4. The Battery (2012)
Can a brand new movie really be considered underrated? If theres any justice in the world, director/writer/actor Jeremy Gardner will go on to big things thanks to this small-scale, character-driven jaunt through the oft-trodden scenario of the zombie apocalypse. While World War Z is the conceit at its most sprawling and visually dramatic, The Battery is positively microcosmic and uncomfortably intimate in its portrait of two professional baseball players who band together out of necessity in a New England ransacked by the living dead. The zombies are envisioned as a background and external danger that constantly looms over Gardners Ben and Adam Cronheims Mickey. Lonesome, lovely landscapes and expertly crafted sound effectsAdams headphones create entire fields of captivating aural ambienceare married to a richly detailed study of two men who must depend on one another when the world itself seems pitted against them. This is a superb chiller that gets much mileage from the two central performances and from Gardners canny knack for getting under the skin of his characters and into those most tender of zombie delicacies, the heart and the brains. Keep a look out for more of this guy; its too early to say where his career is headed, but this feature demonstrates the skill of contemporaries like Ti West and Shane Carruth.