a couple scenes where zombies start to devour a few corpses here and there, but even then, nothing about the special effects come even close to Romero or Fulci's standards.

Carl Bessai also directed Severed.  It's his first crack at horror movie stardom, and I have to say that at first, despite a horrible plot, while behind the camera he tends to show a lot of talent.  His camera movements do become overly shaky at times, but it isn't anything that's too overly distracting.  Most of the time he keeps the pace of the film going at a rather fast rate and does what he can to try to keep the audience interested in the characters struggle to survive.  Bessai shows so much talent behind the camera that it's almost hard to pinpoint exactly how Severed becomes so incredibly dull and unsatisfying.  The script is well constructed and the actors (not unknown by any means) all do a surprisingly great job with each of there rolls.  Perhaps the problem here lies completely on the lack of special effects and lack of any interesting plot devices.  Those two problems alone make the film seem like a complete disaster and I for one was finding it difficult to even stay awake throughout the films entire 90 minutes.  It's really that dull of a film.

If you’re into traditional zombies and all the rules that are held to the original films about the undead, you’ll be happy to find that the zombies in Severed look and act as if Bessai is paying a tribute to some of Romero's classic tales.  Here we also have a few socially political influences, but nothing anywhere close to what lied beneath the surface of any of Romero's films.  Still, it's nice to see a skilled director, if not much of a storyteller, try his best to ride the wave of the current explosion in zombie filmmaking.  Severed will have you yawning throughout most of its running time, and it's hard to even recommend to almost any fan of this genre of filmmaking.  You'd be better off running down the list of classic zombie films and finding the one you haven't seen in a good year or two.  It's always nice to rehash part of the undead past.  Especially, if you're such a stickler about those rules!