The Dead 2

I was thrilled to find "The Dead 2: India" by sheer luck, as I enjoyed watching the first "The Dead" movie and had no idea that there was a sequel available. It was picked up and watched immediately.

It is a good movie, but it wasn't fully up to par with the previous movie. There was just something missing in "The Dead 2: India" to make it that much more special. Or perhaps it was because of some really stupid mistakes and goofs in the movie that were bringing it down a notch.

Let's start with the story. The movie starts out with letting us know an Indian man named Rajiv having returned to India from Somalia, where he was bitten by a mad woman. Right, so here we have the source of the zombie outbreak. Good enough. Then we follow Nicholas, a foreign contractor working on wind mills in India when society collapses and he finds himself in the midst of a zombie outbreak and he has to return to Mumbai to get to his pregnant wife.

The storyline is good and it does follow up on events immediately after "The Dead", which was good. But, yes there is a but here, we learn that Nicholas is 300 miles away from Mumbai in the movie. Then I wonder how did the zombie infection spread from Mumbai to where he was (300 miles distance) in such a short time? And from just a single bitten man. It just didn't make any kind of logistic sense.

And the other thing that worked against the movie was the fact that about 90% of all infected zombies were walking around with their heads tilted and craned to one side. It just looked too staged and too orchestrated, as if some 'zombie instructor' went "alright, you have to walk like zombies" and gave an example with his head tilted, and the majority of zombie actors just copied that pose. It brought the whole zombiesque atmosphere down a lot.

The zombies in the movie were good, just as in the first "The Dead" movie. However, while there is a good amount of blood and wounds here, then don't expect to see macabre stuff such as missing limbs, shredded bodies and the like. But still, the effects worked to the extend that they were supposed to.

And it was nice to see a zombie movie take place in India and actually manage this well, and not be a classic, major Hollywood production. If you enjoyed the first "The Dead" movie, then you most definitely should watch "The Dead 2: India" as well. And while on the topic of Indian zombie movies, then you should watch "Go Goa Gone" as well.

"The Dead 2: India" is entertaining, but has some flaws that were just too stupid and should have been caught in pre-production already. While I rated the first "The Dead" 7 out of 10 stars, then I will have to settle for 6 out of 10 stars for "The Dead 2: India".

I really loved the first "Dead" movie the Ford Brothers did. I can't say the exact same about the sequel. It's not bad, but it feels a bit like a rehash, much of the same again, just in another location. We have a story added and a motivation for our lead character, which saves this from complete rip-off tag. But that is not enough to make this an improvement of part 1.

One of the main things that weighs more here, than it did in the previous movie, is the fact that the non actors have bigger roles to play and mostly fail in convincing. It's crucial to have someone make you feel the drama they are going through rather than just saying their lines. The movie has still some redeeming factors (lead actor, effects especially considering the budget and of course the sheer mentality of the directors going after their dream once more). For some it will feel like an endless movie though, especially if they didn't like the first one in the ... first place

At times, "The Dead 2: India" (2013), seems like a carbon copy of its predecessor three years earlier. Both "The Dead" and "The Dead 2" portray American male protagonists on a lengthy overland trek to reach a wife or girlfriend. Both were shot on location in an overseas setting. (The original took place in Africa.) And both portray a second protagonist who is a native of the country. (In this case it's a little boy portrayed by Anand Krishna Goyal. Even a curmudgeon like me has got to admit — that kid is adorable.)

I liked the first movie a bit better. This one feels a little hastily put together, in terms of its script and directing.

It does manage to succeed somewhat with the things that made the first film decent viewing. Its desert locations are beautifully shot, and the filmmakers bring back some of the original's slow-burn horror elements. The zombies here are usually as slow as snails — slower even than the zombies of George A. Romero's genre-defining early films. But they're also quiet, and they converge en masse when our hero lets his guard down. And the occasional appearance of a rare feisty specimen lead to some genuine jump scares. The movie also effectively employs what appears to be a low-budget special effect — the monsters' eyes are of an opal-white, otherworldly color. (I'm guessing those are colored contact lenses?) The trick works, the zombies are scary, and "The Dead 2" successfully provides a kind of "creeping horror" that is rare for today's horror films.

That wasn't enough, however, to rescue this movie entirely from feeling like a retread of the original. I'd describe this as an average viewing experience for a horror fan, and I'd rate it a 6 out of 10.

The first The Dead movie back in 2010 was an impressive looking film, the unique cinematography made it stand out from the hundreds of zombie movies out there but sadly that was all it had going for it.

The Dead 2 is a separate tale set in India and once again British made. It tells the story of a man fighting across rural India to get to his pregnant girlfriend and the perils and challenges he faces along the way.

The Dead 2 looks outstanding and even better than the first movie. It is a visual feast and touches upon areas that other zombie films never have before and that at least makes it memorable.

Sadly the film itself is generic, its weak in its writing and simply fails to entertain.

Don't get me wrong I respect the hell out of what they've accomplished here but it's like a video game with stunning graphics but very little actual content.

Worth it for the sights but little else.

The Good:

Some great visuals

Fantastically shot

The Bad:

Poorly paced

Weak writing

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Despite both movies getting a combined 6 points out of a potential 20 I'd still like to see one more film in this franchise

I enjoyed The Dead, which was an excellent old school zombie film fitting perfectly into the George A. Romero "Dead" universe. Many zombie films now are more action orientated, but The Dead had a haunting, even lyrical quality and it was beautifully shot and scored. It reminded me of survival adventure films I grew up with, like The Naked Prey and even Nic Roeg's Walkabout.

In this sequel the zombie plague spreads from Africa to India and we follow a new main character, who is strikingly similar to the lead in the first film. Some of the virtues of the first film are still evident here. The cinematography is beautiful taking in some stunning landscapes, the score is great and there is an emphasis on atmosphere similar to the original.

Unfortunately the second film contrives much more of a human drama and that's where the sequel becomes problematic. The hero has to rescue his pregnant Indian girlfriend, who comes complete with a traditional, disapproving father and neither the writing nor the acting are up to the challenge. The film lapses into melodramatic cliché and inadvertent comedy every time we spend time with the female lead and her family in Mumbai. Both "The Dead" films cast mostly non-actors. In an ideal case this can lend characters a sense of authenticity but here results in some awkward performances. In the first film the necessary alliance between the the engineer and the soldier was understated and not a lot of emoting was required. Here the lead actress looks uncomfortably out of her depth and her character lacks any qualities that would make us understand why our hero would be traveling 300 miles across the country to save her. To be fair, the actress tries hard but she isn't given much to do apart from crying and screaming.

Instead of the dignified, stoic soldier of the first film, here the hero gets a cute orphan right out of Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom as a sidekick. By not having a local character fighting next to him, the sight of a white character killing his way through hordes of brown skinned zombies becomes uncomfortable to watch.

On top of these problems, this is a film where characters do unbelievably stupid things in situations where they are surrounded by zombies to repeatedly get themselves into danger. And these folks never seem to learn from their mistakes. Twice the lead talks to his girlfriend about something confidential on the phone and twice her father snatches the mobile from her mid-conversation to overhear something not meant for him, which then sets him off shouting at her paramour. By the second time this almost comes to qualify as a running gag.

On the up side there are a few tense sequences and some decent set pieces. The non-computer enhanced gore is plentiful and inventive, which still makes this worth watching for zombie fans but every time the film takes us back to Mumbai for the ensuing family histrionics, the film stops dead for some eye-rolling Bollywood melodrama. At least it spares us a musical number.