I apologise in advance for being a right grumpy and negative bugger.
I realise that going into a movie called; 'The Amazing Adventures of the Living Corpse' you shouldn't be expecting a cinematic masterpiece that changes the norm of cinema by its shear beauty and elegance. That being said however, you do expect a movie with a zombie doing some awesome stuff and possibly some over the top gore splashed in with a bit of dark comedy/tragic character development or angst. I had seen no teasers and I haven't studied the source material so I was going in blind and without reference.
My expectations for the film dropped rather dramatically after seeing the character models as it didn't look dissimilar to the animated star wars movie (the name has been pushed out of memory to make room for other, better things) and I immediately thought; Kids film. That ain't a good thing for the subject material. The animation does not work on human faces but it doesn't look terrible with non humans and I assume it is meant to achieve a stylised look like the comic book it was based upon. You become more used to it as the film goes on but for me it seemed amateurish, some of the cinematography was great though, I was pleasantly surprised with some of the camera angles that they pulled out, good job on that one guys.
The voice acting was mixed and dialogue varied from pretty damn decent to downright puerile. The son, Taylor was particularly bad, especially in the opening scenes where he delivers his lines like....well cardboard isn't completely rigid. Let's just say that people would not sound robotic in that situation, there would definitely be some emotion in his voice and yet it was missing. A couple of characters where quite annoying, they were the comic relief but the humour isn't very mature or funny by my standards really.
What gore there is in this film is sparse and rare. Most of the time, something gets punched and falls down and dies without much blood or fuss. The combat scenes can become quite stylised at points and can be enjoyable for the most part but they weren't anything that I could sink my teeth into or will particularly stand out in memory.
I suppose the reason I disliked the film is that I liked the concept and there were some nifty ideas floating about; 'Zombie superhero who wanders in and out of the underworld to fight monsters and find his son' sounds like good material for ultra violent schlock or a dark and brooding hero/anti-hero story. Unfortunately this is a film that has an 'R'rating in America but I don't have a bloody clue why. The comedy seems to be rather childish (but like most things, everyone has different tastes so who am I to judge?) but the subject matter and the brief spats of gore make it unsuitable for children. I'm not saying there had to be blood, guts, f-bombs and nudity but the tone and humour is just weird considering the subject matter.
The film has its moments and isn't terrible mind you (even though I like to complain) and will find itself fans but I have to say I found this to be just below average. I'm now trying to find the comic because I think that the transition to film may have been a difficult one and the comic may hold up better.
