Every day in October, the Department of Tangents Blog & Podcast is presenting a different horror short film as part of the Daily Horror Film Fest. It occurs to me that we’ve gone nearly half the month without a zombie film, something we fix today with Jonas Ussing’s Zombiehagen. It’s getting harder to find a really good zombie short, even as people are making more of them. This one caught my eye, though, for its quieter moments and for the twist at the end.

The world-building is impressive – the stadium that used to be a refugee camp, all the posts in the public square (a vision that has become too familiar with real-world tragedies), the empty city streets. Then there are the people, the only two left. “The Girl” is on a desperate search for her boyfriend, and she’s willing to risk her life to find him. “The Guy” seems gentle – he even has sympathy for the zombie crawling through the square. And he’s Johnny on the Spot in the stadium. Maybe there’s a safe place for these two to hole up and take a breath. Maybe.