Severed is a zombie movie that can most be summed up with one word: frustrating. When director/co-writer Carl Bessai's "undead lumberjacks" movie starts off it has some good forward momentum behind it and the setting and idea brought forward in the script is pretty decent, but a lot of that ends-up making little difference when everything feels like it was filmed by a handheld camera operator on a caffeine high. Not to mention the fact that there's not nearly enough done with the premise to make it stand-out from the numerous zombie movies flooding the horror section of your favourite local video store.

Bessai and co-writer Travis McDonald go a little bit heavy on the "protect the environment" message early as the movie opens with a group of protestors who are opposed to a lumber company that's clear-cutting all the trees in the forest. Into the picture comes Tyler (Paul Campbell), who just happens to be the bosses son and has been sent in to see why things aren't running as smoothly as they normal do.

Before you can say "ack! Zombies!" Tyler, our protestors and a group of lumberjacks find themselves under siege by a group of zombies who, as it turns out from the first of a handful of lame sub-plots, have been infected by a genetically enhanced hormone called "GX-11" which has been engineered to make trees grow and put the forestry companies profits through the roof. Yeah, that's right there's a scene here where one of our tree choppers saws into a tree only for some red goop to ``bleed`` out of the trunk - which in turn ends-up getting into his bloodstream due to a chainsaw mishap, thereby starting the zombie plague.

From here Bessai throws out lots of beatings with sawed-off logs and blood sprays in various people's faces as our makeshift group fights off the infected lumberjacks. In fact, the movie overdoes it just a little on all the blood splattering as the cast takes spurts of it to the face more than Jenna Jameson once did of another bodily fluid. To add insult to injury, most of the attack scenes don't work too well thanks to the inept handheld camera work on display as many shots are poorly framed and we get many odd close-ups. It was so bad that the person I was watched Severed with got so frustrated they muttered at the screen, "get a tripod, douche bags!"

Not content with making a straight-ahead zombie flick though, Bessai and McDonald toss in another sub-plot as Tyler and our group of victims stumble across a remote lumberjack camp filled with gruff forestry workers. This not only slows the movie down to a crawl but there's a whole bunch of unnecessary attempts at "weird" as the camp dwellers enjoy playing a game where they lock someone in a cage with zombies to see how many they can kill in a time limit as well as a "dinner" scene that tries too hard to be bizarre and contains a totally perplexing hand stabbing moment.

It's that sub-plot and the fact that the script doesn't have much in the way of characters to root for that makes Severed a chore to get through. The movie's location and premise is generally fine but Bessai and company just don't know how to deliver the goods. Sloppy would be the best word to describe the movie as the story, camera work, and attack sequences all fall victim to an inept sort of sloppiness that even a plethora of spurting blood can't solve. This is the type of movie you'll want to like (and probably will for the first twenty minutes or so) before you end up getting too annoyed at it to enjoy yourself. It's obvious Bessai isn't sure how to make an effective zombie movie and it's proven by that aforementioned head-scratcher of a sub-plot.

Severed is a movie that's trying to stand-out in a littered sub-genre that only manages to sink itself because of that fact. If it would've been more of a standard gut-muncher it might've actually been watchable and not as crappy as it turns out to be. (Chris Hartley, 8/27/07)

Directed By: Carl Bessai.
Written By: Carl Bessai, Travis McDonald.

Starring: Paul campbell, Sarah Lind, Julian Christopher, J.R. Bourne.