Walking the Dead

Not to be confused with the ever-growing popular TV show "The Walking Dead", this little low-budget horror joint "Walking the Dead" is an atypical, but creative and edgy zombie feature.

A disgraced journalist (a dry, fish-out-of-water performance by Sam Voutas) hiding out in Beijing is given one last chance to revive his career when he stumbles across a letter involving an uncle burying his niece alive. So he travels to that isolated Chinese village to only find its mostly a ghost town, those inhabitants still there are less than friendly and a mother (Angela Tong) frenetically searching for her daughter. But what they discover is quite horrifying, a man known as The Walker - who has the ability to revive the dead and is creating an army.

It's beyond strange (with that "Silent Hill" vibe), but it works delivering on atmosphere by using local colour, shadows and displaying grisly details. The direction can be patchy, and its shocks and jump scares can somewhat cheapen the mood (like the thugs getting picked off). The pacing is low-key, but this only builds upon the unnerving and grim nature of the incidents that are unfolding. Sure it's on the cheap, but there's certain slickness to it and its shot-on-video styling is well handled for most part. Visually speaking it's impressive, but this is due to its choice of location and positioning more than anything else. The countryside village is like a maze, where it isolates and disorientates those trying to escape from the horrors awaiting there. The plot is told through our protagonist recounting to the police what he has encountered. It's rather straight-forward and we are kept in the dark, up until it comes to an unexpected revelation like out of the "Twilight Zone". The script really does take a sudden turn, ridiculous, but surprisingly deft. Little story is hanging from it and because of that it can feel drawn out in its long-winded stalk format, but it's driven by local folklore that simply engages. "The Walker" is an imposing figure, mysterious but brutal decked out in his straw hat and dragging along his axe while controlling his resurrected walking dead. The acting can feel amateurish, but it's not a killer.

Not perfect, but different.

"Walking the Dead" is sort of a weird combination of trying to fuse Asian and Western horror together. And the end result was adequate. THe movie is not scary, actually far from it. At best it ranks as a thriller, because there are no scare-moments in the movie, but there is a lot of building up of suspense and working around with the supernatural.

Set in a small Chinese village, where there is something gloomy about. The village is devoid of life, except for a few odd villagers. A Westerner journalist comes to the village to follow up on leads on a story that could be important to his career. He stumbles upon a bewildered Chinese woman who is looking for her missing daughter, hoping to find her before she dies. Gradually, the journalist (and us the viewers) are introduced to the gruesome legend of the Walker who haunts the village, being able to reanimate the dead as his servants.

Despite having a relative small list of cast, "Walking the Dead" was actually enjoyable, and the people did good jobs with their given roles.

This is not a grand special effects festival, but whatever effects are in the movie were well utilized and came off as working well enough. The movie is building on fear and suspense, so having a huge Hollywood CGI fest wasn't really important.

One thing that the movie really had working in its favor was the setting. The village was really nicely put together. There was a sense of foreboding, a sense of isolation and an overwhelming sense of dread lurking about. The village itself was actually coming off as the main core of the story, in my opinion, while the actual storyline was built up around the village.

The ending to the movie was not as you might expect. It was a nice turn of events actually, so whether you like it or not is up for the individual viewer to discern. I will not spoil anything by revealing the ending here. I can say, though, that I personally didn't like what happened at the police station at the end, but I did like the clarity of the entire storyline and situation you were given when the movie came to an end.