UTI Zumbi

We watched this in an early advance screening in the Roxy Theatre in Koersel with the director, crew and some surviving actors in attendance followed by a Q&A.

Not since the Belgian party zombie movie "Rabid Grannies" (1988) did I have so much fun with a Flemish zombie movie. The spirit of the Troma studio's was never too far away as the film went from bloody gory fun into zany over the top black humour involving various genitals and bodily fluids. The technical quality of both the production as the numerous practical FX were top notch, harking back to the energy of "The Evil Dead" and the humour of "Re-Animator". Especially the male protagonist had the survivalist urge of an Ash Williams anti-hero.

Filmed mostly in the old hospital of Maaseik and in Poland, this movie mostly took place in a plastic surgery clinic with dubious experimental treatments resulting in carnage. The lighting in red, green and blue hues reminded me of the cinematography of a Dario Argento movie (Suspiria) and the virtuous camera work embodied Sam Raimi. The music rings back to the synth scores of John Carpenter giving it the right atmosphere.

We had a blast, with the pacing really picking up once patient zero started wreaking havoc. You can check off all the checkboxes you want to see in a film like this. Nudity, action, lots of practical gore with some added VFX to expand the physical effects and a few painful moments that made people whince in painful groans. A couple of really original gore gags makes this a certified horror crowd pleaser. I hope this will do well as I want to see more genre movies like this to get made in Belgium.

Definitely has international potential as there is a clear foreign market for this. After the Q&A we had a nice talk with the director and his wife who are really nice people, giving us some fun anecdotes about the making of the film. She even bought us drinks!

Well, roll on the sequel "Yummier" with double the budget and double the fun!

Whats not to like? Very funny and gory. Thought it was a blast all the way through. The characters are hilarious.

The movie is pretty much what I expected: a horror movie that doesn't take itself too seriously. There is humor in it that works most of the time. Though for a horror movie it's actually not that explicit: real gore is off camera mostly, you actually don't see that much. At a certain moment a head is bashed in with a fire extinguisher, but you only see the blood splatter, not the head being bashed in. They should have gone the 'braindead/dead alive' route with much over the top gore, that would add to the comedy and make it funnier. The 90 minutes go by smoothly and it's a decent watch but don't expect it to be a horror classic.

One of the better comedic zombie movies to come out lately. Not plagued with the rapid-fire, snarky, annoying dialog that America has been putting out. Fun, well acted, well directed.

A young med schools dropout takes his lovely and well endowed girlfriend to a dodgy hospital for a breast reduction but things don't go according to plan. This is a fun zombie horror set in an Eastern European plastic surgery hospital but thats about the extent of it. If you go in expecting nothing more then you'll have fun. Think Dead Snow but set in a hospital and with patient zombies instead of nazi zombies and you'll have a fair idea of what you are getting yourself into. The young male lead and his aversion to blood makes him a fairly useless hero in this situation and so we get something different from your usual lead male heroics. A wide range of characters including the girlfriend, her superficial mother, some creepy doctors and sleazy medical personnel keep things interesting but it still never reaches much higher than can be expected from the premise.