Brandishing a high speed connection and some mad Qwerty skills, starry-eyed, Sam Raimi-hopeful took to his Twitter account May of 2009 to promote Invasion of the Not Quite Dead, a debut film about meteors, deadly viruses, and a host of other equally inventive ideas. The result was a full-scale assault on timelines everywhere and a tweeting-populace agog with rabid excitement at the prospect of being a part of celluloid history. But the virtual marathons didn’t stop there; Lane launched an epic 85-hour fundraising “Tweetathon” on the 25th of January this year (the gripping action broadcast live via cam-feed), followed by an EVEN MORE epic 86-hour battle of endurance shortly after. And more will surely follow. Offering pre-order producer packages to film fans, with perks ranging from nifty key-rings (not just any nifty key-rings, but INVASION nifty key-rings!) to the chance of achieving fleeting stardom as brain-pining zombie extras (not just any zombie extras, but INVASION zombie extras!), Lane’s hobbyhorse, The Indywood Project, has raised over £35 000, effectively reanimating his dreams of film-making independence – solely through fan-funding, and primarily via social networks.

Lane’s is a success story in the making , but with a cast sporting such superstars as Zach Galligan (of Gremlins fame, and well, nothing else) and Efisia Fele (aka prehistoric horror-zine Fangoria’s Penny B Dreadful), and a storyline that’s as tedious as Lane’s vacuous tweeting, the “black comedy/horror” about virulent zombies and viral boredom is probably not the reason in and of itself for the steadily amassing fan-base; it’s more likely the hope that the project holds for wannabe moviemakers with zippo chance of getting studio support – that and the novelty of seeing your name on the film’s expanding credits roll – along with 825 (and counting) other faceless randoms.

You probably don’t want to see another film about hunks of walking dead meat. But if you support the cause, it might make the rest of Invasion of the Not Quite Dead a hell of a lot better than the trailer, and that would be a humanitarian act on behalf of unwitting movie-going victims everywhere:

Still, if altruism is not enough to turn your corporately-hardened heart, there’s always those nifty key-rings.