I'm going to indulge in a bit of TMI here. Full disclosure. I love Left 4 Dead. I love the running, I love the screaming. I love shoving the annoying teammate off of the roof so that they get ripped apart by the gnashing horde below. But most of all? Nothing gets me horror-hard like blasting a corpulent boomer with a shotgun, dousing the surroundings with bile. I'm sorry if that makes you uncomfortable. Click your feeble minds elsewhere. The rest of you? You're giving that knowing nod right now. You don't have to say anything. I know.

If you're a horror fan, you owe it to yourself to at least watch a game. A single match has more electrified adrenaline than most horror flicks do these days throughout their entire run time. The smash success for the XBox 360 and PC is distilled, 198 proof gameplay. There aren't complicated menus. There are no excruciating Metal Gear Solid cut scenes or complex narratives to follow. You run. You kill. You try to live. That's it.

That said, I have no idea how this can be adapted to a film. Everything that makes it so slick and streamlined as a game is every reason it can't be a good movie, not without making substantial tweaks and additions to the story. There just isn't anything there aside from zombie killing with a dash of morbid banter between the characters.

That's not stopping an enterprising cadre of fans from trying, though. They've nabbed some dopplegangers to stand in as the band of 4 from the first game and have whipped up a teaser trailer (after the jump) along with some rather polished images. All of this is laying the foundation for a full-fledged feature. The trailer kicks off with the all to familiar whimpering of the Witch, one of the most terrifying pixelated antagonists to ever make me crap myself. Take my word for it - if you hear that noise, just got the other way, slowly and quietly.



Left 4 Dead: The Movie stars Alpha Ariesmaximus, Gabriel Cash, Maryana Cotelici, and Roberto Verrocchi. The team of Daniele Bellucci and Marco Tudini are the tag team directors. The project, while borrowing heavily from the game, will be scripted by Bryan Schulz.

As you saw in the trailer, it's clear that they don't have the permission of Valve, so we'll see how far this project makes it before ghouls of the litigious variety lay the project to rest. It remains to be seen if it will become popular enough to interfere with the inevitable official film, which I'm sure Dr Boll is circling around like a damned German hyena.

If you're into the whole 'social networking scene', you can befriend the production on their Facebook page.

Surf on by their official page for some more details.

And if you're really intent on bringing the dead to life, throw them some money and become an associate producer by following the instructions here. Support indie cinema!


If you've got a project of your own to promote, let me know about it! Shoot me an email at jasonsmurphy@hotmail.com or reach out to me via Twitter.