The Zombie Dead (Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror) - review

1981 (Italy)

2010 Cornerstone Media / Beyond Terror DVD R(2)

Contains spoilers.

The Zombie Dead aka Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror is truly awful video nasty film making at it's repugnant best and of all the 80s European grindhouse horror I've now watched director Andrea Bianchi's daft and obscene genuflection to what Fulci, Romero and Amando de Ossorio had released the years previous probably best epitomises this particular zombie niche. There's no real narrative, no character depth or development, the actors were obviously chosen because they came cheap or they had long legs, big breasts and a pretty smile but none of that matters. What's important is the carnage, the shocks and watching a seemingly endless stream of Gino De Rossi's Fulci-esque maggot and worm encrusted risen dead kill and feast on fresh arms, brains and intestines as if they were at an all you can eat cannibal buffet.

A crusty old professor (Raimondo Barbieri) unleashes an army of the undead from an excavation site, who then proceed to siege the nearby mansion picking off it's owner, his family, guests and servants in increasingly elaborate and sadistic ways. And that's your lot really. I'll say one thing about Andrea Bianchi; he certainly doesn't let a good story get in the way of an over abundance of exploitative flesh ripping and gore munching. 

There's something about ancient Etruscan secrets of immortality which the professor proclaims he alone now understands, but what he exactly did to wake the dead from the tombs is never really explained, though I don't think we're supposed to think too hard about it. We're also not to question too much the whys or wherefores of the professor's benefactor George (Roberto Caporali), his new wife Evelyn (Mariangela Giordano), her bizarre little man child Michael (a 12 year old played by 26 year old Peter Bark), and the three privileged whiny couples tagging along for a weekend of hanky-panky away from the hoi-polloi. Suffice it to say the couples have all arrived at the isolated rural retreat, the girls have pretty much on mass stripped to their underwear, we've been explicitly told that the cars have been moved and there's no telephone and we know the zombies are on their way. Fifteen odd minutes in, there's only one direction this can go and boy does it.

I genuinely lost track of how many stomachs I saw ripped open and how many sets of intestines I saw feasted upon. Normally in a Fulci, Romero rip off I'd expect one gratuitous over extended cannibal-esque help yourselves group feast, but Bianchi obviously doesn't hold with less is more. It's not just intestines either with anything that could be ripped at and eaten done so including the now quite infamous nipple scene. I've mentioned the characters and actors are mostly shallow and forgettable; this is of course ignoring Michael. Some would call it audacious and brave others would be baffled with the sheer insanity of it all; I'm kind of both. But for some reason in all that The Zombie Dead is derivative, simple and trite, Bianchi decided to include a bizarre odious high-belted man child with a disturbing Oedipus complex indulged by his over protective mother and chose an obviously adult midget to play him. It's odd, it's jarring, all a bit forced and uncomfortable and has a bit of an extra sinister Twin Peak vibe, but it certainly adds to the twisted rambling incoherent charm.

The zombies arrival is very Tombs of the Blind Dead; sarcophagus lids slide and ancient wispy chinned old cadavers stumble out like tipsy old men. Once on their way to pay the nearby villa and its grounds a visit the style is turns very much Fulci with maggots, rotten putrid flesh and a mishmash of stages of decomposition from clearly old, old to maybe taken as a quick snack on the way. They're Romero, perhaps even Amando de Ossorio slow and even one of the guests comments on how on their own they're not necessarily a threat, which is a shame for them really, as there always seems to be a near endless supply. I think we're supposed to deduce that the professor actually caused all the dead to rise (at least in this vicinity but who's to say not across the whole world) leading to an abundance of old bodies pulling themselves Fulci-esque from the ground as if one was watching Zombie Flesh Eaters again, as a way to explain how each freshly dispatched batch is so easily replaced by another. 

Talking of dispatching. It's headshots, fire (though it looked like paint) and brain smashing which there's a lot of, that stops them for good. The story is the derivative kill a few zombies, they kill a survivor, kill a few more, rinse and repeat with each death or series of deaths increasingly extreme and elaborately staged. Bianchi's zombies don't really follow prescribed convention; they may start shambling, brainless and happy to kill by sinking their teeth in but they soon start exhibiting some rather more advanced and adaptable behaviour as they seek additional fresh meat. They climb, retreat, start using weapons to bash down doors and even fashion and use in uni-some a battering ram. Then perhaps demonstrating just how little he gives a toss about zombie canon or narrative coherence as long as it enables him to move the action forward to another highly staged and scripted piece of cinema debauchery, they even contrive an elaborate murder of the house maid involving pinning her hand to the outside latched window with a pinpoint-accurate eight or so inch nail thrown from across the grounds to enable two others to work in tandem to severe her head with an elongated scythe. It's stupid, it doesn't make any sense yet it's somehow, like everything else, uncomfortably pleasing to watch.

The Zombie Dead is a riot. It's pure style over substance, except the style is putrid, gory, amateurish and ludicrous. It's a bad, bad film that epitomises everything wrong about all the Italian exploitative zombie low budget films that were made in the early eighties yet it's hard not to admire for exactly the same reason. There's nothing original on show with scenes directly ripped from Fulci and Romero but they're well filmed and well executed and one has to admire the audacity to make a film that takes all the gore, turns the dial up to ten and omits everything else. Sure if we cut into it, it's hard to work out how so little actual content was dragged out for ninety minutes and really the whole thing is quite a shallow, vacuous affair but it's not about story or depth it's about murdering and eating people; just because. A squalid and debauched ninety minutes of thirty year old Italian zombie madness, which if you think sounds fun, can be, 7/10.

The uncut DVD release I reviewed from apparent new label Beyond Terror is really just a re-badged vipco disc and transfer with a sleeve that looked worse than I could have printed. It wasn't the best picture and sound quality, but it was cheap and watch-able.

Steven@WTD.

Mutants - review

2009 (France)

2010 Momentum Pictures DVD R(2)

Contains mild spoilers.

Moody, brooding, unpleasant; director / co-writer David Morlet certainly doesn't hold back painting quite the depressing picture of what life might actually be like should a viral pandemic sweep the country turning people into uncontrollable violent monsters. Maybe it's a French thing, as like The Horde, there's no sugar coating, no salvation, people aren't nice to each other and if you are attacked it's going to be down right unpleasant.

It's months after the viral outbreak and a pandemic has decimated what was France. The film opens with Sonia (Hélène de Fougerolles) and her partner Marco (Francis Renaud), two paramedics, desperately speeding through the desolate wintry mountain paths of Northern France (it was shot in Picardy though location is never explicitly mentioned in the film). With them and calling the shots somewhat is Perez (Marie-Sohna Condé) a cold military type who is helping them locate Noah, the last controlled stronghold and the only glimmer of hope.

Morlet has a pretty poor opinion of how people would react come the end of the world. I can understand a little utilitarianism and Perez's early action to throw someone who's been bitten from the ambulance and then shoot them in the head is understandable given the circumstances. However her initial cold indifference then open hostility when stopped looking for petrol at the suggestion from Sonia and Marco that they should perhaps look to help a young autistic survivor is just downright self-serving and shitty. Then again the theme is bleak and survival 101, and months of confusion, starvation and little hope would I'd imagine, tend to focus the mind on to doing whatever it takes. Anyway, the upshot to the disagreement is the young autistic kid, who it appears was infected after all, gets shot, Marco gets shot and Perez gets a lot shot.

Mutants is another zombie film which has the protagonists virally deranged but definitely alive. The obvious parallel is 28 Days Later and they certainly have much in common; fast, rabid with a single minded drive to not only beat the living shit out of anyone they notice but sink their teeth in and kindly pass on the virus. I'm not going to go in, yet again, to the rhyme and reason why I now think physical death isn't a mandatory requisite for zombification suffice it to say the poor souls of Mutants have their will and self taken from them by the virus and the people they were are now dead even if they do happen to still have a pulse. There is one big differentiator though between these crazies and Boyle's and it's important not just as a zombie-lore observation but as the key narrative device of the film.

Taking refuge in an abandoned hospital cum isolated forest building, Sonia tends to Marco's wounds and looks to get a radio message to Noah. His initial prognosis is good except for one small thing. It would appear during the earlier struggle he got some of the infected blood in his mouth and he's showing all the early symptoms of the virus too. Mutants may be visceral, violent and unpleasant but it's also calm, gentle and full of affection. The main differentiator between I mentioned is incubation time. There's no immediate reaction; the process is slow, painful to endure and even more painful to watch especially if you're a close loved one. The bulk of the film is watching Marco's painful deterioration and Sonia's beautifully portrayed attempts to never give in despite the weight of inevitability.

The journey from self-aware cognizant individual to rabid primal zombie is uneven, relentless, haunting and explicit. Whether it's watching Marco vomit or piss blood, rip out his hair or teeth or violently convulse, Morlet doesn't hold back letting us watch one of the best cinematic transformations play out with real honesty and starkness.  From fevered dream to paranoia to psychosis; Marco's mental deterioration is just as distressing, and as you watch the man swing in and out of himself there's a pervasive uncomfortable feeling you're intruding into something deeply personal and private.

Mutants is a remarkable film; unremittingly bleak and evocatively shot with moody slow sequences and a brilliant unobtrusive score. It's violent and gratuitous, full of head shots, brain smashing, shooting and some powerful exploitative themes played around with, yet it's also tender, and a desperate personal love story. There's a lot going on with the infected though I'm not sure all of it works. By maintaining they're alive, there's the added complication of exactly how they're staying alive given the long winter months and lack of food and shelter and there's also pseudo psychic sequence that while I can see what Morlet was trying to do comes across a bit clumsy and overly-artistic. They're small gripes overall, and I can't help but be quite enamoured, recommended, 7/10.

Steven@WTD.

Cockneys vs Zombies - review

2012 (UK)

2012 studiocanal Blu-ray R(B/2)

Contains spoilers.

So these two geezers right, their old granddad is in a bit of old barney rubble as his old care home is going to be knocked down to make room for some fucking yuppie high-rise, so they've decide to do some apple bobbing to sort it out. It all goes a bit Pete Tong and the old bill turn up, but that's not the real problem, you see me old china. The fucking problem, is two chancers thinking it peachy to disturb some brown bread in some old crypt, only unleash a chuffing Trafalgar plague, didn't they.

If you can handle all the cockney twang, enjoy a good British non-serious comedy action horror and like zombies, gore and lots of bloodshed then director Matthias Hoene's homage to Night of the Living Dead cum Shaun of the Dead might just be for you. It's fun, airy, light hearted, there's good dialogue and chemistry between the varied characters and there's enough guts, blood and carnage to satisfy any gore hounds cravings. I've seen it described as Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels meets Shaun of the Dead and honestly if they'd just added 'guns' between cockneys and zombies the title would say all you needed to know.

I'll admit I was a tad wary going into this as watching lary bad mouthed east-enders really isn't my cup of tea and whether it's rhyming slang, pearly kings and queens or the glorification of two particular vile gangsters there's nothing quite like insular self-aggrandising, in my mind, to spoil a good party. I needn't have worried though as yes, it's one hundred percent cockney and yes it's chock full of all the east-end charm I've just been bitching about, but Hoene and the writers and producers have managed to pitch it so that cockneyism is in on the joke as much as it's blowing smoke up its own arse.

Now for a translation of that basic story I outlined in the first paragraph. Alan Ford is Ray MacGuire, an east-end retired hard-man with a permanent facial snarl and penchant for swearing, who is seeing out his days in the Bow Bells care home in the heart of the east-end. Like much of old London his retirement home is set to be demolished to make way for a brand new high rise development and he has three weeks until he and his friends are to be relocated up t'north. Unbeknown to him, his good natured, if dim witted grandsons', Terry (Rasmus Hardiker) and Andy MacGuire (Harry Treadaway) have come up with a plan to save the day by robbing a local bank with the help with their cousin Katy (Michelle Ryan), their incompetent friend Davey Tuppence (Jack Doolan) and Ashley 'Mental' Mickey (Bashy Thomas) the local brain damaged nutter (literally) who just happens to be the only person they know with guns.

Inevitably, the robbery goes wrong, the police show, there's panic, arguments and Mickey takes it upon himself to blast his way out grabbing two hostages, Emma (Georgia King) and Clive (Tony Gardner) only to discover that while they've been working out what to do their little corner of London has been hit by the zombie tsunami. Their plan, and the plot of the film is now straightforward. Survival, guns and rescue granddad.

Well it is and it isn't. As well as focusing on the conflicted and out of the depth cockney robbers and their hostages now holed up at Terry and Andy's lock-up there's a second narrative focused on Ray and residents of the care home as it too comes under siege. It's here Hoene is able to be slightly more playful not only with delightful slap stick set pieces and comic dialogue from veteran actors including Honor Blackman and Richard Briers, but by contrasting and poking fun at traditional zombie tropes such as there slow pace vs the geriatric old timers complete with their replacement hips and zimmer frames. There always a fine line being walked when parody is in play, but Hoene gets it right acknowledging all the inherent absurdity while always remaining respectful, much like Pegg and Wright did with Shaun of the Dead; and also in many ways like he does with 'cockneys'.

I do like it when directors understand that if you get the zombie right, it doesn't half help allowing the characters and action to shine. Included on the Blu-ray is the five minute video that was shown to all 526 zombie extras explaining the basic rules of zombie behaviour and movement, or zombicality as they put it. Very slow movement, stagger not swagger, lift legs from the hips, have your arms flailing and let gravity guide movement are all mentioned and the cast of extras follow the doctrine perfectly capturing London in all its tipped bin, newspaper strewn, background flesh munching, apocalyptic splendour.

They're your slow gait Romero zombies, though as the very recently deceased there's only the slightest shade of blue. They hunger for flesh, they're definitely dead and anything other than a head-shot and they'll still keep dragging themselves forward. They're well made up with a fun goofy back story that finally puts to rest the question of what happens when all the skin rots and falls off (they turn in skeletons like in Tombs of the Blind Dead). Other than that it's business as usual; bite, infect, turn (& die) and look to pass it all on. The make-up and effects are striking and the streets are awash with guts and blood and it all looks great.

Cockneys vs Zombies knows what it is and delivers. It's lively, action packed, explosive and gore laden but as excessive and in bad taste as some of the sequences are there's always the pinch of salt allowing them to get away with them. Hoene pitches the comedy with the action and gore perfectly never allowing one to take over and the back and forth between the two narratives is coherent and they meet up just at the right time. It's not perfect, for all it's originality; in story, characters and some of the extravagant zombie deaths, by being a parody means staying tight to the genre staples and it can't help but feel a tad derivative and stale at times. There's also a few throw away jokes that don't quite and skits that don't come off. All in all though, a thoroughly enjoyable ride; with much to commend. I'll Bobby Moore it 7/10.

Steven@WTD.

M is for Madness - short

A quick shout out for director Ross Williams' Kubrick inspired zombie short "M is for Madness". A three minute competition entry for the ABCs of Death Part 2 it's visceral, coherent, well shot and a great little disturbing ride - 8/10.

Well worth a few minutes of your life. You can watch it here: http://26th.abcsofdeathpart2.com/entry/m-is-for-madness/ or here: https://vimeo.com/75926635.

Steven@WTD.

Hell of the Living Dead (Zombie Creeping Flesh / Virus / Night of the Zombies) - review

1980 (Italy / Spain)

2002 Starz / Anchor Bay DVD R(1)

Contains mild spoilers.

I've sat in front of the computer for ten minutes now trying to work out not only how to start the review, but actually how I actually feel about what I've just watched. I mean, I can't hide from the obvious; it's a woefully low budget 80s euro-trash zomploitation video nasty with b-movie acting, a poor English dub (there was no original soundtrack with subtitles option on my DVD), a meandering derivative story devoid of any real content or meaning, and an obsession with the ridiculous misuse of externally sourced stock footage. Yet, I somehow enjoyed my hour and forty minutes with Lia (Margit Evelyn Newton) quite the enthusiastic front line reporter and Lt. Mike London (José Gras) and his blue boiler-suit wearing commando goon squad.

There's a rather superfluous and unexplained back story about a global conspiracy to euthanize the third world and it all going wrong with some giant clouds of degenerative toxins leaking out into the atmosphere. There's also a radioactive zombie rat. All that's really important to know is Lt. London is in New Guinea with his crack force of three totally unconvincing exaggerated 80s bad boy throwbacks, he can't get hold of his superiors, his crew have stumbled into Lia, her camera man Vincent (Selan Karay) and decided to let them tag along, and the normally quiet jungle landscape is teeming with blue skinned undead flesh-eaters.

There's not much else to the story. The gang of six travel to the nearest village, Mia takes her top off to communicate with natives who she was alleged to have stayed with for a year, the village is overrun, then they travel to an abandoned plantation, it gets overrun, then they travel to Hope #1, a sprawling industrial complex and the source of the zombie death cloud, and it gets overrun. Each location starts with the same promise of respite, only for some shadowy figure sitting in a chair with their backs to them to reveal themselves as a macabre flesh eating zombie and the place to come under siege.

I've seen director Bruno Mattei described as a total hack unable to fashion anything original, but I've also seen him described as the man to turn to, to get the job done with as little fuss and money as possible, and both are undoubtedly true. Hell of the Living Dead is a veritable pastiche of everything Zombie Flesh Eaters and Romero. It's formulaic, it's derivative, scenes are stolen, music is literally stolen (Goblin's Dawn of the Dead soundtrack) but if the remit was for a by-the-numbers repeat of the two success stories above, to be filmed in four weeks with no money, credit however begrudgingly, has to be given. What story there is never really comes together and it does drag out, but it doesn't actually fall apart, the characters are cheesy and obnoxious, and played poorly, but at least they're all entertaining each in their own special way, and each action sequence is contrived and poorly choreographed but the way the so called professional soldiers throw themselves about is always amusing to watch. There's also the fact there's an abundant and near constant flow of gratuitous and shocking gore on offer, almost as if Mattei knew this alone would sell a few copies regardless of all films other short-falls.

The zombies are, funny enough, a Dawn of the Dead / Zombie Flesh Eaters fusion. They're blue, they shuffle and groan, they arrive on mass and they like eating people. I've that usual complaint, that for quite the desolate unpopulated area there's an awful lot of zombies and even with a Jeep and boat the gang can't find five minutes respite. Also the zombies do seem to know when to hold off that fatal bite, even with people literally in their grasp, yet on other occasions, for instance when the village is over-run, a native must merely flash a bit of ankle for the teeth to get sunk in. It's almost like the zombies knew when each main character was to be bit and all the action was contrived to ensure it happened as planned. Other than this, it's head shots, with the guys going through the early rigmarole of shooting the body repeatedly first before having the hallelujah head-shot moment, fire being the zombie-no-no and lots of staggering around slowly with arms outstretched. There's nothing new on show but at least Mattei has taken what works and not embellished it unnecessarily, other than allowing their innate cannibalism to get a fair bit more screen time than Romero would have.

I'm not going to pretend that this is a good film; it's one of those that somehow transcends all that it does wrong to become worth watching for the sheer exaggerated stupidity on display. Mia's tribal undress entwined with all the obvious third party tribal stock footage is worth watching if only for the audacity Mattei had in thinking he could get away with it. Wise cracking Zantoro (Franco Garofalo) is worth following if only to witness a truly great maniacal goofy performance, and there's a good game of guess the next jungle animal in stock footage forced in to allegedly make the film as long as Dawn of the Dead. Dawn of the Dead it isn't though; and for all I say go watch it, be prepared for a bit of a genre stinker that you must remember even Mattei was ashamed to have his name attached at launch (he went as Vincent Dawn). Still recommended for that 80s euro-trash no-story maggot-crusted, flesh-munching zombie itch, but don't say you've not been warned, 6/10.

Steven@WTD.

Zombie Hunter Rika (Rika: Zombie Killer) - review

2008 (Japan)

2011 Switchblade Pictures Nihombie!: The Complete Japanese Trilogy (Zombie Self-Defense Force / Attack Girls' Swimteam vs. the Undead / Zombie Hunter Rika) DVD R(1)

Contains mild spoilers.

Low budget, crass, nonsensical Japanese exploitative zombie comedies are a bit of an acquired taste and I'll happily admit, having now watched all three of the nihombie high-school girl vs zombie bad taste flicks that it's one I've yet to truly acquire. I'll concede there are more than likely cultural reasons to why I haven't found the incoherent excessively stupid narratives engaging, laughed along with the juvenile humour or particularly felt comfortable with the awkwardly forced and dangerously close to age inappropriate nudity, but I'm starting to think maybe it might actually be them, not me, who's at fault, and the truth is simply that they're just pretty crap. I'm being a bit disingenuous; I didn't actually mind Naoyuki Tomomatsu's Zombie Self-Defence Force, pitched as it was at being as totally bat-shit crazy as it possibly could get away with. It understood perfectly what to do with no money and a ridiculous premise and story, knowing to never bow to common-sense or restraint at the expense of getting another cheap laugh from an endless supply of the audaciously stupid. It was still culpable of all the complaints I mentioned earlier and is undeniably crap but it knew it and knew played along with it.

On paper director Ken'ichi Fujiwara's Zombie Hunter Rika has it pitched right. School girl Rika (Lisa Kudô) is playing hooky to visit her master surgeon and expert samurai grandpa, there's an outbreak of green skinned flesh eating foot shufflers and the severed arm of a legendary American zombie-hunter is conveniently found just when our fair skinned heroine inadvertently loses her own. Add three moronic stooges that have somehow survived the onslaught, a conspiracy theory that blames the whole thing of a covert government program to euthanize the elderly, a cognisant zombie who arrives on the scene offering help and a rat-like zombie boss who makes not one blind bit of sense for existing and we have all the stupid, implausible and contrived we've come to expect.

So why doesn't it work this time? Two reasons. One, is that there is actually an attempt to present all of the above in something other than a non-serious way. Two and more importantly, what should have been audaciously over the top and in your face actually comes across flat and insipid like all involved just couldn't shake off just what amateur b-movie drivel it all was. The acting is limp and lifeless, the dialogue lazy and the story gives up any attempt at retaining a modicum of coherence or natural pacing all too readily. Fleeing the zombie horde with help from Tomoya, a man purporting to be her grandfather's wife's brother, the trio arrive to find a sad old man riddled with dementia, a gaggle of young maids desperate to compare breast size and an awful lot of conversation completely devoid any mention of the fact the whole town is now fucking zombiefied. I can handle a bit of laziness but it's like no one cared at all by what was being said.

The zombies, I'll hold my hands up, aren't actually too bad; though I'm really using the term loosely. They're clearly the result of minimal time and money but, at least they have a uniform look to their shuffling around groaning and ponderous attacks on anyone unaffected. There's the usual Japanese quirky embellishments, with one zombie holding his crotch as if aroused, one driving a car and the excessive use of a questioning 'meha?' groan, but I'll leave these as observations as I don't think it's really worth any attempt at a semi-intelligent critique. Also where would be if there wasn't some token completely out of place and mind-bafflingly insane magic and mayhem, and a good old fashioned big boss fight with the excuse to throw in some average looking CG. A speaking, mask wearing cognisant revenent with a hokey eye and some strange CG death beam from his belly has the former covered; Grorian a dual sword wielding samurai who on defeat explodes into dust and somehow holds to the key to fixing all the wrongs that have been wrought and curing all infected or killed, covers the latter. There's no rhyme or reason to any of it and while not necessarily a bad thing; I mean look at Chanbara Beauty and Zombie-Defence Force which were equally audaciously stupid, here the action, effects and fighting is so lacklustre, bland and lacking in style, finesse and belief, it can’t rise to appear as anything other than as poor and amateur as it is.

Zombie Hunter Rika is so pedestrian and mediocre it took me three sittings to get through it as I kept thinking of things I'd rather be doing like taking out the bins or tidying the cutlery drawer. There were a fair few interesting and uncomfortable moments of gore, lots of blood and there's plenty of flesh-eating, but I'm scrambling for many positive things to say. An amateur script that felt like it was being made up as it went along, dry lacklustre acting performances from people who genuinely looked like they didn't want to be there, and shot capture and direction that looked cheap and harried as if Ed Wood with his one take what-ever happens approach was in charge; it's bad film. A chore I'd not recommend others endure, 2/10.

Steven@WTD.

World War Z - review

2013 (USA / Malta)

2013 Paramount Home Entertainment Blu-ray R(All)

Contains mild spoilers.

  

Now before we start we'd better get the whole is it faithful to the book stuff out the way as I don't want it to dominate the review. Kev, I mean, Burt Malone ahem, perfectly sums up not only my but I think pretty much everyone who has read Max Brooks' zombie opus's thoughts perfectly over at Zombie Hall so I'll not regurgitate it all here again.

Suffice it to say, I'm not going bitch and whine too much about the change to the more traditional linear narrative style as stylistically I'm not sure what else they could have done that would have lent itself to the big mainstream audience that justified such a huge budget. Yes, perhaps they could they have been a lot more clever about it, and somehow looked at keeping the broken interview narrative style interweaving multiple timeframes, characters and stories, but that could have easily become cumbersome and is more suited, funnily enough, to a medium where there's more room to play. I'm also not going to moan about the sanitised reduction in blood and gore, though the extended cut I watched I believe is somewhat improved. The target was disaster / apocalypse movie over horror and that's ok.

The one thing that does irk me, however, are the zombies and the war. The essence of Max Brooks' fight was mankind's stand against the slow <<< now this word is important, inevitable tide of death. The zombies were ponderous gruesome macabre flesheaters in the Romero mould, and the survivors' stories the pained weary confessions of those who were faced with the most difficult of decisions. The zombies' consumption of the world reflected their gait; it was slow, painful and endless and not as is the case in this movie adaption overnight and total. I'm not saying it's better or worse, just WWZ the movie is Max Brooks' zombie and zombie story only in name; and that's not really right.

Anyhow, we'll move on. The first ten or so minutes of WWZ the movie is perhaps ten of the most satisfying big scale zombie apocalyptic movie watching minutes of my life. There I said it; ten minutes in did I care the story wasn't being narrated and zombies were leaping and running about like crazed kamikazes? Not one jot. WWZ is what it is, a big budget, high octane triple A trip with a big name attached, the backing of a huge studio and CG exploding from every orifice. The fact that so many people were prepared to throw so much money and resources at my favourite genre is commendable and, despite any idealistic misgivings I have, I just can't help myself from loving them all for it.

Max Brooks' disparate tale doesn't lend itself to the idea of a single story and character and that screenwriter Michael Straczynski managed to do so convincingly while in my mind staying true to the investigative oriented origin story of the book is commendable. Brad Pitt plays Gerry Lane, a retired UN investigator used to working in the most hostile places and conditions. Surviving the initial zombie explosion in Philadelphia with his wife, Karin (Mireille Enos) and two daughters Rachel (Abigail Hargrove) and Constance (Sterling Jerins) he gets the call from his old boss Deputy Secretary-General (Thierry Umutoni) who promises to save his family on condition he joins the scant remaining forces to find out what started all this in the hope it will lead to some kind of solution.

Gerry's journey takes him to South Korea, to Jerusalem then to Cardiff; each location full of high octane drama, tension and close-calls. If we nit-pick one could argue the story is merely the vehicle to move Gerry to a new zombie playground to get chased around in and destroy; but that would be slightly disingenuous to what is a global investigative story. The big urban sprawl of Philadelphia, teeming as it is with pedestrians and vehicles, is the perfect place to show the pandemic arrive like a tsunami of death; cars get tossed, everybody screams and almost everybody gets turned. The tight fog-laden airport in South Korea provides the opportunity for claustrophobic tension and a wee bit of horror then rinse and repeat for Jerusalem and Cardiff. Each location provides just enough story to make the trip feel worth while allowing the action and zombie fun to never distance itself too far from centre stage.

Say what you will about director Marc Forster's ultra-fast uber-zombies in relation to the Romero plodders but they are well fleshed out, visceral and have certainly taken on an identity all of their own. The infection in WWZ is the puppet master and its need to spread and stay alive is all that's important; the undead are really only here to make this happen. There's no desire to actually eat flesh or brains; after contracting the disease through a bite, 12 seconds is all a person has until death, violent reanimation and the virus driving its new host on the singular mission. And man do they go about this in a virulent and exhilarating way. They leap, they bound, they never ever stop sprinting and if you've seen one you're more than likely already well on your way to being one too; they're pure instinct and animated muscle, sinew and teeth, and they also work together in swarms in ways we've never seen before.

The phrase is mimicked behaviour and the WWZ team took the emergent idea from nature, that small but large scale micro-interactions could easily be misconstrued as some grand combined-thinking intelligence when seen on a macro level. Whether it's ants coming together to build a bridge or a flock of birds turning together in unison, the zombie ladder being erected to scale a vast wall is merely a product of them all copying each other, and entirely reliant on them having no superfluous will or motivation. When combined with the resilience of being dead and not needing everything to work, not feeling pain and a tenacious and relentless drive it a) lays the groundwork for probably the most dangerous zombies yet devised and b) doesn't half lend itself to some extravagant and excessive large scale CG scenes that somehow despite the sheer insanity of what's going on maintain a certain degree of plausibility.

For a film that cost some $190m to make the presentation is, as expected, immaculate. Buildings explode, bombs go off, planes crash with style and panache. Brad Pitt's pitched perfect performance is one of many and I really can't find fault with the film on any technical level. Character development is somewhat neglected and the final third does become dare I say a little derivative in style, though this isn't necessarily a bad things as watching Brad line up with several unruly looking scientists melee weapons in hand ready to go creep round a claustrophobic infested lab like in any other zombie film from the last thirty years was somewhat perversely gratifying. WWZ is what it is. A high octane, big budget apocalyptic thrill ride that really doesn't do a lot wrong other than not acknowledging the style, pace and heart of the source material it paid a lot of money to secure.

WWZ is a stunning piece of apocalyptic cinema and a zombie film I will be coming back to time and again with many memorable scenes, an original and audacious reimagining of the zombie and a competent and cohesive enough story to hold the orgy of global apocalyptic scale CG together. Yes it's a pop-corn flick, yes it's daft and it seems a lot of non-genre, new wave TWD fans liked it, yes it's Brad Pitt's WWZ, not Max Brooks' but it's I have to admit also unwaveringly full-on, intense and utterly brilliant, 8/10.

Steven@WTD