Barren Earth (2009)

Original Release Date: August 5, 2009
Publisher: Library of the Living Dead Press

Let’s call a spade a spade: purchasing a zombie novel or movie from a smaller distributor, publisher, or film studio can be a mixed bag. You never quite know what you’re getting, and the lack of financial backing to the project in question could be either a blessing or a curse. Many people think that media created by independent publishers (or self-published by an author or filmmaker) is automatically going to be sub-par due to the fact a larger company didn’t put their name and resources behind the project.

Fortunately for those of us willing to explore these independent projects, “many people” are proven wrong quite frequently. Often times, novels and movies released by smaller companies provide exactly the opposite of most people’s expectations. Because independent authors and filmmakers don’t have multiple higher-ups to answer to or corporate editors to hack and slash their vision into what might be termed “universally sellable,” you can actually get results that are exactly what the creators intended, and are many times quite unabashed, unique, brutal, truthful, and “real” projects.

Granted, there are “stinkers” out there: books and movies that are low-budget, low-talent, derivative pieces of drivel that aren’t worth the paper or film that they were made on. But to be perfectly fair, these stink bombs come from all over, put out by both the smallest companies and the big entertainment powerhouses – for every terrible small-budget film like “Zombie Nation” you can probably name an equally crap-tacular big-budget flop like 2008’s “Day of the Dead” remake.