‘Fenris Unchained’: The Zombie Apocalypse as an Excuse to Drink Heavily In Wisconsin
Could the ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ occur in Wisconsin? Zach Snyder thought so.
Would it involve beer? I’m just guessing, yeah:
Beer for beer and shot for shot, when all 50 states belly up to the bar, few can hold their own with Wisconsin.
Binge drinking – we’re No. 1.
Percentage of drinkers in the population – No. 1.
Driving under the influence – No. 1.
How about the Norse Gods?
The story of Fenris Unchained is of the beginnings of Ragnarok, starting in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, with the possibility of the Norse god Fenris being released from his prison. It’s never really stated why Norse gods are battling in Wisconsin and not keeping their fights in Valhalla or wherever it is Norse gods typically fight, but I think it has something to do with our main character Peter Vidar (Ryan McDaniel) and his disturbing dreams.
Well…. Ok, it’s like this. There’s a certain subset of people in the Upper Midwest of Scandinavian descent who really, really want to believe that this area was settled by the Norse/Vikings/whoever centuries before white people came from the East to make farmland and throw the Native Americans off their property. Part of this is simple romanticism, and part is the wish to make their claim to the land somehow more legitimate. This has sometimes led to remarkably extreme behavior, like, say, carving a massive rock with fake runes and using it as a hoax to prove that Minnesota was explored by Scandinavians in the 14th century.
That might have some bearing on the whole issue, or not. Who knows?
Where does the ZRC get involved in this? Glad you asked:
Let’s get to the thing we all care about here the most, though: THE ZOMBIES. Unfortunately, the zombies make their first appearance at 65 minutes into this 89 minute film, and then it seemed mostly for having-zombies-for-zombies’-sake, like they threw in some zombies to have the movie show up a bit more on low-budget horror radars. Let’s face it, most people that watch these no-budget flicks are zombie fans, and perhaps the filmmakers were playing to that. I think there might be something about the dead coming back to life during Ragnarok, though, so I could be entirely off base here. But even if the zombies did seem a bit gratuitous, at least they were done right: these are slow shamblers that eat human flesh.
I’m not big into Norse mythology so I have no idea about the dead coming back to life during Ragnarok, but since the modern flesh-eating Zombie stereotype originates in the 1960s (not just with Romero, but most famously from him), I’m not sure why rehashing the stereotype in the context of the Norse end-times qualifies as Zombies ‘done right’.
From the sounds of it what we have here is an indie film that doesn’t know what it wants to be, but knows that hating on Zombies gets you instant attention and DVD sales, and so decided, heck, let’s throw in some Zombie Apocalypse, then people will watch our deranged take on Ragnarok.
As for me, I think I’ll stick to craft beer and Zombie Friendly entertainment.
Hmm. Beer.
(I do live in Wisconsin after all)
PS: Something that seems odd to me as a local:
It seems Norse gods and mythical beings have a thing for bars (which makes sense I suppose) as half of the set locations are bars. There’s lots of drinking and, curiously, as I mentioned earlier, smoking. Now smoking isn’t strange at all for bars, but the way that the movie constantly points it out was off-putting. Not to mention, the way the actors themselves smoked, as if they’re not real smokers. They didn’t even inhale for Christ’s sake. I am a smoker and that took me out of the movie a bit.
Actually, Wisconsin banned smoking in bars last year. So I’m not sure if these Norse gods are just scofflaws or if the movie was made before the ban, or was unaware of it for some reason. Regardless, you can rest assured; you may run into Loki in a Wisconsin bar, but he won’t be smoking…. legally, anyway.
About The Author
Interesting article/rant/review.
On one of our daily searches to see what people have to say about our little film, one of the minions came across this page. It wasn’t brought up until today. Personally, I find that any news/reviews of what we put together as amusing, and love to hear what the viewers have to say, whether it be good, bad or just plain ugly. So thank you for that.
The main reason I’m here to clear up some of your questions. First and foremost, the film is supposed to be a noir-comedy, there is no point in the film that we were taking ourselves over-the-top seriously. The film even has a game that goes along with it, to match up to the bloopers that can be found routinely throughout the film, boom pole in shot, random shot of the news team that showed up to do a story on us filming, etc.
The zombies are in the film as that’s what happens to people that are killed by Loki, in this little sub-universe that the film exists within. They have nothing to do with the plot of the film itself other than it was fun to do. We were unaware that the film could be construed as “Zombie Hating” as you have elgantly put it.
The smoking ban in Wisconsin, this is one area that few people know about. In fact, the city council in Eau Claire, WI had just put its smoking ban into effect less than a week before we started shooting. We got in through a loop-hole in the ban at the time, that has since been covered by the state of Wisconsin.
I encourage you to watch the film for yourself to get a better insight to the film.
Aaron Rigby
Producer
Fenris Unchained