An uneasy alliance develops between hardened criminals and the policemen raiding their apartment block as a zombie plague wages outside in this French take on the horror subgenre. While hardly exploring new or original territory, the film has some memorable touches, most notably as the group torment a female zombie pinned to the ground and talk about gang banging her, highlighting just monstrous non-zombies can be. There is also a well done bit in which one man plows into a crowd of zombies as if he is playing rugby. For the most part though, 'La Horde' never reaches its potential. There are a lot of zombie attacks, but they occur so quickly with rapid fire editing that there is no chance to bask in the madness of bodies ripped apart. The macho characters get on the nerves quite quickly too with the film soon becoming less about cops and criminals united together and more about tough men competing to show off how tough they are. There is one prominent female character, however, she is so bitter and twisted that she remains hard to warm too throughout and her actions in the film final's scene leave a sour taste in the mouth. Fortunately, the film focuses largely on Yves Pignot, who brings much comic relief as a war veteran relishing in the chance to use his army training again to fend off the zombie plague, but this is still hard a film to recommend without reservations.
