Low budget, independent zombie gore-fest from Oz

A meteor shower over the Australian outback heralds the arrival of zombies – and something more – in a small fishing village

There’s a scene halfway through Undead where the heroin attaches a circular saw blade to the end of a broom handle and uses this to dispatch a room full of zombies in a full on bloody carve-up frenzy.  Nice, you might thing.  Not so, unfortunately.  It is pretty much a lift of a scene in Braindead (though Lionel uses a big upended lawnmower to do his offing in that).  This scene for me sums it all up about Undead; where Braindead transcended its tiny budget and daft plot with inspired directorial flair, Undead is simply floundering.  The scene is just botched – cut together so badly that you cannot follow what is happening.  In contrast to Braindead’s hugely inventive gore rampage this is a wasted opportunity – which is frustrating as there are a clutch of nice touches; a zombie with a spade stuck out of the top of its head repeatedly gets stuck trying to get under a low beam, and when the victorious bloodied heroin stands panting, surveying her carnage an Australian flag falls of a shelf behind her, fluttering down in a crowning moment.

I really did have high hopes for this non-Hollywood indie effort but was hugely disappointed.  Ironically, the best part of the film is the quirky study of this remote community that takes place before any zombies show up.  Nice scene shots, peculiar characters, bit of plot setup, and then the undead start to appear.  The early zombie encounters are ok, there are even a few jumps, but it soon descends into pointless scenes and unnecessary dialogues which just go on forever.  There’s some preposterous Matrix style gunslinging that is just painful, terrible stock music soundtrack, and as for the “twist” ending, well I past caring at that stage.  It is a film that really wants to be another film (at one point you can hear the Evil Dead “Join Us” chant – why?).   The best thing about this film is that there’s an actor in it named Mungo.  And it’s not as bad as The Dead Next Door.

I do feel bad slating this film, it is the Spierig brothers’ first film, everyone acted for nothing, etc. etc but it is a labour to watch – it doesn’t even feel like it has been directed with that much enthusiasm.  They are now working on a vampire apocalypse film called Daybreakers which does sound interesting, let’s hope they do better there.

Favourite Scene:

The Aussie flag bit,

Favourite Quote:

“Are you a fighter, Fish Queen, or are you zombie food?”

Film Rating:

1/5

Film Adherence to THE LORE:

1.5/5