It is super rare for critics to agree on anything. It is absolutely unheard of for every critic I’ve seen thus far to gush over a foreign-made zombie/comedy flick with a ton of found-footage style camerawork tacked onto the beginning.
What is this miracle film bringing the masses together despite the chaos in the world?
One Cut of the Dead is a 2017 Japanese zombedy from writer/director/editor Shinichiro Ueda. Somehow the film lurked under everyone’s noses until it started the film festival circuit. Since then, it’s everywhere. Folks who generally snub the genre can’t stop praising the fun they had during their screening. Honestly, it feels somewhat like a dream the last few months as more and more information drops about OCotD. This can’t be real. The masses do not just rave about a low budget zombie film on this level. There has to be a catch, right? Not one that I can find. Currently the film has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb users give it 8/10 stars, and the Google users rating is 91%. It’s not just critics hyping the piece anymore. Everyone’s onboard to ride the fun train to zombie slaughter town.
The key here is that the movie hooks viewers from the beginning. Opening with a single-take scene, it drops right into the middle of a harried director’s attempt to make a low budget zombie film. There’s problems everywhere, including a leading lady who can’t manage a single decent take of one particular scene. Bad acting quickly drops to their least important problem as real zombies invade the set and they’re forced to fight them off. Yes, this sounds impossible to produce as an uncut scene, yet there it is. If the footage from the trailer is any indication, the camerawork and editing during this opening sequence is some of the best from the genre in years.
Possible spoilers below!
What keeps viewers engaged is when Udea flips the plot on its head, taking the timeline back to show how the film crew got to that impressive zombie sequence. It’s a solid look at how filmmaking can be a comedy of errors at every turn, yet still provide a way for a person to reach above their station in the world to create something life-altering. Some critics call the non-zombie sections charming and heartwarming, again proving that this film is breaking all the rules of the genre.
Unfortunately, there’s no US distributor yet, so the only way to catch One Cut of the Dead is via a film festival. I highly doubt it’ll go long without landing on a streaming platform, though. We’ll totally be back with that news when it drops.
Wan to Produce Train to Busan Remake by R.C. Murphy
One would think the rumors of a sequel would be all we heard about the Korean zombie film Train to Busan for quite some time. It’s a great film, but US genre fans didn’t flock to it like overseas fans and that almost always kills a franchise’s momentum. The film grossed $85 million overseas, yet just $2 million in the US. Turns out the American market might not be as powerful as it once was, though, and this franchise is just beginning to sprint toward becoming the next big thing for horror fans to gush about.
On September 25th, Deadline dropped the news that James Wan (Saw, The Conjuring) has been shopping around the rights for an American version of Train to Busan. Gary Dauberman (It, The Nun) is Wan’s partner in crime this time around, riding high on the success of his last few scripts. French studio Gaumont, who announced they had obtained the English remake rights a couple years back, will partner with Wan’s Atomic Monster Productions for this project.
Currently several major studios are in a bidding war for the rights package. New Line seems to be the most aggressive suitor for the property, but Paramount, Lionsgate, and Screen Gems are still vying for the chance to bring the remake to life. Universal was in the room where it happens, but backed out early. Likely because New Line’s history with Dauberman gives them better leverage for negotiations.
There’s no director tapped for the production just yet, but with the talent already onboard, it makes sense for one of them to handle it. We’ll bring you that news when it’s available.
About the original Train to Busan:
Parenting is rough. Parenting during an unknown viral outbreak is impossible. Seok-woo just wants his daughter to have a good birthday, despite their strained relationship. To cheer her up, they head to Busan to visit her mother. Before they leave the station, a sick woman boards the train. Her death and rebirth as a flesh-eating ghoul is only the tip of the iceberg—the entire Korean peninsula is in the grips of the undead. Seok-woo does his best to keep Su-an alive as the train blindly hurdles down the track to an unknown future in Busan. It isn’t easy when the dead inside the train quickly outnumber the living and the few living left refuse to trust each other.
On the back of what some critics call a misstep with his latest Cloverfield film, J.J. Abrams took a leap in a vastly different direction for his newest project, Overlord. Joining Abrams at the helm is director Julius Avery (Son of a Gun). The rated-R horror film is not connected to the Cloverfield franchise, according to Abrams in an interview from April. He went on to add that this new film is “bat shit crazy.” Which, honestly, I’ve got to agree after watching the trailer.
Overlord takes place during the brutally violent Battle of Normandy. American paratroopers drop behind enemy lines and make their move on a Nazi-occupied village. As they infiltrate the military operation, the paratroopers realize there’s something far more dangerous than Nazis waiting for them. “A thousand-year army needs thousand-year soldiers,” they’re told. Does their training cover fighting zombies?
One of the most striking things about the trailer, aside from that insane air battle, is the violence of the zombie transformation and movements. We’re seeing yet another variation of this creature, and it’s quite startling. The danger in the way they’re using computer graphics to enhance the actor’s performance and makeup is going too far, making the creature almost cartoony. It’s a fine line to walk. Many films who’ve gone this route have been dragged about the heavy-handed CG. No one is fooled by digital blood. Ever. Going off of what we’ve seen in the trailer and still photos, this team may have actually found a way to pull it off, though.
The only way to know for sure is to watch the film when it’s released. Overlord will have its world premiere at Fantastic Fest, which runs September 20-27th in Austin, Texas. Julius Avery will be in attendance, along with the film’s stars Jovan Adepo, Wyatt Russell, Pilou Asbaek, John Magaro, and Mathilde Ollivier. Overlord will then hit theaters nationwide on November 9th.
Rated: R (Contains intense violence, gore, adult language, sexual situations, and nudity)
Language: English
Starring: Roger Cross, Daniella Alonso, Bruce Payne, Scott Adkins, and Jesse Garcia
What I love about the promo for Re-Kill is it presents the film as a serious Cops/SWAT team action flick. It really isn’t. The format is far, far different. We’re watching a reality TV show within a movie, essentially. There’s even a slew of eyebrow-raising commercials, including promotional material from an agency tasked with promoting procreation. So after some serious bloodshed, it flashes to a steamy boudoir scene used for sexual propaganda. The first time it happens, it’s a tad startling. Each subsequent time, one’s mind treats it like an actual commercial and tuning out to do something else is an impossible urge to fight. It’s not until the final act that things get serious enough to really snag one’s attention, primarily because the commercial breaks are so outlandish, it kills the tension and they’re forced to start all over again to put viewers on the edge of their seats. Sometimes doing something quirky doesn’t work as planned.
Five years after the zombie outbreak, the entertainment industry has found a way to make a buck from the catastrophe which killed 4.5 billion people worldwide. Case in point, a popular reality TV show called Re-Kill, which follows random squadrons in the newly formed R-Division. The R-Division are the frontline when it comes to containing the undead within the quarantine zones, as well as taking care of any pop-up outbreaks in the United States. Being on the frontline means they’re also painfully aware that things are getting bad again. One squadron is wiped out on live-TV, save Alex Winston. Winston’s new squad has much better luck remaining with the living, completing a couple missions before things start to get weird. Why would someone drive a truckload of re-ans (zombies) into a quarantined zone? The government interrogates the truck drivers and learns of something called the Judas Project hidden in the middle of re-an occupied territory. Since the squad is already familiar with what’s going on, they’re tapped to venture into The Zone, formerly New York City, to investigate. They never expected to find a city of undead who’re smart and forming an army under the leadership of a re-an nicknamed Elvis by now-dead scientists in the failed Judas Project.
Without the commercials breaking up the action, the premise has promise on paper. The actors are pretty stellar; it’s a pleasant surprise to step into the last half of the movie and realize Dark Matter‘s Roger Cross is the new squad’s leader, Sarge. Bruce Payne really nails Winston’s complex moral code, all while being creepy as hell. There’s some characters who’re a tad too abrasive, like every dudebro stereotype is crammed into gun-wielding nutjobs who get their rocks off killing former humans. As for plot? There’s really not one until the final “episode” begins, which is far too deep in a film to finally go, “Oh, by the way, there’s this bad thing happening and we should stop it somehow.”
The production didn’t expend too much effort on the re-an FX makeup, probably because this film is shot first-person POV and once the action starts, hardly any of the zombies get a decent close-up. The basics are good enough here—pale and mottled skin, dark veins, and jagged teeth provide just enough visual cues to sell the look. There’s a small group of hero zombies, but the only difference is they’ve got more veins or a very specific facial wound. Like a lot of shoot-’em-up zombie films, these zombies are terrifyingly fast and move erratically. If they’d used shambling re-ans, the film would have been intolerably slow.
For failing to be what is promised in the promotional material, Re-Kill still manages to check a few boxes on the list genre fans keep in order to determine if a film is worth their time. At the very least, it’s a great excuse to watch people mow down zombies. However, be prepared for a fight to stay interested once the faux commercials kick in. Overall, I give Re-Kill three shattered jaws out of five.
Rated: TV-MA (Contains nudity, adult language, sexual situations)
Language: English
Starring: Lucy Watters, Gina Piersanti. Adam David Thompson, and Shane West
A mysterious virus spreads across America. It starts out as a simple rash, but eventually the infected become angry, ravenous creatures set to fill a hunger which can never be sated. Ann and Jason thumb their noses at the government’s suggestion that they stay put and instead take off into the woods where Jason grew up to wait it out. If only surviving were as easy as taking off when things get bad. Their foraging skills aren’t enough. Desperation pushes Jason to venture on a one-way mission to get food and medicine. Ann is left alone in the woods with a baby . . . and then by herself completely not long after. Eventually she manages to work out a system to keep herself alive. Time passes. She avoids the insatiable, diseased creatures slowly roaming away from the cities while making daring dashes into abandoned houses to find food. That’s when Ann finds Chris and his stepdaughter, Olivia. The trio start off wary survivors banding together just to stay alive, but tangled emotions and the monsters have a way of turning strangers into family—a really dysfunctional one.
I went into this film expecting more of the same zombie stuff that’s been done before across the genre, especially since low-budget films like this tend to only have the capacity to tell exactly one story. Boy was I surprised once the movie found its footing. First off, Ann is the survivor from the family, not Jason who’s marginally more skilled at outdoor survival. She’s all-in when it comes to doing what’s necessary, including smearing god knows what on herself to mask her scent while on trips to find food. There’s very few moments where the writing made it feel like, “This woman would be a mess and die without her man and child.” Which is refreshing. We know those moments exist, it’s human nature to mourn and fall into depression in the face of so much adversity, but they flit by quick enough to keep the story rolling along. That being said, failing to focus on Ann’s mental anguish doesn’t mean there’s no emotional impact from her losses. That final scene with the baby is gut-wrenching for any parent to endure.
Where things go sideways in this film is when the dynamic between Olivia and Ann is fully flushed out going into the final act. Honestly, the whole emotional twist here leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Everything about this film is solid, except the stepfather fetishism. It’s creepy and unhealthy. Not to mention completely unnecessary. There’s countless ways for the women to fall out with each other which doesn’t demand a love triangle where there shouldn’t be one. Can we stop doing this, writers? It’s not titillating. It’s just gross. Women don’t need sexual rivals in order to find each other’s company problematic—this is one trope I wish would die in a fire already.
Adam David Thomspon as Chris in HERE ALONE. Cinematographer: Adam McDaid
The infected aren’t on-screen much. They’re brought in sparingly because the story is about Ann, not the outbreak. That being said, these zombies are some tough mothers. They’re quick, jittery, ready to eat anything fleshy which lands in their path. The makeup is pretty basic, but well done. These zombies are, for the most part, intact so there’s not a load of gore to dress them up. Primarily it’s all mottled skin, black veins, and whatever blood came from their last meal. Simple. Effective. The zombie makeup didn’t break their budget, but despite that it doesn’t look like something a harried mother slapped on their kid after school because of course Halloween is on a Tuesday—yes, I’ve seen films with makeup that bad. The extras brought in to play the dead are energetic, adding their unique spin on zombie movements which seriously helps raise the tension in the final scenes.
Here Alone starts off a little slow, builds at about the same speed, then rams a car into your knees and takes off toward the ending before you’re sure what’s actually happening. Yet there’s a huge misstep with how the women in the film interact which cannot be overlooked—we must do better as writers to strangle these tropes pitting women against each other, their mental well-being, and their own safety in order to secure a man. That being said, as much as I’d like to give this a higher rating, Here Alone gets three and a half gnawed-on femurs out of five.
Rated: Not Rated (Contains extreme violence, strong adult language) Language: English
Starring: Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander, Joseph Pilato, Richard Liberty, Jarlath Conroy, and Sherman Howard
In tribute to the man who brought us all to this weird zombie life, I snagged Day of the Dead for a re-watch . . . and realized I’d never covered the film for this website. Well, that’s just wrong. We’re going to remedy the problem right now.
Sarah and her band of scientists are perhaps the last to continue research work during the zombie apocalypse. They’re aided by thuggish army personnel who’ve just about had their limit of hunkering down in an abandoned missile silo while the man they call Frankenstein carries out gruesome experiments. The team’s goal is to find any way to lessen the zombie impact in an earth overrun by the undead. Sarah wants a cure. Her blood-coated coworker, Dr. Logan, thinks he can tame zombies using positive reinforcement and their own latent human traits. It works. Somewhat. There’s one zombie who’s not like the others: Bub. But their progress with Bub isn’t enough for Rhodes, the military man in charge. He snaps and all their hard work hits the fan.
Now, admittedly, Day of the Dead isn’t many people’s favorite Dead film. The language is beyond foul. The racism makes any sane person’s blood boil. The way the men treat the only woman is abhorrent, and while there’s no sexual violence, it sure is threatened a lot. We’re meant to be disgusted by these men. The best shortcut was to make them outrageously racist, misogynistic, and flat out a-holes of the highest caliber. They’ve existed in an echo chamber of hatred while stuck underground. Basically, this is Romero saying that if you put a bunch of awful white men in a jar, they’ll become even more hateful before turning on each other just to have someone to fight other than their own thoughts. Unfortunately, they weren’t alone and those caught in the crossfire are people who don’t deserve to be treated so badly. Almost everyone pays with their lives because Rhodes is, deep down, a frightened little boy who requires a death grip on everything he can possibly control since the world above is absolutely insane.
The ethical questions raised by Dr. Logan’s experiments lead to some of the best conversations Romero’s ever brought to the table, on-screen and off. At what point do the undead stop being human? For Logan, it is never, ever clear. He has no qualms about using the military men as fresh zombies to operate on while he searches for what makes them tick. On the other hand, he treats Bub as an adoptive son, is painfully patient with him, and goes to great lengths to ensure the zombie’s well-being. This is night and day compared to the way Logan talks to the scientific team and the military men. With humans he speaks from a place of deep entitlement, never bothering to hide that he believes himself to be far superior to them because he’s so dang smart. He gets away with it, for the most part. However when Sarah snaps and puts Rhodes or his men in their place, she’s nearly shot. Logan made himself important, far more important than his peer, and forced Rhodes to see her as disposable. Frankenstein was never in the silo to help humanity. He was there to help himself by gathering knowledge about the one thing no one else had access to, and did it in a way he knew Sarah wouldn’t replicate so she could never be on the pedestal he built for himself.
There’s so much going on with the dead in this film. This is where Romero drove home the notion that they’re not much different from us, only they have something primal driving them instead of the complex rules humans live by every day. They’ve got more freedom than the humans. Even Bub and the others imprisoned in the silo for experimentation are at liberty to do what they want because there’s no social rules for the undead. Their only restriction is placed on them by another species. They just are whoever they are and nothing can change that. Bub already possessed the reasoning capabilities Logan exploits in the film. How do we know that? Land of the Dead. In that film, the dead communicate, have returned to a human-less life where they repeat the tasks ingrained in their minds from their living days, and eventually band together to seek something which is missing from their lives. If Bub were taught how to reason, future generations of zombies wouldn’t have been able to accomplish their great trek to Fiddler’s Green. We owe a lot to Bub.
The makeup FX are some of the best . . . for 1985. Except for a few background actors in full masks who accidentally shuffled too close to camera, the zombies are a collection of what everyone considers a stereotypical zombie. Go look at your local zombie pub crawl. Most of what’s there can also be found in the final act of Day of the Dead. There’s even a clown, for heaven’s sake. Romero did it all back in a decade when zombies weren’t the cool thing to produce. That influence echoes throughout anything dealing with the undead to this day.
Day of the Dead signaled a change in the way the undead would be presented for decades. For that reason, and so many more, I’m giving it four oozing eyeballs out of five.
Rated: R (Adult Language, Violence, Drug Use, Nudity)
Starring: Yael Grobglas, Yon Tumarkin, Danielle Jadelyn, and Tom Graziani
Camera gimmicks aside, this is perhaps one of the most unique zombie origin stories I’ve seen in years. It’s not just a random, evolved disease. There’s no shadow government running tests on humanity. Asteroids have nothing to do with spreading a weird virus. For JeruZalem they went back to the religious origins behind mankind’s obsession with the dead rising. Every Rosh Hashanah mankind is judged. This time around, the living fail the test and the dead rise in Jerusalem to punish them.
Tourists Sarah and Rachel are side-tracked from their vacation in Tel Aviv by a handsome anthropologist, Kevin, who suggests they go with him to Jerusalem instead to celebrate the New Year. The trio pack into a hostel run by the charming Omar and his family. Desperate to party, the ladies take Kevin and Omar out to check out the nightlife. We get a taste of the everyday conflicts between the numerous cultures jammed into the city during their escapades. They spend some time flirting with two soldiers, Omar isn’t as welcoming. For the most part, the party scenes are just that, save the splashes of stark reminders that the people living in Jerusalem do so in constant tension with one-another. It’s not until the final day of the celebration when things get weird. Violent news reports dominate the airwaves, which Omar brushed off until it was too late to take action, and too widespread to continue softening the horror for the hostel’s guests. Because they’re so slow to see the undead threat, they’re trapped in the city when it’s put under quarantine. The only way out is through a massive tunnel system; one older gentleman knows the path.
By then, they’ve had a few face-to-face encounters with the undead. These zombies are a hybrid, bringing in more demon than zombie aesthetic to the creature design. They’re rotted humans, but the final evolution includes functional wings, black eyes, and claws. Because this was shot to look like Glass footage, everything in the dark is super grainy, no matter what resolution screen you watch it on. What could’ve been a super neat zombie design is muddied in the shadows. Fight scenes where the undead are close enough to see detail are choppy. Almost all of the latter fights include several minutes where the point-of-view is seriously compromised, there’s no light, or the camera is sideways on the floor. The zombie/demons aren’t the only creature. We get one head-scratching shot of something the locals call a Nephilim. It’s massive, towering over the buildings as it strolls by. Then we kinda forget there’s a huge thing walking through the Old City and continue on.
There’s little to get to know about the characters. They wear it all on their sleeves. Sarah is emotionally scarred from her brother’s death. Rachel is tired of her buzzkill bestie and wants to party. Kevin has a niggling idea about the undead rising, but by the time he thinks past getting in Sarah’s pants, he can’t save anyone. Omar has the most depth of them all, completely stealing the show from the ladies at every turn. This is the kind of film where it’s easy to forget to spend time developing the characters because the writers are so focused on how they’d die. And die they do. We see first-hand how a living soul turns into one of the undead. Which is really ridiculous because it means the main characters knowingly tote an infected person along for the great cave escape. Spoilers: Like any good zombie movie, there’s not much hope for mankind. The ending isn’t that shocking, but does leave fans with a nice sense of dread with the closing shot of a zombie/demon swarm over Jerusalem.
JeruZalem has its faults, it really does. However, I cannot tell you how refreshing it is to watch a zombie-centric film which isn’t set in America, the UK, or Germany. The change in location and culture dictated a change in the story-telling process. Doing something different is a terrifying challenge, one genre filmmakers relish and fans lap up like warm milk—watching the same set of characters doing the same things and running from the same monsters over and over is a drag. This film is not the next NotLD, but I’m giving JeruZalem three-point-five mangled mandibles out of five. I’d add it to a marathon night of found-footage films.
Starring: Kris Holden-Ried, Emily Hampshire, Shawn Doyle, and Claudia Bassols
Rated: NR (Adult language, partial nudity, mild drug use) From Filmax International:
Kate (Emily Hampshire) works at the hospital in the Return Unit, helping those who have been infected by the virus that turns people into zombies. Kate’s dedication to her work is absolute, but few people realize that for her it is also a personal matter; Kate’s own husband, Alex (Kris Holden-Ried), has been returned.
After various brutal and prolific attacks at the hands of Anti-Return groups and rumours that the “Protein” stock is running dangerously low, Kate fears for Alex´s safety. Suspicious of the government’s order that all the returned should report to a secure medical facility ‘for their own safety’, the couple decides to flee, taking with them all the doses of “Return Protein” they have. At no point does the couple imagine that the real threat is a lot closer than they think…
The Returned came from the same house as the [Rec] series, and the quality shows. I went into the film expecting one of the random, low-budget films that are usually slid under my cell door. Boy was I in for a surprise. While The Returned isn’t a blockbuster, it’s not something to snub at a glance.
Let’s get down to it. The film starts with what feels like a random, bouncy flashback scene. It isn’t entirely clear why we’re seeing this scene until the final minutes where it becomes clear this is a pivotal moment in Kate’s life, one that shapes how she deals with the fallout of so many harsh decisions from those around her. The importance could’ve been made clearer. Possibly by cutting some of the post-production additions—all the “noise” added to make the footage feel old—and pushing the credits until the following scene set in the present time.
As for the characters, I’ve found a rare film in that none of them are, as I call it, Too Stupid To Live. Every decision made throughout the movie is thought out, or when done impulsively there’s decent character-driven reasons, as is the case for Jacob and Amber when they ultimately are forced to make a hard decision that may put them at odds with their friends, Alex and Kate.
There’s not a lot of zombie action on screen. The film instead focuses on society’s inability to adapt to change and accept a new species of people. Because, that’s what the Returned are, something new and unpredictable. Forced to rely on a daily dosage of drugs, the Returned are given the same treatment as homosexual AIDS patients by the media. What happens when they stop taking their treatments? What will they do to others without treatment? How fast will this disease spread if the government doesn’t step in and micromanage their lives? Wouldn’t it be better if they were all just killed—gunned down while idiots seek to coddle the monsters? We recoil at the truth of it—anything new and uncertain is automatically handed a death sentence. That’s the way humanity is hard-wired. Kill the unknown to spare the larger population. Never mind who is traumatized in the process.
The Returned is a slow-burner. The plot pushes steadily forward, forced along by the characters, their decisions and reactions, and not the evil undead waiting to tear them limb from limb. This is not an action film. It’s a statement on a society that cannot change without first destroying itself. If you want hack-and-slash, keep moving. However, if you’d like to think about the implications of how zombies would change everyday life, give The Returned a chance. I’m giving it 3.5 bloody scalps out of five.
A. Zombie Reviews . . . Cockneys vs Zombies (2013) By A. Zombie
Rating: NR (Adult language, violence, gore)
Starring: Rasmus Hardiker, Harry Treadaway, Michelle Ryan, Jack Doolan, and Georgia King
From cockneysvszombiesmovie.com
COCKNEY: A native of the East End of London, born within hearing of the ringing of the Bow Bells
ZOMBIE: A supernatural power or spell that according to voodoo belief can enter into and reanimate a corpse
SYNOPSIS: The Bow Bells Care Home is under threat and the McGuire’s – Andy, Terry, and Katy – need to find some way to keep their grandfather and his friends in the East End, where they belong. But, when you’re robbing a bank, zombie invasions makes things a lot harder. And let’s face it, they need all the help they can get when their bank-robbing experts turn out to be Mental Mickey and Davey Tuppance. As contractors to an East London building site unlock a 350-year old vault full of seriously hungry zombies, the East End has suddenly gone to hell and the Cockney way of life is under threat. Equipped with all the guns and ammo they can carry, it’s up to the gang to save the hostages, their grandfather, and East London from zombie Armageddon.
You have to love a movie which starts, not with a zombie attack, but with a fart joke and foul-mouthed construction workers. Cockneys vs Zombies takes a while to hit the undead action after the bumbling construction guys accidentally unleash the zombies lurking in a 17th century catacomb hidden under London’s East End. First, we’re introduced to Andy and Terry. The boys are obviously up to something nefarious, but the depth of their desperation isn’t completely clear until they finish delivering meals to the old folks home and set off to collect their intrepid band of misfit bank robbers. How the guys thought they could pull off the heist implies a strand of the DNA in the McGuire lineage is pure crazy with a pinch of delusion. For heaven’s sake, their disguises included fake mustaches giving me flashbacks to Magnum, P.I.
The true highlight of the film isn’t the zombies or the action (a whole five seconds of it) during the extremely successful bank heist. C vs Z’s golden goose lays in the cast of characters residing in the old folks home. They’re a laugh riot. Don’t balk in the face of shambling evil. And, amazingly, even with their replacement hips, bad hearts, and various ailments, they’re still capable of out running a zombie. Or blowing a hole in one’s head.
This isn’t a shoot-em-up zombie flick. It’s a comedy surrounding a family trying to make the best of a bad situation. There just happens to be zombies wandering around to make the situation that much more difficult. The film is also pretty truthful when it comes to showing how normal people would react and fight the undead. For instance, Emma—one of the hostages from the bank heist—attacks her first zombie with limp-wristed swings of a shovel, a load of determination, and some choice phrases to voice her frustration when the zombie doesn’t instantly keel over. Then there’s a few characters who transform into sharp-shooters, laying waste to every shambling corpse coming their way, covering both sides of the fighting coin.
Makeup FX for the general zombies are basic, but well done. No cheesy Halloween night makeup jobs where someone forgot to cover their ears. The main FX gags are amazing in their detail. At one point, Mickey ends up with a portion of a zombie hanging from his arm for several scenes. Not once did the makeup and prosthetics look rubbery or fake—as often happens in zombie films. The same goes for the few disemboweling scenes, intestines looking like actual intestines instead of rubber hoses slathered in colored Karo syrup.
Cockneys vs Zombies is a slow-moving, but hilarious addition to the genre. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea—some prefer much more tension with their undead viewing—but I believe many of you will enjoy watching this with friends. I’m giving it four punctured stomachs out of five.
Rating: PG-13 (intense frightening zombie sequences, violence and disturbing images) Starring: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, and Daniella Kertesz
First thing’s first, this reviewer is fully aware that World War Z is based on the novel by Max Brooks. However, seeing as they don’t give me any books—just stacks of movies to shuffle through—I haven’t read it. This review will focus solely on the merits of what was on the screen during the film. Nothing else. Now that the business portion is out of the way . . . have I mentioned how much of a pain it is to not only sneak into a theater without freaking out the humans, but also get a pair of 3D glasses to stay on when one of your ears fell off fifteen years ago in New Mexico? Let’s just say there was liberal application of duct tape in the moments before the lights dimmed and the film began.
World War Z starts off with disturbing news reports of a rabies-like virus sweeping over the globe. America is seemingly unharmed by this virus. Our hero, Gerry is happy to be at home with his family and not with his old bosses at the United Nations dealing with the mess. Then everything flips on its head. Gerry and family are caught in the middle of a sudden outbreak of the zombie virus. In seconds, Philadelphia is overrun with the undead. The family escape and Gerry is called in to help the UN figure out how to deal with the zombies. He’s sent to every corner of the earth searching for answers in unlikely places. In the end, it seems the world’s only hope stems from utter devastation.
The opening is slow, designed to lull you into a false sense of security while simultaneously feeding viewers information through numerous television news clips—the tried, true, and vastly overused method of plot progression available to the zombie film genre. This is of course after viewers suffer horrendous vertigo and nausea from the title sequence, which is designed to make maximum use of the 3D format. Essentially, you can get stuck in line for popcorn during the first seven minutes and not miss anything vital to the film’s plot. A zombie movie is a zombie movie, is a zombie movie. Anyone hoping World War Z would prove to be ground breaking and different in this aspect is fooling themselves.
That’s not to say once the action kicks in, the film isn’t interesting. The mechanics of the zombies alone cause a lot of heart-stopping, breath-holding moments, and even a handful of really well thought out scares. The zombies are fast. Obscenely fast. They have no physical limitations, easily leaping over two cars to take down their prey. Any reservations the person held alive are gone after death, allowing the undead to climb over each other, sacrifice each other in the name of sinking their teeth into something alive, or even bash their skull repeatedly into a car’s windshield in order to get to the gooey yummy treat inside. The makeup ranges from normal looking people covered in blood, to the hero zombies who were desiccated, rotting as they wait for fresh food sources. Two of the hero zombies in the final act of the film were by far some of the best zombies character-wise I’ve seen in any genre film. They were wild, uninhibited in their ferocity and sheer weirdness of undead traits.
Brad Pitt, despite reservations about an A-list actor stepping into a genre film, delivers a wonderful performance with the script he’s given. He brings to screen the only compassion seen from any character, really. Some of the supporting cast shine—most of the good ones don’t get nearly enough screen time. Other members of the cast failed to give a performance capable of making viewers want to see them survive. Isn’t that the point of being one of the main characters? We want to see you live, not listen to you whine, garble lines, and have little to no facial expressions. When a zombie has more facial expressions than the wife of the main character, a main character who’s in mortal danger, there’s something wrong.
What can be learned from World War Z? Duct tape is your best friend. Armor can be made from fashion magazines. The police are indeed people and cannot be relied on after the undead invade your city. And most importantly, if you’re not careful, a can of Mountain Dew could very well lead to your demise.
I’m going to give World War Z four severed hands, out of five. The epic scale of the film was hard to ignore—something genre fans haven’t seen since Romero’s Land of the Dead. Bypass the 3D experience, though. The foot chase scenes in 3D format induce headaches. Chewing on aching brains isn’t good eats. Think of the zombies waiting outside for a snack when you head to the theater.