Undead (2003)

Michael and Peter Spierig

Australia

104 min, color, English

Review © 2006 Branislav L. Slantchev

This has got to be the first-ever zombie flick made by Aussies that I have seen and, man, does it make me want to see more! It's really not fair to call it a zombie flick. It is a oddity that is a bizarre cross among Jackson's ultra-gory Braindead, Raimi's slapstick Evil Dead 2, Romero's claustrophobic Night of the Living Dead, and even Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, all executed with gusto and with the feel of the really wild West that just goes to show that enthusiasm and plenty of CGI can make up for originality.

Gratuitous shot of Felicity Mason	Zombified Hamlet

The last part of the previous sentence should not be construed as disparaging the Spierig brothers. If anything, they have shown us that one can take every ingredient well known to genre fans and then mix them up with wild abandon until the concoction is a truly unique dish albeit with somewhat weird flavor. Even the actors, most of whom won't be playing any Shakespeare on stage any time soon unless it's the invisible rooster part in King Lear, did not totally drop the ball. Or, rather, they dropped so many balls, I stopped counting after the first skull exploded. At least the lead Felicity Mason was quite decent.

This is my triple boomstick	I wasn't trying to steal your beans

Without going into much detail (or divulging the truly delicious twist ending), the film can be summarized very quickly. Australia. Some fishing village. Bunch of Aussies. Weird meteorites strike the vicinity and some less than fortune citizens who turn out not to be meteorite-proof. The supposedly dead people zombify and walk around in gruesome makeup with gastronomic tendencies that border on gourmet. Normal citizens decline to relinquish brains or body-parts to satisfy such appetites, and a general craze ensues. Several man and women get themselves locked in a house with the starving zombies making a series of semi-successful attempt to break into their fridge.

Have mouth, will scream	We are from the neighborhood watch for humans

Lots of shooting, and some graveyard humor later the intrepid survivors are speeding down the only road in the outback only to find themselves trapped by a huge dome that covers the entire area. It's as if the aliens who apparently brought the zombie gene have made sure nobody can leave. There's also that weird rain that is like a tracking device from the invisible mothership: every person that gets wet is then beamed up within a light pole. Or so everyone thinks. Some flashbacks later we realize that the zombie gene has been around for a while and is somehow associated with the aliens indeed.

Girls with guns, ahoy!	This zombie got the raw end

At this point I have to stop because going further would reveal too much and although I am not above sneaking in the occasional spoiler, this is one film that is best appreciated with no idea of where it is going to go or how it is going to end. Suffice it to say that all my common-sense expectations firmly rooted in the genre films to which this one so obviously pays tribute to were seriously confounded. Despite the slapstick element and the humor, the film wallows in relentless bleakness which comes from the simple fact that things are only getting worse with time for the protagonists. It is not until the very end that we realize what has been happening, and the nice part about it is that we have been in the same boat as the characters, and so know as much as they do and (for the most part) would react just like they did. Well done.

Did you forget to bring windshield fluid?	Man, we're so screwed

The film is very heavy on CGI and for the most part they work quite well. It does have a slightly artificial look but they did use a lot of real props and so the overall effect is that everything sort of hands together. There's also a lot of post-processing and color manipulation that makes the entire film look a bit dreamy and fantastic (what an odd thing to say about a zombie flick!) but I have to admit to being rather pleasantly surprised that the CGI did not ruin everything. As a rule, productions on a shoestring a better off with physical SFX (e.g., Dog Soldiers) especially when it comes to closeups. But the Spierigs managed a nice mix between these and computer animation for the more outlandish sequences. It's not like they did not resort to buckets of fake blood when they had to!

Reject from the X Files	When shooting fails, why not em-bare-ass the zombies?

Invariably cool, the film has proven a hit on the festival circuit, at least according to the extras on the DVD. I can see how this one would be quite entertaining to see with a bunch of like-minded fans. However, I cannot honestly say that it would appeal to a wider audience. The gore is not for the feeble-bellied: bodies are hacked, sliced, diced, and occasionally julienned. Even though the main protagonist is female, this film is no celebration of the fair sex for the zombies are more of an equal-opportunity brain-munchers. There isn't any horror to speak of and the tension is about as effective as the jolt you'd get from licking a dead 6 volt battery. Many may miss this being the point. It's a fun horror film without horror.

Will perform brain surgery for free	Close encounters of the CGI kind

The R1 Lions Gate DVD is pretty good considering the quality of the source material. The film is presented in its OAR of 1.85:1 and is anamorphically enhanced. It may be a bit grainy at times but that's definitely the source. The colors come through very nicely, especially in the sequences where the cinematography is really flashy (you can't convincingly portray a zombie fish attacking the fisherman without some attention to the color palette). The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is serviceable although in several places I thought it was bit muffled (but that may have been just me struggling with the accent).

Gratuitous abduction shot of Felicity Mason	The post-plague future isn't rosy... it's orange

The one department where the DVD really shines is the extras: making off featurette that goes behind the scenes with interviews from the directors, the cinematographer, the composer, the lead performers, and the producer. There are two (!) feature-length commentaries, extended and deleted scenes, camera tests, artwork sketches, and some documentary footage from various festivals. In short, the disc is loaded with extras worthy of some special edition of a major motion picture. Having said that, I would have much preferred to see the three original shorts on which this film was based. Yeah, I know, I am perennially dissatisfied.

March 11, 2006