High street's death captured on camera as local films 'zombie movie' hometown

10 January 2024 , 20:46

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High street's death captured on camera as local films 'zombie movie' hometown

A staggering clip, recorded by a keen videographer, captured the collapse of a high street, as the previously popular area decayed into something you'd see in a "zombie film."

On a trip to the place she grew up, Waterlooville, Hampshire, a woman, wandered around the roads she knew so well, only to discover the place had turned into a shadow of its former self. She recorded the footage of her abandoned town centre, which she sent to a good friend, whose husband, Aaron Bastani, shared on social media.

With a feeling only replicated in blockbuster films, the woman, who must've been going through similar emotions to Jesse Eisenberg's Columbus in Zombieland, wandered past the disused shops in a state of shock.

The bizarre footage begins with the camerawoman strolling down the road. Narrating the footage, she said: "I've come down to Waterlooville because I'm helping my mum and dad out with an eye test."

The woman couldn't believe her eyes

The video captures the fall of the area

Turning the camera 360°, the director captured a humongous building that had evidently been the property of M&Co. However, rather than its prime, with customers flocking through the entrance, the doors were boarded up without another person in sight. With memories of what the street was like in the past, the narrator said: "This is definitely not what it was, I grew up round here."

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Continuing her journey, the good times came flooding back, as she remembered an old canon on which she used to sit. The local reminisced: "I used to sit on that cannon as a kid and a lot of these shops; I remember I used to come and get my Pepe Jeans from one of these shops, but look at it."

With police sirens heard in the distance, the woman continued along the road, eventually stumbling across a business that has remained open, but even that was too good to be true, as one of the windows was boarded up, likely due to vandalism, rendering the woman stunned, gasping: "There's nothing here."

The filmmaker loved the canon

Local residents claim that there were plans for the demolition of the shopping centre in place of building flats. However, developers pulled out, leaving the area looking like a ghost town. Concluding her evaluation, the woman said: "This is crazy."

On January 11, Aaron uploaded the video, expressing his fury with the government, captioning the post: "This is Waterlooville, in Hampshire. My wife's friend took this video and was kind enough to let me share it. While politicians and the London media live in a parallel universe, this is reality for much of the UK. Economic malaise and high streets that look like a zombie film."

With many clearly in agreement with his views, he received a whopping 11,000 likes and 900 comments, with a plethora of others sharing their surprise with the situation.

The area is not what it was

One concerned viewer wrote: "Pedestrianisation killed this high street, landlords killed enterprise, and local government failed on every level. There are huge plans being discussed; for them to succeed, it will need a change of culture."

While another added: "Many town centres are awful in the UK, but I think this is the worst I've ever seen."

A third suggested: "Knock it down, turn it into a park."

James Sweetnam