Virus Undead

I agree with most of the things "NeilCassidy" wrote above; compared to most other Horror Movies of German origin, this one seems like a fresh breeze. Obviously, its focus was more on the question "how do certain characters behave under siege", rather than on sheer gory splatter.

Compared to Uwe Boll's pathetic efforts (who obviously has a vastly bigger budget and seems to manage to hire very well-known actors on the cheap), I felt much better entertained. There's plenty of passion for detail (remember the cuckoo clock scene?) that I feel is completely missing in Boll's movies.

Now, if the writer would please do without those clichè villains in future scripts, I'd be quite thankful.

"Virus Undead" is a 200% retarded and incompetent horror flick, but then again, what else do you expect from a director who's named Wolf Wolff? If his cinematic skills are as inspirational as his choice in artist names, you just know we're in trouble. The film was cleverly released at the heights of the bird flu paranoia a few years ago. In Europe – and particularly in Germany, since there fell a handful of casualties if I remember correctly – this epidemic caused quite a lot of disturbance and chaos, so it's only logical that sly writers/directors would exploit it in gratuitous and low-budgeted horror movies. So actually, this could have been a cool movie, but sadly it's not. The one thing that immediately (and irreversibly) ruins the film straight from the beginning are the entire cast's atrocious German accents when they recite their lines in English. I don't blame native German speakers for having an accent, but why not simply allow them to talk in German? Were the producers really that worried that the film would lose potential viewers in case of subtitles? Of course, there are a lot more issues than that. The screenplay is as incoherent and derivative as can be and literally ALL the main characters are insupportable. Certain of them are even downright bizarre, like that guy named Eugene, for example … Why is he such a weirdo and how come he even has acquaintances to begin with? The story centers on Robert returning to his rural hometown, along with two of his college buddies, to arrange some formalities after the death of his grandfather. Supposedly he died of Alzheimer's disease, but granddaddy was really a retired scientist and still secretly experimented with possible cures for the bird flu epidemic. During one of these experiments, the birds carrying the virus attacked him and escaped into the countryside. Not long after Robert's arrival, more and more villagers become infected with a much harsher form of the virus; turning them into slowly rotting but nevertheless still hungry zombies. Robert and his friends are locked inside the isolated mansion, just when they're throwing a party with two sexy chicks they met in a gas station! Bummer!! "Virus Undead" is completely devoid of tension and atmosphere, and you literally don't care if any of the characters survives the ordeal not. The zombie make-up effects and splatter are definitely not the worst I've ever seen, but the film doesn't contain any truly memorable gory parts, neither. As said, the dialogs and acting performances are horrible. In fact, the only remotely acceptable reason to be interested in "Virus Undead" is the astounding rack of supportive actress Anna Breuer

If you like a movie or not, will be determined by many things. Do you like the genre is one of them. How much do you like the genre, would be the next criterion ... but even if you are an avid fan, I can only advise you to stay away from this.

Another user said, that he thinks this is nicely shot for a low budget movie. I only agree on the fact, that this is indeed a low budget movie. And of course the fact, that this was shot in English for financial reasons. Even if you cut the movie some slack, for some nice shots (the DP should get praised for that and not the directors), the negative things are far worse than anything that might be called "good" in this movie ...

It's starts from the simple premise of the story (nothing original or remotely interesting to be found here), goes on with an uninspired script and finally explodes with acting, that shouldn't be called "acting". The actors are clearly feeling uncomfortable speaking in English, but they should've seen that coming and cast others! And then there are quite a few other small things that add up to the very bad picture of this flick ...

I just watched Virus Undead and I have to admit I'm disappointed.

First off, I was stunned that somebody on this production had the really stupid idea to have German actors speak English. While the guys certainly aren't bad with the language, some of them still have a pretty strong German accent, making the whole ordeal somewhat of a joke to me.

On top of that, the movie tries way too hard to have your typical US hillbilly scenery and character clichés, which are already a vast exaggeration when set in the middle of nowhere in the US, but just don't work at all in a town in the middle of Germany. You have the default unfriendly "town sheriff", complete with sunglasses and donuts, the commonly known town ruffian, including tons of tattoos, a goatee, leather clothing and a pea-sized brain and they even have a "restaurant" in the middle of the woods making sausage out of any dead animal they can find. Those two things made me wonder why the writers were too afraid to actually try something fresh and simply go with the "set in Germany" thing and pull through with it. Instead, they chose to take the generic "hillbilly town" cliché and move it over here. Kind of idiotic. Just like the hillbilly town in horror flicks is a big exaggeration of clichés about American towns in the middle of nowhere, an exaggeration of clichés about small German towns would have been far more entertaining and would have worked a lot better. Basically, this movie tries very hard to be an American B-movie set in Germany played by German actors, which was what I found very disappointing.

The story covers the basics of "virus causing zombies", but doesn't go any further than a rough outline and the characters are walking clichés with some odd moments here and there. I agree with NeilCassidy, though, that the movie at least looks professional.

Overall it has some mildly entertaining moments and is well done on the technical side of things, but to me the story and setting were pretty much atrocious. I've seen a lot worse films, but this one stands out for almost intentionally ruining any potential it might have had.

There are some very good things about VIRUS UNDEAD (Chiller is running it under the title THE BEAST WITHIN). The premise- virus spread by birds threatens to overrun the world- is sound enough in and of itself. The special effects and fight choreography are professionally done. And the film is very well photographed. In fact, if you put on a good CD and run this with the closed captioning on you might really enjoy it.

But no film can be better than the performances by the actors, and these actors couldn't do worse. I don't know that they're really inept or untalented actors. But they were born in Germany and as best I can tell are trying to perform in English, so you get some really off the wall line readings.

We've seen this story before. Young man goes to his grandfather's home after the old man passes away. On the way into town he and his friends meet a couple of cute girls and run afoul of some local louts. The sun sets, the zombies come out to play, mayhem ensues.

But because of the inept acting it's almost impossible to feel any connection to these characters and the screenplay doesn't really develop them as individuals.

The more I write, the more I think my concluding sentence in the first paragraph is right. In fact, there are so many clichés on parade here- wow, German cops live on donuts, too!- that you might not even want to run the closed captioning.

Footnote: Definite kudos to the director for being named Wolf Wolff. Please, Lord, let that be his real name. I don't see any major directing career for the man, but that is a totally righteous name.