Stalled has a very simple premise: zombie apocalypse, from the view of a guy is stuck in a bathroom stall. And it's certainly not overly complicated - it sticks to that premise (aside from a brief hallucinatory number) until the very end of the film. But surprisingly, it moves pretty fast and doesn't drag as much as one might expect from the one-note premise. There is a bit of a cheat - one (mostly unseen) person is also stuck in the same bathroom with our hero. But I'll give that a pass... without that there would be literally nothing for our hero to do. Anyways, the bulk of the film is the two of them talking - giving each other a hard time and getting to know each other while gut-munchers continue to fill up the bathroom.
The premise pretty much sums it up. But to go into a little more detail... sad sack janitor W.C. is working during the big office Christmas party, and is fixing something in the women's room. And since he's a little pervy, when someone comes in to use the facilities, he hides in one of the stalls. And when another woman comes in and the two start to make out, ol' W.C. thinks he's witnessing a pervy Christmas miracle. (Having actually written this down I really wish Stalled would have starred the Ghetto Heisman himself - rapper WC from the Westside Connection.)
Anyways, as you may guess, one of the women is in fact a zombie (it's the kind of film where the zombie apocalypse just happens - you never really know why) and bites the other one. And the zombie plague spreads. Unfortunately for W.C., more of the undead revelers wander into the bathroom, while he just sits on the toilet and tries to figure out how to escape. After a few minutes, he finds/hears that a second person has been in another stall the whole time... witty banter ensues, and the pair tries to figure out how to escape without becoming zombie food.
So, Stalled is (of course) a zom-com. While it would be pretty interesting to see a deadly serious movie about a dude stuck in a bathroom during a zombie apocalypse... this ain't it. And as a comedy, Stalled *kind of* works. I chuckled on several occasions, but never found it to be a laugh riot. And most of the humor comes from the interplay between W.C. and "Evie" (the woman trapped in the other stall). Honestly, this humor would probably work in *any* situation where the two were trapped and isolated from each either. What I mean is that most of what works (character-wise) in this film is never really zombie specific.
That's not to say the zombie stuff is bad. On the contrary - they all look pretty good makeup-wise, and the gore is solid. But Stalled just doesn't really bring anything new to the table. I mean, it's better than I expected it to be considering the plot. I had assumed the whole "stuck in the bathroom thing" was just a way to keep the budget down. But it looks like they spent some decent money, and I think that zombie aficionados would be just fine with the caliber of makeup/gore here. But it's nothing that you haven't seen before. Not that that's an inherently bad thing - it's not easy to do with the hundreds of zombie films coming out annually. Sometimes just being competent is enough.
I head read a couple of reviews saying Stalled is a "zom-com with heart." I don't really agree. It's never really mean-spirited, and while it kind of tries to have an emotional hook, it just didn't resonate with me in any way. And I don't want to get all spoilery, but I was not a big fan of the resolution of Evie's character. But otherwise, it's well-shot and decently acted. While the overall tone is kind of goofy and it's got it's fair share of gags, they take the zombie effects pretty seriously. So that was nice.
So yeah, it's a thin premise and I'm not sure what else I can really say here. Stalled is a pretty breezy film. It's well-paced (in spite of being in one location for the vast majority of the runtime) and well-made. And the humor mostly works in a low key way. It's never particularly clever or laugh-out-loud funny, but it passes the time well enough and is a painless way to scratch your zombie itch.
I would more-or-less recommend this film.
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