Ben (Jeremy Gardner) and Mickey (Adam Cronheim) survived the zombie apocalypse with a little luck and lots of patience inside a house surrounded by the undead. Now they travel around in the country with a simple strategy to survive: keep moving, so they can't catch us, and stay away from the towns and cities where most of them are lurking.
You might divide Zombie movies into 3 types: stage 1, when zombies only occur on remote islands, while the rest of the world doesn't notice ('White Zombie', 'I Walked With A Zombie', or Lucio Fulci's 'Zombi 2'). Stage 2, when a city is overrun, but with the aid of military forces, mankind may still emerge victorious ('Return of the Living Dead', Lenzi's 'Nightmare City'). Stage 3, when the zombies won and only few survivors are hiding or running ('Day of the Dead', 'Resident Evil: Extinction'). The problem is, too many 'stage 3' movies have been shot in recent years, including the TV series 'The Walking Dead' which took the commercial potential to a whole new level. So, if you pushed apocalypse to the top already, where can you go from there? 'The Battery' aka 'Ben & Mickey vs. the Dead' recognized you cannot push destruction and violence any further, so it takes apocalypse from a huge scale down to a small personal level. Ben and Mickey don't massacre the undead. They just try to stay out of the way and live a life with small pleasures. They'll be happy to find a toothbrush, clean socks, batteries for the CD player or a bottle of booze. The lack of heroic ambition and the wish to avoid fights leads to a lazy life (with the risk of an early demise, nonetheless). If viewers describe the movie as boring, slow or uneventful, that's because the two main characters love to live as uneventful as possible. The orchard, where nobody could pick up the apples because they are all dead, is a quiet and ultimately disturbing symbol for the decay of the world – you don't need to show a burning city for the same statement. The movie is kind of unique in its modesty - and very tongue-in-cheek, too. In my opinion, it deserves to be watched because it takes a different approach to the zombie genre, which is hard to achieve in a genre that accumulated so much attention of movie makers in recent years.
You might divide Zombie movies into 3 types: stage 1, when zombies only occur on remote islands, while the rest of the world doesn't notice ('White Zombie', 'I Walked With A Zombie', or Lucio Fulci's 'Zombi 2'). Stage 2, when a city is overrun, but with the aid of military forces, mankind may still emerge victorious ('Return of the Living Dead', Lenzi's 'Nightmare City'). Stage 3, when the zombies won and only few survivors are hiding or running ('Day of the Dead', 'Resident Evil: Extinction'). The problem is, too many 'stage 3' movies have been shot in recent years, including the TV series 'The Walking Dead' which took the commercial potential to a whole new level. So, if you pushed apocalypse to the top already, where can you go from there? 'The Battery' aka 'Ben & Mickey vs. the Dead' recognized you cannot push destruction and violence any further, so it takes apocalypse from a huge scale down to a small personal level. Ben and Mickey don't massacre the undead. They just try to stay out of the way and live a life with small pleasures. They'll be happy to find a toothbrush, clean socks, batteries for the CD player or a bottle of booze. The lack of heroic ambition and the wish to avoid fights leads to a lazy life (with the risk of an early demise, nonetheless). If viewers describe the movie as boring, slow or uneventful, that's because the two main characters love to live as uneventful as possible. The orchard, where nobody could pick up the apples because they are all dead, is a quiet and ultimately disturbing symbol for the decay of the world – you don't need to show a burning city for the same statement. The movie is kind of unique in its modesty - and very tongue-in-cheek, too. In my opinion, it deserves to be watched because it takes a different approach to the zombie genre, which is hard to achieve in a genre that accumulated so much attention of movie makers in recent years.