Something is seriously wrong in the quiet Queensland hamlet of Berkeley: rocks are falling from the sky, carrying a virus that turns local residents into flesh-crazed fiends. And that's just the start of the powerhouse slam-bang debut from Brisbane twin filmmakers Peter and Michael Spierig, an audacious triumph of invention and imagination over budget and genre constraints. Even more remarkable is the fact that two local Brisbane boys have achieved the impossible and created an original Aussie zombie epic that is set to lay waste to the international horror community.
Ever the post-80s horror boom cultural vultures, Spierigs plunder shamelessly from the expected sources - the grey apocalypticism of George A Romero's Dead trilogy, the outrageous gore setpieces of Peter Jackson's blood-soaked Bad Taste and Braindead, the camera histronics of early Sam Raimi and Coen Brothers efforts - while breathing new life into the long-exhausted zombie cycle and making a film that is entirely their own. Undead marries a wholly unpredictable narrative, jawdropping effects (graphic enough for the most jaded of gorehounds) and a frighteningly assured grasp of cinematic language. As expected there's buckets of gallows humour, but the film never trades cheap laughs for its primary purpose: delivering good old-fashioned blood-curdling shocks.
If Aussie horror is a dead duck, Undead blows it out of the water.
