The Dead 2

An infectious epidemic spreads through India as an American turbine engineer (Joseph Millson) learns that his pregnant girlfriend is trapped near the slums of Mumbai. Now he must battle his way across a 300-mile wasteland of the ravenous undead.

The biggest complaint this film seems to receive from people is that it is a repeat, or rehash, of the first film. An outside in a foreign land who has to travel across great distances while fighting off zombies. And that is a fair complaint.

But the Ford brothers do it well, with an amazing cinematography, and beautiful color palette, that showcases the beauty of India. Not to mention better than average zombie effects. For what is probably a relatively low budget film, it looks like a Hollywood-caliber production.

I was thrilled to find "The Dead 2: India" by sheer luck, as I enjoyed watching the first "The Dead" movie and had no idea that there was a sequel available. It was picked up and watched immediately.

It is a good movie, but it wasn't fully up to par with the previous movie. There was just something missing in "The Dead 2: India" to make it that much more special. Or perhaps it was because of some really stupid mistakes and goofs in the movie that were bringing it down a notch.

Let's start with the story. The movie starts out with letting us know an Indian man named Rajiv having returned to India from Somalia, where he was bitten by a mad woman. Right, so here we have the source of the zombie outbreak. Good enough. Then we follow Nicholas, a foreign contractor working on wind mills in India when society collapses and he finds himself in the midst of a zombie outbreak and he has to return to Mumbai to get to his pregnant wife.

The storyline is good and it does follow up on events immediately after "The Dead", which was good. But, yes there is a but here, we learn that Nicholas is 300 miles away from Mumbai in the movie. Then I wonder how did the zombie infection spread from Mumbai to where he was (300 miles distance) in such a short time? And from just a single bitten man. It just didn't make any kind of logistic sense.

And the other thing that worked against the movie was the fact that about 90% of all infected zombies were walking around with their heads tilted and craned to one side. It just looked too staged and too orchestrated, as if some 'zombie instructor' went "alright, you have to walk like zombies" and gave an example with his head tilted, and the majority of zombie actors just copied that pose. It brought the whole zombiesque atmosphere down a lot.

The zombies in the movie were good, just as in the first "The Dead" movie. However, while there is a good amount of blood and wounds here, then don't expect to see macabre stuff such as missing limbs, shredded bodies and the like. But still, the effects worked to the extend that they were supposed to.

And it was nice to see a zombie movie take place in India and actually manage this well, and not be a classic, major Hollywood production. If you enjoyed the first "The Dead" movie, then you most definitely should watch "The Dead 2: India" as well. And while on the topic of Indian zombie movies, then you should watch "Go Goa Gone" as well.

"The Dead 2: India" is entertaining, but has some flaws that were just too stupid and should have been caught in pre-production already. While I rated the first "The Dead" 7 out of 10 stars, then I will have to settle for 6 out of 10 stars for "The Dead 2: India".

At times, "The Dead 2: India" (2013), seems like a carbon copy of its predecessor three years earlier. Both "The Dead" and "The Dead 2" portray American male protagonists on a lengthy overland trek to reach a wife or girlfriend. Both were shot on location in an overseas setting. (The original took place in Africa.) And both portray a second protagonist who is a native of the country. (In this case it's a little boy portrayed by Anand Krishna Goyal. Even a curmudgeon like me has got to admit — that kid is adorable.)

I liked the first movie a bit better. This one feels a little hastily put together, in terms of its script and directing.

It does manage to succeed somewhat with the things that made the first film decent viewing. Its desert locations are beautifully shot, and the filmmakers bring back some of the original's slow-burn horror elements. The zombies here are usually as slow as snails — slower even than the zombies of George A. Romero's genre-defining early films. But they're also quiet, and they converge en masse when our hero lets his guard down. And the occasional appearance of a rare feisty specimen lead to some genuine jump scares. The movie also effectively employs what appears to be a low-budget special effect — the monsters' eyes are of an opal-white, otherworldly color. (I'm guessing those are colored contact lenses?) The trick works, the zombies are scary, and "The Dead 2" successfully provides a kind of "creeping horror" that is rare for today's horror films.

That wasn't enough, however, to rescue this movie entirely from feeling like a retread of the original. I'd describe this as an average viewing experience for a horror fan, and I'd rate it a 6 out of 10.

I really loved the first "Dead" movie the Ford Brothers did. I can't say the exact same about the sequel. It's not bad, but it feels a bit like a rehash, much of the same again, just in another location. We have a story added and a motivation for our lead character, which saves this from complete rip-off tag. But that is not enough to make this an improvement of part 1.

One of the main things that weighs more here, than it did in the previous movie, is the fact that the non actors have bigger roles to play and mostly fail in convincing. It's crucial to have someone make you feel the drama they are going through rather than just saying their lines. The movie has still some redeeming factors (lead actor, effects especially considering the budget and of course the sheer mentality of the directors going after their dream once more). For some it will feel like an endless movie though, especially if they didn't like the first one in the ... first place

"Nicholas Burton" (Joseph Millson) is an electrical engineer who is currently in India working on wind farms. His girlfriend, "Ishani Sharma" (Meenu Mishra) has just told him she is pregnant and he is determined to go to Mumbai to see her as soon as possible. Unfortunately, a zombie epidemic has suddenly erupted which seriously jeopardizes everything. Now, rather than reveal any more of the movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this film greatly resembles its predecessor in a number of ways. Although there is only a slight connection to the original film I actually think this sequel is slightly better because it adds more of a human element. However, just the like the first film it is a dry zombie picture with absolutely no humor or anything else which deviates from the horror at hand. And while I have no doubt that true zombie fanatics will appreciate this movie, I also think that it might appeal to other viewers as well because it isn't one of those cheap-looking zombie films by any means. Accordingly, I rate it as slightly above average.