Days of Darkness starts out as if it’s going to be a traditional, George Romero-style zombie film but changes pace about halfway through to become a bit more Sci-Fi influenced with touches of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Aliens, and even a does of John Carpenter’s The Thing all mixed in.

If anything, it tries to do too much. It had some promise as a straight zombie film. Not great, but enough to make it interesting but I think they outsmarted themselves with adding all of these other elements.

Steve and Mimi are returning home from a trip in the wilderness when they are assaulted by a couple of zombies along the road and Steve is bitten. They are aided by Simon, who helps them back to an abandoned Norad monitoring station (OOOOkay). There are several survivors living in the fenced in outpost including former actor Chad, former solider Lin, former Pornstar Kylie, Kylie’s daughter Jane, religious nut Trent, and DJ and Slasher. He’s called “Slasher” because he sold used cars and “slashed” prices.

Chad is the defacto leader, mainly because he’s the only one with a gun and doesn’t want Steve to stay since he’s been bitten. Evidently Chad’s seen one too many zombie films because this happens to be the one instance were a bite doesn’t turn you into one of the undead. Somehow Mimi is pregnant although she insists she’s a virgin. This is where things begin to turn South a little bit. The group has a zombie chained in the basement and Steve notices his, sigh, penis has fallen off. That’s certainly the most terrifying part to the film for most men, no doubt. When examined, the Zombie’s missing unit has been replaced by what appears to be an egg sack. From about that point on it’s all out chaos as the survivors are soon fighting each other and the zombies.

The acting is pretty weak overall, due in part to the characters being completely one-dimensional and stereotypical. Tom Eplin as Chad got the choicest role, being able to chew scenery playing a total A-hole character. Eplin also served as Producer, which might explain why he got the best role. Sabrina Gennarino also stood out as Lin but she sort of looks like the old WWE wrestler Chyna, in the film.

The Zombies are strictly bargain shelf variety. Most look like regular people stumbling around with maybe a bit of blood on them. It would have been nice if they would have invested maybe a hundred bucks or so from a local costume store and bought a few of those zombie make-up kits.

Days of Darkness isn’t a horrible film. It has some nice elements to it, particularly the setting and it’s filmed quite well. If they had stuck with just the zombie theme it would have worked out a bit better, though. As it is I would give the film a C+ grade. Running time is 88 minutes and there are no extras on the disc.