“One day you are in your boat and you get attacked by zombie fish.”
Back when I worked at American Express I had a colleague who was as fascinated with zombies as I was. Much like Derek he was deathly afraid of the very concept of zombies and as such we would have deep philosophical discussions on the nature of the undead.
When we first heard that George Romero was making a new zombie film for the first time in twenty years we were quite excited at the prospect. I took it upon myself to track down a copy of the script and printed a copy out for the two of us to read, and within its pages came about a concept that afforded us hours of time wasting discussion.
The film, at the time still untitled but soon to be known as Land of the Dead, had an interesting, if somewhat throwaway scene that was to lead off the third act of the film. With zombies encroaching upon the city, an unknowing loan man on patrol stops for a quick smoke break under a bridge. As he stands there something stirs in the darkness. Soon it seems as if the entire underside of the bridge is shifting and as the man looks up a horde of zombie rats drop down upon him and quickly devour him whole.
Now when I read this scene all I could think about was how cool this could potentially look on screen. Granted, with its mix of live animals and CGI it would be difficult to pull off without looking ridiculously fake, but seeing a man covered in rats devoured whole would no doubt have left an impression on even die hard zombie film fans.
But my colleague took a far different stance.
“You can’t have zombie rats! That would mean all sorts of zombie animals. Everything they come in contact with would be zombies.”
To which I countered, wasn’t that the idea of a zombie plague, an overwhelming surge of zombies?
“But that means you’d have zombie flies and mosquitoes. With all the zombie insects you’d be a zombie in days if not hours. It works so much better when it is species specific as you then have a very narrowly defined threat that might be avoided rather then an obvious conclusion.”
Which is an interesting point. Once you allow for cross-species transfer, anything that comes in contact with blood is a potential zombie. And while I might enjoy watching a film on a zombie Venus Flytrap, who didn’t enjoy Little Shop of Horrors, a film about zombie paramecium is, lets face it, a little ridiculous.
Rene (Felicity Mason) has recently lost her family farm, but thanks to her recent win at a beauty pageant, she finally has a way out of her tiny town in the Australian outback. But just as she is leaving a meteor shower rains down on Berkeley. And it seems that anyone who comes in contact with them quickly turns into a brain craving zombie. And what are those aliens up to who seem to be behind the whole affair? Are they the ones behind the acid rain as well?
I find myself struggling to review Undead for several reasons. With its low budget look, sometimes marginal effects and often limited acting Undead suffers from the same things that so many other small independent films often do. Oh sure the film had heart, but I don’t know if that was enough to overcome its inherent limitations.
The biggest issue with the film is that for a horror comedy it simply wasn’t very funny. Oh sure a fist fight with flying zombie fish was both a hoot and practically worth the price of admission, but there was a surprising dearth of sight gags and the vast majority of jokes fell painfully flat. Compounding this problem is that the film isn’t all that scary either.
Like most recent horror comedies Undead practically ignores genuine scares and focuses more on being gory with dashes of humor. But with the humor in Undead being so unsuccessful, there is nothing to fall back on except buckets of gore. Thankfully, at least the effects department holds up their end of the bargain. Now, as Undead is clearly on a limited budget, any of of the CGI effects struggle to look even passable, yet the practical effects are highly effective and realistic. In an era of film making that continually reduces the role of practical effects to get by with far cheaper CGI instead, it is refreshing to see them used so well in a film with such a limited budget.
And further driving the nail into its cinematic coffin, Undead seriously struggles at telling a coherent and functional story. Character motivations are muddled and ill defined at best, characters are flat and one dimensional, and I had absolutely no idea what the hell was going on with the plot. You see Undead struggled mightily in giving any sorts of clues as to what the story was up to, which can be a bit of a problem for the viewer when they try to engage with it. For example, the acid rain component of the film, in hindsight an incredibly important detail, isn’t discussed for a solid ten minutes after it happens on screen. Sure clothes steam from the rain and people smack their heads and faces for some seemingly important reason, but no one ever says anything about the rain burning them. Which is kind of an important detail, don’t you think?
Then of course there are the zombie fish. Which should be, and are, ridiculous. Incorporating the idea of cross-contamination, Undead should prove to be rather infuriating to me, yet this is where Undead begins to win me over. For all its faults and foibles, I still found myself enjoying Undead. In spite of its mishandled delivery, the actual story and resolution are both ambitious and almost epic in scale. The film plays more as a mystery then a horror film, what with those odd meteors, acid rain, alien abductions and the alien invasion all weaving in and out into a strange tale.
The story culminates into a perfecting interesting and fitting denouement that resolves any of the story, plot or zombie fish issues one might have, much to my dismay. I should hate Undead. Loath it. Most certainly be annoyed by it. Yet here I am, content with this unquestionably flawed and decidedly imperfect film. So here I sit in my room, content with the inclusion of zombie fish. Dammit!
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February 6th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
As a zombie fan, I too had serious mixed feelings about Undead. It starts off quite strong with the way-over-the-top gore, then quickly annoys with characters who do nothing but holler shrilly. (And that’s coming from someone who really liked all the yelling in Day of the Dead.) The whole shebang almost felt like high-budget zombie fan fiction, rather than a stand-alone flick.
Also, if you are going to spread the zombie plague beyond the border of the human species, it would make the most sense to at least restrict it to warm blooded animals. (I’m not sure why, but a zombie hippo seems far more plausible than a zombie alligator.)
February 6th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
I agree on the flat and annoying characters. The whole sheriff and his deputy plotline seemed as if everything except the introduction was left on the cutting room floor. At that point you would be better off eliminating them entirely. I was also frustrated at Undead being yet another film that failed to bring forth a zombie baby. If you have a pregnant woman in a zombie film it should be a pre-req that the baby eats its way out of its mother’s womb. No excuses.
High budget zombie fan fiction might just be a perfect descriptor of the film.
I think the warm blooded idea is a good one, but still would be hard to explain on screen. Though think of what you could do with a zombie tortoise, it would be unstoppable!
BTW, hurry up and post a review on The Telephone Book. That one looks so good it should have been mine. You can be sure I’ll be linking the hell out of that once you get it posted. That trailer is fantastic.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
A zombie turtle would be nearly unstoppable, but turtle speed divided by zombie speed equals really, really slow. I guess with enough of them it could be a pretty big pain in the ass. Zombie armadillos give me a little more of a pause.
The Telephone Book review is up.
December 1st, 2009 at 4:32 am
[...] One of my more recent finds was the flawwed, yet still enjoyable, Australian zombie film Undead. And while it was a decent enough independent horror comedy, I must say I found it a bit surprising [...]