Carne muerta

Say what you like about writer/director Conor McMahon's debut, but he knows his walking dead movies from the entrails out.

This loopy, atmospheric and gore-splattered low budget tale set in rural Ireland about mad cow disease jumping to humans and turning them into gut-chomping zombies is teeming with references and visual nods to a dozen other movies.

But whereas Shaun Of The Dead stuck largely with George A Romero's canon, McMahon's clearest inspirations are the brooding autumnal landscapes of The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue, the invention of The Evil Dead and the unhinged splatstick of Peter Jackson's Brain Dead.

The tonal shift between horror and black humour isn't always smooth but McMahon and his enthusiastic cast hurl themselves into it with gusto, whether dwelling gleefully on the obligatory slippery red zombie picnic or ratcheting up the tension for some genuinely harrowing moments.