2012 (USA)
Contains mild spoilers.
Ok, I wasn't
expecting much. Maybe a satirical light hearted zombie romp across the Middle
East; a few laughs, a few good gory scenes, a bit of a daft plot (obviously); a
coherent pop corn flick I could kick back and laugh at with a couple of beers.
Osombie, written by Kurt Hale and directed by John Lyde isn't satirical, isn't
particularly gory, has no memorable scenes and rambles along incoherently with
no redeeming qualities. Now I'd love to end the review there but I've set
myself a standard (albeit not very lofty) with my reviews to date so I should
elaborate.
Osama Bin Laden
wasn't just shot in a house in Abbottabad, Pakistan then buried at sea hours
later. He was instead found and shot at a zombie experimentation lab where he
was chief researcher. During transportation he rose from the dead causing an
accident and the helicopter to fall into the sea. Found by loyal Al Qaida
followers he's now protected at secret military camp in the mountains bordering
Afghanistan and Pakistan where his blood and research are being used to fashion
an army zombie foot soldiers ready to topple the godless heathens of the west
etc, etc.
Enter our heroes.
Dusty (Eve Mauro) a yoga instructor from Colorado has taken it upon herself to
head into the mountains to look for her brother Derek (Jasen Wade) who
struggling to come to terms with the death of the rest of his fire fighter crew
on September 11th, has self funded a trip there where he hopes to uncover the
truth to Bin Laden's un-death and kill him once and for all. On their way they
run into a small NATO task force sent to identify and destroy the secret camp
and the put a stop to the zombie outbreak.
Now I will forgive a
film many things when working to a low budget and limited resources; in this
case the CGI is overdone, the acting is wooden, the sets and environments are
unconvincing and the scope is limited but I can live with these, they make b-movies
what they are and lend a certain charm. Here though and rather more unforgivable, we also have an incoherent narrative full of inconsistency,
dialogue that's just plain awful, a plot full of holes and a whole ambience
that feels flat and lifeless. Even during the high octane action scenes with
wave after wave of not actually that badly made up Arab zombies being mowed
down with precision and CGI exploding powdery heads I found myself wondering
how long it had to go. It's a problem.
Now I've seen films
before that have managed to make an absurd concept work with limited funding
and they do this with either brilliant writing and vision or by going down the
totally over the top route recognising their own flaws and playing to them. Osombie
does neither instead trying to retain creditability and seriousness when
clearly the subject matter dictates it can't and shouldn't even try. Everything
about the film is ridiculous and absurd yet it plods along with uninspired
unmemorable characters sharing trite badly written dialogue and there is never
any recognition of this. Like it's style and direction everything about the
film is average and mundane; the film has no spark or life. Even if it was a
yeehaa isn't America great propaganda piece it would still have been a huge
improvement over the lifeless dirge that was produced. To top it all off I had
constant audio and visual stutters with my Blu-ray. I'm not sure if it's
isolated to my copy and quite frankly I don't feel that impelled to find out.
I went into this
with some trepidation but I still fancied I could have a laugh. By the time the
credits rolled the only excitement I felt was from knowing it was all over and
I had my life back. Osombie is joyless, inept, badly written nonsense and a waste
of anyone's time, avoid. While I really wanted to give this a 1 the zombie
make-up was nicely done and someone deserves some credit, 2/10.
Steven@WTD.
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