Transit 17

Transit 17

After Europe gets ravaged by a virus, General Ratzinger (Jean-Paul Van der Velde) along with his troops starts hunting the uninfected survivors hiding in so-called ‘transits’ cut-off from the outside world. Led by Commander Simac, his tropes called ‘sniffers’ are on the lookout for those that resist confinement while a revolutionary group the Free Fighters led by Vanguard (Christophe Van Zandycke) attempts to escape and bring down this violent force that keeps slaughtering the infected as their numbers rapidly increase.

However, a different group of the resistance, composed of Tex (Guy Bleyaert), Eve (Zara Phythian), Brad (Lee Charles), Deena (Kimberly Stahl), and Daniel (Daniel Pala), is sent on a secret mission to locate Jen (Maria Melikidze), a girl of 15 years infected with the virus but lived. She is possibly the only cure for what makes the Free fighters and the Resistance join hands. They will do everything possible until she is protected and the cure that can rescue mankind is found.

The movie-action is loosely based on the true events shot in 2014 and created as the sequel to writer/director Guy Bleyaert’s first feature film released in 2013. Transit 17 endured a long wait for a wider release which is not often a good omen to many films. Nonetheless, in this case, it is far from the truth, as it is an entertaining low-budget zombie-action picture that stands out due to its balanced drama and action, and rightly so, you don’t have to be obsessed with the zombies when you make a zombie film (a common pitfall among many low-budget filmmakers).

With regard to the zombies, although they do not form the central theme of Transit 17, when they surface some of them seem inspired from the gory themed films of Jean Rollin – there is clearly a European influence as many of them do not look like traditional zombies for example in numerous genre films made in the US. The same thing can be said about their speed. They are very quick, much quicker than the zombies from 28 Days Later for instance. Perhaps this is why in this movie they are referred to as ‘runners’ instead of zombies!

Going back to European, writer/director Guy Bleyaert has assembled a fairly diverse cast which features him prominently as Tex the Resistance Leader but in fact the major attractions of this film are Zara Phythian and Lee Charles who play Eve and Brad respectively. It’s Phythian I especially believe to be the real standout, and even though she has most likely performed in several movies during the time this movie started filming, this has to be her best and most significant role as a lead in a film.

Gladly, in numerous places all over the film, the actress has been given more than enough time to show off her skills and for this reason, I came out of Transit 17 thinking that it was about time to see Zara Phythian as the lead in e next action series. With the right writer and director, she could be one of the best of the DTV queens of the 80’s and 90′.

Transit 17 is true to its genre, boasting zombies, and while the constant use of CGI some may find excessive (of course we mean gunfire and blood which is more like splotches), this is the first and only time the words ‘surprisingly’ and ‘great’ could be used together when describing what is classified as an action-horror and its intended release on tock was a year late compared to other zombie flams released last year.

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