There has been a resurgence recently of Zombie films. Not exactly a renaissance but definitely a renewed interest in the genre. This is both good (Shaun of the Dead) and very, very bad (House of the Dead).
Undead, a little indy film out of Australia by the Spierig brothers has some effective moments but it is seriously flawed. I was really looking forward to this film. I’d heard some interesting buzz on it and I saw a trailer for it that really intrigued me. Undead is not a total disappointment; it just isn’t very satisfying. The movie has its heart in the right place; it just manages to miss the mark more often than not. The plot has some interesting ideas, mixing in alien abduction, zombie horror and over the top action but the execution is just all-wrong.
Blending genres is difficult. If you mix it just right, maintain the right atmosphere at the right moments you can end up with a truly unique vision that has a little bit of something for everybody, à la The Brotherhood of the Wolf. If you’re not careful you end up with an incomprehensible mess that fails to resonate with your audience at any level. Undead has ideas that might have made for a really fun mélange of genres however these disparate elements never really gel very well.
We start out in the small town of Berkeley. A freak meteor shower has begun to take its toll, killing and infecting the citizens. Pretty soon the undead are up and munching away. This is as good a set-up as any for a zombie flick and it brought to mind the 80’s gem Night of the Comet. The unlikely groups of survivors (town weirdo, ex-beauty queen, two cops and a really annoying couple) end up trying to escape the clutches (and stomachs) of the newly risen dead. Like Night of the Comet and Peter Jackson’s Braindead, this film really tries to mix horror and camp. This film just doesn’t succeed at it. Night of the Comet and Braindead triumph where Undead fails, with their winning combo of campy humor and horror. The humor in this movie is flat and clichéd. The Three Stooges-like slapstick is telegraphed and transparent in its attempts to be tongue-in-cheek. This movie verges on “so bad, its good”; it’s just not quite good.
The action aspect of the film is probably more of a personal taste issue. Most of the action centers on town weirdo, Marion. Marion looks like an Amish Rambo (seriously, I am not joking, funny beard and everything). This in-itself is rather odd but that’s not my only problem. The action is very over-the-top and though this often works well in movies, it just didn’t work for me in this movie. I see two stylistic camps in this trend of over-the-top action choreography. There’s John Woo and his almost ballet-like gunfights that seem very graceful and stylized. And then there’s Robert Rodriguez and the “gee, this will look kewl!” style of gun battles. I guess it’s not hard to see which kind I prefer. The action in Undead definitely falls into the Rodriguez “kewl!” camp. Well, it wasn’t “kewl”.
What truly failed for me in this movie was the plot. I know lots of people think, “It’s a zombie movie, who cares?” Well, I don’t agree. Even for a zombie flick, there needs to be some semblance of a coherent plot. This film never knew where it wanted to go. The story doesn’t really make sense until the end, and even then it's not very well thought out. Perhaps fans of this movie will believe that Undead employs a “twist” ending and therefore can’t be foreseen until the end. But there are two sticking points for me that can’t be ignored: (1) I’m sick to death of “twist” endings. Its been done. Let it go. It’s boring and shows lazy writing. If you can’t write an interesting story without putting a twist at the end then hire a damn writer! You obviously can’t do it yourself! [/end rant] (2) If you need to explicitly explain the ending and the twist, it’s not any good.
The other issues with the film: the acting, the dialogue and the FX. Hey it’s a low-budget, indy, zombie film! Well, I kind of expected these thorny issues to arise. Actually, the FX were decent considering that the film was made for $1 million and all effects were done on two PC’s by the Spierig brothers themselves.
So, while this film wasn’t the worst horror flick that I’ve seen recently, it definitely fails to provide quality, gut-munching, zombified entertainment. My advice, go see Shaun of the Dead again.
- Anansi
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