A minor league pitcher and catcher (a battery) mosey across rural New England during a zombie apocalypse we know nothing about. Benjamin (Jeremy Gardner) is the dominate catcher and Mickey (Adam Cronheim) is the wimp pitcher. You would think they would get along better, but they don't. Mickey is hoping things will return to normal as he keeps his winning scratch-off ticket. Benjamin wants to move on and adapt.

The film is "The Road" boring. There is a scene 35 minutes into the film, I admit I haven't seen in a zombie film and hopefully won't see again. The film is more about character relations with zombies as a distraction. Yawn.

Parental Guide: F-bomb. No sex. Nudity (Jeremy Gardner)

At times this seems to be dragging at a speed that even a slow walking zombie would feel offended by. But the road movie and the road ahead in general have powerful things to say. While this is obviously a low budget movie with mostly two characters on display (and their interactions),it does have a lot of punches along the way.

You could ask if some conflicts were necessary, but you can never truly know how you'd react to a situation like the one those two friends find themselves in. And it's always good to have two guys who have a different personality. The movie is also not shy when it comes to more adult jokes and themes that would certainly come up while on the road for so long.

An independent movie like this seems to need all the promotion it can get, therefor it will be called "Ben & Mickey vs. The Dead" in Germany. Some might be aware of this, but it is "normal" for German distributors to change English titles of movies into English titles ... that may spark a wider interest. The movie speaks for itself, but don't expect this to be a comedy. It's independent, it gets down and it is dirty ...

Baseball player buddies Ben (ably played with gruff conviction by writer/director Jeremy Gardner) and Mickey (a fine and credible performance by Adam Cronheim) have radically contrasting ways of handling a zombie outbreak in rustic New England: The pragmatic Ben has accepted the severity of the situation and regressed to a fierce survivalist mode while the less practical and weak-willed Mickey remains in denial about same and yearns for the creature comforts of the now hopelessly lost pre-apocalypse civilized world (as confirmed by Mickey's insistence on constantly listening to music on his portable Walkman). Gardner admirably eschews cheap scares and excessive gore in order to put a laudable marked emphasis on the two well-defined main characters, a low-key gloomy atmosphere, and the psychological ramifications of coping with a zombie apocalypse in which there's a considerable amount of tedious and monotonous downtime in between killing zombies and scavenging for food and supplies. Indeed, the fraught relationship between Ben and Mickey gives this smartly written gem an exceptionally substantial surplus of depth and poignancy. Moreover, Gardner comes through with several genuinely startling and unexpected moments that pack a potent emotional punch: Ben and Mickey relishing a rare opportunity to brush their teeth, the sexually frustrated Mickey masturbating to a buxom and still attractive female zombie, Ben singing and clumsily dancing while listening to Mickey's Walkman, and rugged alpha male Ben forcing the wimpy and passive Mickey to kill his first zombie. A lengthy set piece with Ben and Mickey trapped inside a car by the zombies proves to be positively nerve-wracking. Christian Stella's sumptuous widescreen cinematography astutely captures the loneliness and isolation of the vast wide-open rural landscape. Kudos are also in order for the first-rate soundtrack and Ryan Winford's spare, yet folksy and harmonic score. A totally on the money little winner.