War of the Dead

A platoon of American and Finnish soldiers is driven deep into a Russian forest where its Captain discovers a terrifying secret.

When produced in 2007, this was the most expensive film ever made in Lithuania. What does that mean? Since I do not know how many films are produced in Lithuania, and I have no idea what the budget was, it is hard to say. The budget must have been at least as much as Uwe Boll spends, though, because it looks like one of his movies.

Not that this is a bad film, but it is more action than horror. So if you like movies where guys shoot at each other for 80 minutes, you might dig this. If you would rather see horror with ghosts or chainsaws, this is not going to be your cup of tea.

Personally, I lost interest in it really quickly.

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.

This movie does everything a B-movie needs to do, to get your attention. It's pretty trashy, it's pretty out there (who cares about historical accuracy anyway, right? ;o) ) and it does have some extreme ideas and still some decent acting (all judged by the limitations of budget of course, don't compare it to a blockbuster). If that sounds intriguing to you, than do not mind the silly name of the movie (though maybe the silly name prepares you somewhat), but do watch the movie and just enjoy it as it is meant to be.

Having said that, if you can't fathom the idea of mistakes, ridiculous behaviour, OTT acting or OTT special effects at times, plus some explicit scenes of violence, than you might want to stay clear of this. It is not a great movie by any sense, but it will entertain you, if you let it.

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