Some of my favorite things to write about are microbudget films, trash films, and films made in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio. 2006’s Wormwood checks all of those boxes. Directed and produced by James Maynard, and scripted by Maynard and Brett Blumfield, the budget was a minuscule $400 according to one of the less scathing reviews on IMDb (possibly posted by a friend or family member of the filmmakers, I’m guessing). At a scant 48 minutes, the film hovers between a too-long short and an extremely short feature.
I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Let me rewind a bit first. A few weeks back, I was cruising around my neighborhood’s annual community garage sale searching for treasures. I had already found a factory set of ’89 Fleer baseball cards that contained the black box version of the infamous Billy Ripken “fuck face” card, an only slightly rumpled The Big Lebowski poster, and a stack of vintage Ray Bradbury paperbacks that day when I came upon a dilapidated cardboard box filled with DVDs at a rather unassuming sale. There, amongst the typical dollar bin fodder, public domain westerns, and oddball how-to videos, was a cover that I’d never seen before.
Clearly, the artwork had been printed off on someone’s computer, but this wasn’t a bootleg. I had never heard of any of the actors or the production company (Zombie Junkyard), and the font used for the plot description on the back was of questionable taste. I realized I was looking at a copy of a homemade movie. Score! I paid my dollar to the guy in the lawn chair running things and asked him if he knew anything about the film. He mumbled something about it being his daughter’s before turning his attention to a lady inquiring about the weed wacker that was the piece de resistance of his offerings.
When I got home later that afternoon, I dug up whatever info I could find on the film, which wasn’t much. The production company’s URL wasn’t up and running (if it ever was) and searches for the filmmakers, cast, and crew turned up next to nothing. IMDb informed me that it was made in Columbus, which, along with the blistering reviews and low rating, added to the intrigue. 2006 was before the days of nearly everyone having relatively easy access to editing software and smartphone cameras. So, the fact that it was even on the site was kind of impressive to me. Plus, it only had 33 ratings, so it made me feel like I had stumbled upon some outsider art that barely anyone had seen.
What about the film itself, though? It opens with an introduction from the young director, thanking the viewer for purchasing the disc. We then move on to an extensive prologue focusing on a preacher (played by Blumfield) who is obsessed with the apocalypse. After being relieved of his duties by a skeptical church administrator (Ritchey T Mulhollem), the fiery reverend pays a visit to the cemetery where his father is buried. When his freshly awakened and ravenous zombified brother greets him, he knows he is right about the end of the world.
We then transition into the main story, which is concerned with a handful of folks (Devin Kemp, Kate Shane, Peter DiGravio, and Kathryn Brewer) holed up in a small apartment as the zombie threat grows. In between arguing about what to do with their slowly accumulating pile of corpses, they watch TV broadcasts for info about the unfolding apocalypse. It’s all very Night of the Living Dead and this element is knowingly placed front and center with clips and music from the film utilized frequently. Maynard and Blumfield even go so far as to lift bits of dialog from NotLD and Dawn of the Dead for their characters to use. The film ends abruptly on a fairly downbeat note. According to the behind-the-scenes extras included with the disc, they only had four days to shoot the film, so I’d bet the somewhat unsatisfying conclusion was necessitated by the short schedule.
If you weren’t already clued in by some of the details discussed above, let me spell out that Wormwood was definitely the work of amateurs. Maynard’s camerawork, shot compositions, and editing are inartful and awkward. We often see cars calmly tooling around in the background of shots while zombies are supposedly rampaging across the world. And speaking of zombies, there are merely a few on display. The soundtrack, by which I mean the dialog recording, is clumsy, with some pieces being muffled and inaudible. The performances are serviceable but are nowhere near what you’d call polished. Actors sometimes look directly into the camera and often seem unsure of what to do while they’re not speaking (blocking likely didn’t come into the equation at all).
On the other hand, Jeremy Turon’s score is fun, alternating between electronic dissonance and 8-bit videogame-inspired bounciness. I also enjoyed the small amount of effects sequences we get, even though they’re not convincing in the slightest. Maynard and Jason Greer’s makeup does just enough to elevate the piece beyond what some motivated kids might make in their backyard on a lazy summer day. I particularly liked the zombie escaping from the grave shot early in the film, for what it’s worth.
Look, I’m not trying to dunk on the film, though. That would be boring. I’m actually quite happy that I could add the film to my collection. I had fun watching it, too! Yeah, it’s clearly the product of people with more ambition than skill, but so what? I’m here for the dreamers and misfits. I was disappointed to see that pretty much everyone involved didn’t go on to have any sort of career in underground filmmaking, at least according to IMDb and some quick Googling. However, I’m glad that James Maynard and company were at least able to mostly see this project through to completion. I can only recommend Wormwood to folks who like buying random VHS tapes from thrift stores for the dubious pleasures they might contain, fans of poorly made student films, and those who take pleasure in knowing they’ve seen art that most people will never know even existed.
Michael Cavender