Mickle's observation of a devastated working-class America is so sharp that the horror elements, though effectively handled, come to feel like an afterthought.

| Sep 12, 2011

Like Romero, Mickle has a pragmatic attitude to genre convention: even the corniest stereotypes can be turned to new purposes.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 22, 2011

Somehow its posse of American travellers, attempting to reach the Eden of Canada while assailed by vampires, seems a little dull.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 17, 2011

The postapocalyptic landscape has become so familiar of late (The Road, The Book of Eli) it puts pressure on low-budget indies like this to deliver something new.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 17, 2011

An angsty, bleak fantasy of America the lost.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 16, 2011

Other undead movies needlessly foreground the action. "Stake Land'' has its fight scenes, but here they're secondary.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 16, 2011

A film that shrugs off its small budget to present a meditation on survival and suffering.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 16, 2011

Jeff Grace's melancholy music underscores the atmosphere of bleak dystopian despair, leavened by flashes of humour and hope.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 15, 2011

It's a good little genre piece, edgy rather than slick, and well worth a look.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 13, 2011

The ultimate destination Stake Land heads to isn't exactly an upper, but unlike other films with such a dystopian viewpoint I'm just not sure this one earns its downbeat nihilism.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 29, 2011

A confident piece of genre filmmaking that not only deserves a wider audience but hints at truly great things to come for its talented director.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 29, 2011

Shows that a savvy mixture of characterization, atmosphere and gore-eographed suspense can make even the most familiar fright tropes feel vaguely organic again.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 28, 2011

"Stake Land" bursts with action, ideas and interesting characters.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 28, 2011

Mickle has talent, and the end credits include a character known as "French Canadian Cannibal," which is worth a half-star right there.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 28, 2011

Director Jim Mickle, who co-wrote the film with his star Nick Damici, has crafted a good-looking, well-played and atmospheric apocalyptic vision.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 28, 2011

You might be left cold at the end of Stake Land when the question of what this particular variant is going to do differently is answered with a half-hearted shrug.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 25, 2011

Though it has plenty of shocks, the film creates a wasteland that would be compellingly deranged even without vampires pressing insistently at every border. Horror is just the half of it.

| Apr 22, 2011

Some numbers are too large to contemplate. How many drops of water are there in the ocean? How many grains of sand are there in the desert? How many more apocalyptic zombie movies must I sit through?

| Original Score: 1/4 | Apr 22, 2011

Ryan Samul's cinematography and Jeff Grace's score pick up the slack, smoothly maintaining an unstable atmosphere of lurking horror.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 21, 2011

The whole movie aches from tired blood.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 20, 2011