As zombie movies go, Undead gets points for trying to throw the audience some plot curveballs, but like any zombie movie it’s really just an excuse to keep you guessing which characters live and which die (There’s not a lot of difficulty in this instance). The action is over the top, and the gore is split pretty evenly between clever physical effects and CGI trickery. Which is a bit sad, as George Romero’s budget forced he and Tom Savini to create some incredibly resourceful effects, while the Spierig brothers just rely on CGI (with one brain punching exception).
The film can’t decide if it wants to be as it jumps from low-brow comedy to horror to action with little breathing room in between. Were the actors up to the task, it might have worked itself out, but budget woes kept each scene to one or two takes each and it shows. Similarly the camera work seems uneven, with most of the film bathed in a dark blue filter (which obscures a good deal of detail), but sometimes it jumps back to a full RGB spectrum.
Undead
2 & 1/2 Stars
The advance word on the ultra-low budget Undead had it pegged as a return to the romp and gore of Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive, so expecatations were high. Sadly this nugget of zombie love doesn’t live up to it’s own hype, but it still managed to be an entertaining bloodfest.
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Written and directed by a team of first-time-out brothers Michael and Peter Spierig, starring no one you’ve ever heard of, and made for about 4 dollars, Undead takes all the allegory and pretention out of zombie films and puts it right back in the blood bucket, where it belongs. This time around, meteors have bombarded the small down of Berkeley, turning residents into flesh-craving zombies. Local beauty queen Rene (Felicity Mason) gets her depature from Berkeley cut short by an attack, only to be saved by the local gun nut (and loony) Marion (Mungo McKay), whom she follows to find refuge. Soon enough they’re joined by two constables (Emma Randall and Dirk Hunter), as well as a young couple (Rob Jenkins and Lisa Cunningham). Due to lack of supplies and the needs of pregnant Sallyanne (Cunningham), the group is forced to battle their way across town, only to find that some force has walled off the town and is abducting it’s inhabitants.
As zombie movies go, Undead gets points for trying to throw the audience some plot curveballs, but like any zombie movie it’s really just an excuse to keep you guessing which characters live and which die (There’s not a lot of difficulty in this instance). The action is over the top, and the gore is split pretty evenly between clever physical effects and CGI trickery. Which is a bit sad, as George Romero’s budget forced he and Tom Savini to create some incredibly resourceful effects, while the Spierig brothers just rely on CGI (with one brain punching exception).
The film can’t decide if it wants to be as it jumps from low-brow comedy to horror to action with little breathing room in between. Were the actors up to the task, it might have worked itself out, but budget woes kept each scene to one or two takes each and it shows. Similarly the camera work seems uneven, with most of the film bathed in a dark blue filter (which obscures a good deal of detail), but sometimes it jumps back to a full RGB spectrum.
All in all Undead should provide zombie fans with a gore-treat free of the current pretentions, but it’s no second coming of Peter Jackson.