ZolarCzakl puts gets his two cents in on Undead
Since the dawn of the modern zombie film in the late 60’s there have been hundreds, if not thousands of cinematic stories told about the undead and those left living who struggle to remain alive. So it’s understandable that to make a zombie movie these days you need to try to put a new spin on the whole idea if you want your movie to get noticed. The Spierig Brothers from Australia have, for the most part, done this in their relatively recent movie Undead (made in 2003 but just now hitting our shores), although the execution of the film leaves a bit to be desired.
The story goes like this: In the small Australian town of Berkeley, meteorites start falling from the sky and immediately turning people into crazed, flesh-hungry zombies. Rene (Felicity Mason), a local beauty queen, holes up in a house owned by a strange farmer named Marion (Mungo McKay), who happens to sell weapons and really knows how to use them. Two cops, a park ranger and his pregnant wife show up as well and the rag-tag group of strangers must band together to survive the zombie onslaught. Things get much stranger from this point on as mysterious hooded figures come into the picture and to tell you any more would be a crime that I’m just not willing to commit.
There seem to be two major species of the zombie film: the serious kind and the funny kind. On the more serious side we have the George Romero movies from Night of the Living Dead all the way up to the recently released Land of the Dead. These movies have sprinklings of humor but for the most part are played in a serious dramatic manner. On the other side we have movies like Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series and the movie that perhaps personifies this entire sub genre, Peter Jackson’s 1992 gore opus Dead Alive. These films take goofy characters and situations and mix them with stomach-churning gore and horrific suspense to create a unique blend of sickening violence you can laugh at. Even though the trailer for Undead makes it look like a very serious Romero-type zombie movie, it seems that the Spierig’s were trying to make one more in the Jackson camp but couldn’t quite pull it off.
The problem is that the movie can’t decide if it wants to be funny or if it wants to be serious. Scenes that are meant to be funny (but don’t quite make it) are surrounded by long action scenes (that are at times too drawn out) and even longer stretches of drama. If you look back at Peter Jackson’s first (Bad Taste) or the first Evil Dead movie, you can see that those directors had the comic/horror blend down pretty well from the beginning. It’s apparent that the Spierig Brothers don’t have it yet, but certain things in Undead do show promise for these Aussie filmmakers.
When the humor works, it works really well. In some of the action scenes, the crazy farmer Marion suddenly starts pulling some stunts straight out of Hong Kong crime movies and the Matrix series. Guns appear from out of his sleeves into his hands and he does impossible body flips in slow-motion that are very out of character. There are humorous lines found throughout and some of the violence is really funny in that Dead Alive way. There’s also a scene with zombie fish that has to be seen to be believed. If they could have found a way to keep this humor running consistently throughout the movie then it wouldn’t seem so out of place and would be much funnier overall.
As far as the zombie effects go, they are done pretty well. There is a lot of CGI stuff going on, but it didn’t bother me as much as it does in other movies. The blood and guts are effectively disgusting and the zombies were disposed of in much more entertaining and imaginative ways than they were in, say, Land of the Dead (had to get another jab at Land in there). You know a movie is going to be pretty good when you see a fountain of blood shooting very unrealistically out of someone’s neck like in a Monty Python sketch in the first few minutes of the film. Well, at least I do.
The film was a little disappointing but overall pretty entertaining. Not to compare or anything, but I got more genuine zombie thrills from Undead than I did Land of the Dead. It’s impressive for a first film and should provide enough blood and quirkiness for those who crave goofy zombie mayhem.
Undead (2003)
Lion’s Gate
Rated R for strong violence and gore, and for language
Directed by Michael and Peter Spierig
Starring Felicity Mason, Mungo McKay, Rob Jenkins, Lisa Cunningham, Dirk Hunter, Emma Randall