The Dead

The Dead. Its not the most creative of titles, reading it you pretty much know it's either going to be a James Joyce adaptation or a film about zombies. This time it's the latter and the stripped down title actually works, since this is pretty much a stripped down zombie film. Moving away from fast zombies, crowd pleasing style and "fun" gore gags, The Dead is bleak, numbing and even repetitive, an approach I actually enjoyed as it seems to get far closer than many films to the real horror of such events. It stuns with visuals and draws the heart with an inspired central heroic partnership, but by and large is many leagues away from the shallow silliness of all too many popular zombie films these days. Following at first the journey of Lt. Brian Murphy, wanting nothing more than to return home from a zombie outbreak stricken Africa, then Murphy and Sgt. Daniel Dembele, the latter trying to find his son, this is a quest film as much as horror, the journey as important as the grue. A first time feature for writers/directors/brothers Howard and Jonathon Ford (the latter also co handled cinematography with Jon Ford), The Dead moves at a dignified, steady paced, sporadically shot through with brief but intense bursts of tense violence heavy on head shots, laced with a growing respect and friendship between the two heroes and occasionally touched with poignancy shining in the gloom of the situation and ardour of the trek. Its skilfully handled, laconic stuff with a documentarians eye for the location (I never knew Burkina Faso was such a beautiful place), characters suitably rounded and likable and a powerful finale, overall it's a film with a punch. Rob Freeman as Lt Murphy plays things like a tough guy character actor of yore, impassive and resourceful determination with a human edge, while Prince David Oseia does equally well as Sgt. Dembele, carrying himself with authority and intelligence. As with any such film, the zombies are a major part of the experience, and The Dead succeeds nicely here. Make up effects are handled by Max Van De Banks and the zombies are simply portrayed, dead eyed, pallid, dirty and some bloodied, they move at a refreshing ominous creep as well, taking after the terrors of Romero pictures rather than any cheese of recent years. Gore is decent too, a realistic approach is taken over setting up lots of fun gimmicky kills, the headshots can get repetitive but there are a few other methods on display, a couple of which are real grisly crowd pleasers. By and large I had a fine time with this one and I hardly even expected too, having gone to watch it on a whim. The film does lag in the middle, stuttering a bit even in its already measured pacing, but it doesn't take too long to return to its groove. More irksomely, there are one or two undeveloped scenes which are too rapidly glossed over, as if time or the budget ran too short, there are some editing blips as well, though this may well have been intentional it still comes across a bit of a niggle. Still one of the best zombie films I've seen in a while though, well recommended.

"I'm just trying to survive." Lt. Brian Murphy (Freeman) is part of the last evacuation plane out of Africa. The country is in a war where the dead come back as zombies. When the plane crashes he is the lone survivor and now he needs to make it to the airport on his own. When he meets a local sergeant they decide to work together to make it to safety. I will start by saying that I have never really liked zombie movies (except for "Shaun of the Dead"). The "Dawn Of The Dead" and "28 Days" movies never were my thing. This movie however was great. Much like the movie "Let Me In", which I thought was what the world would be like if vampires actually existed, this movie is the most "realistic" zombie movie I have ever seen. If zombies did exist I think it would be like this movie and not the glorified gore that other movies show. For someone who doesn't like movies like this I was very impressed. Overall, one of, if not the, best zombie movie I have ever seen. I recommend this. I give it a B+.

This is the best zombie movie I've seen in a long time. The film is dead serious (no pun intended), there are no attempts at humor (voluntary or otherwise) whatsoever. That alone sets it apart from about 90% of all recent zombie films. The 2 protagonists (the American looks a bit like Billy Bob Thornton at times) do a fine job delivering their (few) lines). The whole movie is rather bleak, and even though you see a lot of zombies and victims it is not overly gory. The effects are very good and there is no crappy CGI blood (or if there is any I didn't notice it). There are many zombies missing limbs (arms and legs) and I had read a while back that they even used real amputees, which is a nice touch. The other thing that sets it apart from all other zombie films is the setting. All of the movie takes place in the African savanna (from what I saw in the credits it was shot in Ghana and Burkina Faso), which leads to some gorgeous vistas while the characters try to reach their destination. And finally, it was shot on film, not on video or digital video, which I hate even more than CGI blood.

This is a zombie movie in Africa which contains old school, slow walking zombies. The lead characters are people with families who are just trying to get home or find their loved ones. They are not trying to solve the mystery of the outbreak, which makes it a simple, but very entertaining piece of film.

There is a huge difference in picture quality; Sometimes you are looking at dark images with too much artificial grain, at other times you are seeing beautiful African scenery with some nifty shots. Meanwhile, the undead are never far away. This resulted in the best feature of the whole movie; you never felt safe EVER. The threat of slow zombies always shambling towards the main characters gave me that freaky feeling only Romero delivered. It worked.

This movie doesn't really excel at anything, but it is still very enjoyable. It has some minor continuity flaws (like cleaning a blood smeared face with just a dry cloth) but it doesn't get in the way. It doesn't deliver perfect acting, but it isn't terrible to watch either. It lacks a film score but there's still enough tension without it. Even with these minor flaws, I feel The Dead was a welcome change in the zombie genre and I would recommend it to any zombie fan.

I love me a good zombie flick, and I try to support independent cinema whenever I can. But I'll be the first to admit that the words "independent low-budget horror" can send me running for the hills. But after hearing some of the good buzz around this one, I thought I'd give it a shot at a midnight screening last night. I'm really glad I checked it out. The co-director was in attendance for last night's screening, where he spoke of his adoration of the early Romero films, and that influence shows. It's an endless stream of slow-walking, omnipresent zombies. It's the opposite of the hyper-stylized, fast-cut, fast walking zombie movies of recent years. Most of the action takes place during daylight hours in wide open spaces. Africa can be a harsh and brutal place without zombies, so you can imagine the difficulties that the survivors must endure. I thought the pacing was decent, and the acting was very solid. There are some really nice stylized shots in places. I'll remember that striking final scene years from now. I thought the sound design and the minimal score were very effective. Because the survivors are mostly out in the wild, there's this constant chatter of insects throughout. It's like a buzzing fluorescent bulb that always keeps you a little off- kilter. A refreshingly stark entry into the sometimes crowded zombie genre. Highly recommended.