JERUZALEM (Doron Paz, Yoav Paz). 93 minutes. Opens Friday (January 29). See listings. Rating: NN
Though the title treatment of JeruZalem suggests a zombie picture along the lines of World War Z, this Israeli horror movie – with dialogue almost entirely in English – is actually more of a Cloverfield riff.
As in Matt Reeves’s 2008 found-footage knockout, a group of young people are caught in the middle of an apocalyptic event. Here it’s a pair of American tourists (Jane The Virgin’s Yael Grobglas and the largely offscreen Danielle Jadelyn) visiting Jerusalem just as a gate to Hell swings open to trigger the end of days.
Weirdly for this sort of movie, the first half of the film is more effective in establishing the movie’s world and creeping sense of unease. When the story needs to explode into all-out craziness, writer/directors Doron and Yoav Paz fall back on a pale copy of the [REC] movies with minimal invention and a poorly defined mythology.
