Undead

Rene (Felicity Mason), the town beauty queen of Berkley, Austrailia, wants desperately to get out. But as her and her boyfriend are driving out of town, meteorites fall from the sky turning various town-folk into rampaging zombies. When Rene's boyfriend gets changed, she watches as a mysterious stranger (whom we later learn is the town 'crazy') dispatches the now zombiefied BF. She decides to hole up in the isolated farmhouse of said 'kook'. It's soon up to her, the guy, a husband, his pregnant wife, and two cops to survive long enough to figure what the hell is going on.

This Aussie film, while hopelessly derivative and ripping-off a great many great genre movies, is still a lot of fun. It looks far better than it's budget would imply and gore-hounds will be satisfied. That being said, the acting isn't the greatest and the movie pretty much loses steam towards the end when it veers decidedly off-course. But it's still very enjoyable for fans of the genre.

My Grade: B-

Something is seriously wrong in the quiet Queensland hamlet of Berkeley: rocks are falling from the sky, carrying a virus that turns local residents into flesh-crazed fiends. And that's just the start of the powerhouse slam-bang debut from Brisbane twin filmmakers Peter and Michael Spierig, an audacious triumph of invention and imagination over budget and genre constraints. Even more remarkable is the fact that two local Brisbane boys have achieved the impossible and created an original Aussie zombie epic that is set to lay waste to the international horror community.

Ever the post-80s horror boom cultural vultures, Spierigs plunder shamelessly from the expected sources - the grey apocalypticism of George A Romero's Dead trilogy, the outrageous gore setpieces of Peter Jackson's blood-soaked Bad Taste and Braindead, the camera histronics of early Sam Raimi and Coen Brothers efforts - while breathing new life into the long-exhausted zombie cycle and making a film that is entirely their own. Undead marries a wholly unpredictable narrative, jawdropping effects (graphic enough for the most jaded of gorehounds) and a frighteningly assured grasp of cinematic language. As expected there's buckets of gallows humour, but the film never trades cheap laughs for its primary purpose: delivering good old-fashioned blood-curdling shocks.

If Aussie horror is a dead duck, Undead blows it out of the water.

Another great splatter horror film from the Southern Hemisphere! It is so rare these days to set eyes upon a film that is not subjected to the boring, rehashed, commercially-hungry, modern American sub-genre of horror movies such as Cabin Fever and a host of recent slasher movies that try, beyond hope, to scare or shock the viewer by throwing as much blood and fast camera movement ("Boo, are you scared?") at the screen, with little to no success. Undead finally gets back to the roots of true splatter horror in a way that would make Jackson and Raimi proud and is a superb treat to the mature viewer who has grown up with these classics and is not simply into gratuitous pure shock-value.

Undead is "cheesy" and off-the-cuff. It pays hommage to a number of cult classics out there such as Romero's Trilogy of the Dead (the isolated farmhouse from NotLD, "Let's shop!" from Dawn and the police powerplay from Day), Raimi's Evil Dead ("Join us!"), Jackson's Braindead (the shovel in the bank manager's head) and Bad Taste (the alien contingent and appearance).

Do not expect great acting (though I am sure these actors are more than capable of doing so) or a totally original script (though the ending was actually quite unusual and surprised me), for this is not what this film is about. It is about having a fun 2 hours and, in my opinion, rewarding the fans of cult classic splatter horror (and hopefully introducing a number of younger individuals to this fantastic genre).

Not a great film, but a fun (non-American, something that is so rare these days) film!

I caught Undead's second and final Festival screening last night, and it is just fantastic. I cannot understand how a film so cheap (cost about two million Australian, as I recall) could look so incredibly good. Most of the visual effects were done on a laptop, and they are just stunning. According to one of the Spierig brothers (the identical twins who wrote, directed, and produced the film, as well as managing the effects) the film contains 305 special effects, and maybe ten of those effects shots don't quite work.

Technicalities aside, it is also damned funny, extremely gory, and a whole lot of fun. The humour is not just slapstick gore, either - there are some priceless moments of character humour and a handful of absolutely classic lines, arguably the best of which can be heard at the end of the trailer. Surprisingly, the plot is quite strong, too, with a ripper of an ending that left me deeply impressed.

It isn't without its flaws - a few gags fall flat, the dialogue can be a bit hard to hear at times, the pacing is a tad shaky, and the final reel or two could do with a little bit of fat trimmed, plus the hero of the piece is just a bit annoying, with a whole lot of dialogue that is meant to be cheesy, but gets a bit TOO cheesy more than once - but for a first film made on a shoestring, it is just incredible. We are talking about the Bad Taste of the digital age.

I know it is getting a small mainstream cinema release here in Oz in early September, and I have heard it is getting a little release in the US and UK as well. Fans of early Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi, and George Romero owe it to themselves to go along and laugh themselves sick.

A fun night in, good because of its extra features on DVD as well, Don't turn the movie off after the feature, you get a sense of what it is like to make a film on a shoe string and make it look like a mainstream feature- a sad state of affairs to have to do. But hey blame bloody HOLLYWOOD, two fingers up at them me thinks these guys could very well say. The blokes on this must have worked so hard to get this to screen and Kudos to them for getting the positives they got for all the hell they clearly went through to get it there. A polished film which will not disappoint for a night in.Such a laugh and b rilliant detail in specail make up and special effects.