Call of the Undead

Do we really need yet another lousy, unmemorable, low-budgeted and gratuitously repulsive zombie movie? No, of course not. Do I gladly stand in line amidst dozens of other outraged horror fanatics when it's premiering at the Brussels Festival of Fantastic Films? Why, of course! Because even though you know from beforehand that you won't see anything new or innovating, and presumably that it'll even be a stupid and terrible film, there's something irresistible about watching zombie fodder at a festival's midnight screening. The only unusual but noteworthy elements about this "Zombie 108" are that it's a flick from Taiwan (usually the genre flicks come from Japan or South Korea) and that the contains a few illuminative – but sadly underdeveloped – ideas. Following the Tsunami and the subsequent nuclear disaster in Japan, (yes, that's how fast the horror industry exploits news dramas!) a deadly cloud full of radioactive chemicals comes flying over one of the most pauperized and crime-infested districts of the capital Taipei. People die but immediately resurrect as a flesh-craving monsters, the government places the area under quarantine and the continuously decreasing number of human survivors have to battle for their lives. There are two rather interesting subplots in "Zombie 108". A SWAT-team that was about to do a raid on a mafia night club are now forced to combine forces with the criminals against the zombies invaders. This results in a couple of amusing moments, particularly involving the 400lbs mafia leader. There's another intriguing – but mostly bizarre and unfathomable – subplot about a perverted serial killer/kidnapper (who replaces his own skin with cooked meat) who abuses the zombie mayhem to make even more victims. One would say, especially with positive aspects like these, that "Zombie 108" is an adequate horror effort, but unfortunately the wholesome is too chaotic, incoherent and amateurishly put together. The gore and make-up effects are nauseating, but laughably inept and cheap. The extremely young and over-enthusiast director Joe Chien (he was present at the festival to introduce his movie and barely looked twenty years old!) clearly doesn't grant any importance to tension or ominous atmosphere and goes straight for savagery, including loud heavy metal music and plentiful of scarcely dressed beauties in the supportive cast.

There have been an increasing number of cheesy, low budget zombie films made in recent years, such as THE ZOMBIE DIARIES and APOCALYPSE OF THE DEAD, films which offer their own minuscule-priced takes on the classics but often falling down due to the poor expertise of the crew members making them. ZOMBIE 108 is no different, and in its defence it attempts to rip off not just one genre but instead three distinct ones, with generally poor effects.

Firstly, it's clear that somebody watched and enjoyed THE RAID before they made this, because half of the characters are SWAT team members whose long-running feud with some ugly gang members provides a backdrop to the zombie action. Then we have the zombies themselves, the usual bunch of shuffling, entrail-grabbing monsters, who always seem to appear in badly-edited montages. This effect may be utilised to hide the rubbish nature of the zombie makeup.

Finally, if that wasn't enough, writer/director Joe Chien throws in a flesh-masked pervert who keeps a dungeon full of chained naked girls and uses zombies to power his own electricity generator! The Texas CHAINSAW influence is clear, but it means that, tonally, the movie is all over the place, ranging from the ridiculous to the repulsive. One moment we're sitting through another hackneyed zombie attack and the next we're watching this slobbering rapist having his way with a naked and nubile young woman. It's pretty nasty.

Thankfully, the film is so poorly made that none of it means much, and even the sicker moments are amusing rather than disturbing. Joe Chien acts like an overactive child when directing, with his irritating jumpy editing and choice of death metal to irradiate the ears of sensitive viewers. The film is littered with amusing errors, like somebody turning into a zombie complete with decayed makeup in the space of two minutes, and more bad acting than you can shake a stick at. My favourite character is the black guy, a wannabe Parkour expert who does these little jumps over tables and the like in a bid to convince us of his athletic abilities; such moments are truly hilarious.

The novelty factor is that this is Taiwan's first zombie movie, but unfortunately it lacks any cultural awareness or difference to the bog-standard low grade horror film from any country on this earth: people running around aimlessly and doing very little. It's a bore.

I find it had to see why anyone has rated this film as anything above terrible.

I love zombie movies (usually) and I also really enjoy movies from outside the UK, especially Hong Kong Cinema. However this film was such a let down I find it hard to put into words.

I will start with the acting which is some of the worst I have seen in any movie, even the Zombies are acted badly! Secondly The camera work is all over the place to the point that it makes the viewer feel dazed and loose concentration.

The story is poor taste and seems to just look for excuses for nudity. The film tries to shock and fails terribly. The whole film is patchy and seems to be really badly put together jumping from scene to scene often lacking in sense and direction.

My conclusion: Save an hour and a half of your life and skip this one.

I love zombie movies, but it was hard to find good zombie movie from Asia. This one is good, but there is two thing which I want to share with you.

1-tipicle Chinese stile movie- mix of saw, rec, biohazard etc dressed up with new CG technique. No originality at for scenes.

2-subliminal anti japan propaganda- lot of money come from Chinese government so its normal, but lot of racism in Chinese language. I hate political indication in movies...

watch it if you like zombie movies, its good for spent 80min during weekend night(but don't spend money for rent)

This is a movie that many people probably won't like for a variety of reasons. First, the movie I watched was filmed in Taiwan with English subtitles. Now, normally subtitles wouldn't necessarily be a problem for me. However, the pace of the movie was very fast and jumped from one subplot to another with several different characters. This caused some confusion for me at first but as the movie continued it started to make sense. Additionally, it has some graphic sexual violence which some people may find distasteful. Be that as it may, the film essentially starts off with headlines explaining a recent virus in a laboratory and then we hear a car crash. Inside the car is a man named "Frank" who has been killed in the accident and an attractive young woman named "Linda" (Yvonne Yao). Upon regaining consciousness, she realizes that her 3-year old daughter, "Chloe" is missing. So she walks into a deserted supermarket and encounters zombies. She manages to escape with her daughter and is picked up by a passing motorist (played by the director, Joe Chien) who turns out to be a pervert of the worst kind. From there the scenario abruptly changes to one where the cops are trying to seal off "District 108" and then to a nightclub where an obese gangster (played by Morris Rong) is indulging himself with cocaine and naked women. Since I don't want to divulge the entire story I'll just add that other than the sexual violence it wasn't that bad. Especially considering it was a low-budget production. It had plenty of action and that was good because it helped to conceal the below average acting of everyone (with the possible exception of Yvonne Yao). All in all then it was an interesting film that some "zombie enthusiasts" might want to check out one day.