War of the Dead

I watched the UK premier of this title at Fright fest Scotland.

It's your basic mystery story at the start. Bad things are happening behind enemy lines. What is the cause, well with a title like War of the Dead it is easy to say its Zombies.

What I liked about this movie was that it told the same old story of dodgy dealings behind enemy lines. It does it pretty good.

The effects whilst good are below par. The movie itself looks like its a low to medium budget movie.

This is not top of the class but it is good fun for what it is.Its better than zombies of war and Armageddon of the dead.

This movie started out having a score of 5.9 and went down all the way to 4 sadly. Believe it or not, I did like it. The set up and the atmosphere are great. Acting is OK. And the movie has some good action scenes to keep the audience interested. And it's one of those ''Nazi zombie'' or ''War horror'' movies that I really love. But the downfall of this movie is it's story. I think this movie would have been much better if it had bigger work put into the story. Explain more about the experiments, show some flashbacks, etc. the one thing I didn't like was that the movie is VERY fast phased.

You can see that movie does not leave out character development, but it's just not enough. Needs more character development and more dialogue and more suspense.

the movie is not bad especially if you're a fan of the genre. 6/10

This is a combination war story and horror film that could have been better than it was. The suspenseful and creepy atmosphere is there along with plenty of action to keep you from losing your attention. The acting was fair and perhaps it could have been better.

The story however doesn't explain or go into much detail about the secret sinister experiments that were conducted in the bunker. This I feel should have been elaborated more which would have improved the story quite a bit making it far more interesting than it was.

This is one movie that at first seems to be promising but later on lets you down with disappointment. One can only feel afterwards that this movie could have been better than it was. It had all the potential to be a 1st rate horror film.

A platoon of British, American and Finnish soldiers come head to head with unstoppable zombie-like soldiers. Aided by a Russian grunt they must fight for survival.

Despite some over used slow-motion and unfitting sound effects War of the Dead director Marko Mäkilaakso delivers a wonderfully atmospheric World War II action 'zombie' film.

The film has pace, moving from one location to the next through bunkers, trenches, air shafts, forests and there's plenty of gun-play and fights. The effects are modest and well executed and the sets are perfectly dressed, the location shoot gives it an edge. Writers Mäkilaakso and Barr B. Potter include some zombie hallmarks an empty house under siege, a graveyard, shots to the head but the antagonists share more with 28 Day/Weeks Later's infected and Outpost's theme. War of the Dead expands the Nazi super soldiers angel further including some fast moving, stealthy, post experimental and 'infected' soldiers.

Reminiscent of The Bunker, Death Watch, Dog Soldiers and the aforementioned to name a few this latest addition includes some great worn looking actors including Antti Reini, the reliable and talented Andrew Tiernan (who also starred in the The Bunker) as Capitan Martin Stone. UK viewers may recognise ITV's Bill - Mark Wingett. Supporting leads Samuel Vauramo as the emotional Kolya and Mikko Leppilampi as Lieutenant Laakso are effective enough. Notable is the only female Magdalena Górska and Jouko Ahola who is perfectly cast as the super soldier Captain Niemi.

It lacks that slow foreboding feel synonymous with zombie films in a bid to be original. In addition, the mix of genres doesn't work as well for this WW2 predominately action, chiller as it should due to the thin script. Nevertheless, it's a solid piece of entertainment packed with action and an obligatory nihilistic ending with a twist.

the best way to describe this movie is that it's a B movie coated with A movie presentation. the special effects and the acting are the only things really holding it back from its true potential. the acting or dialogue is at times so bad and the accents so inconsistent that you wonder why the director didn't just choose to re-shoot some of the scenes and put a little more pressure on his actors. the special effects are sometimes good, but sometimes bad. this is made clear at the start of the movie when some men are gunned down in a hallway yet there is no sign of any bullet penetration or even sound effects here and there. some men just fall to the ground, we'r shown close ups of some weird nazi character grinning as he walks out of a lit-up doorway like a freaking angel or something.

the best thing about this movie is its presentation. the cinematography and camera-work is pretty 'up there'. like one of the quotes on the DVD cover states, it is 'like an episode of band of brothers with zombies'. and yeah, it is; just with much less impressive actors.

the story is unoriginal yet interesting enough to warrant your time and it looks like a lot of effort went into this little B movie. the characters all look fantastic (just like any soldier out of saving private ryan or band or brothers) and at times gunfights and explosions are convincing. its just a shame the acting and occasional iffy effects let it down.

so in summary:

presentation - 8 special makeup effects & sound - 6 acting - 5 script - 6

overall - 6/10