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.

As a virus sweeps the city, it falls into a bloody zombie- apocalypse and array citizens come together to survive the nightmare.

Yes we've seen it all before but what writer/director Joe Chien does have like his semi-side-quel Zombie Fight Club (2014) is a dark and ominous atmosphere.

Following the opening of a large abandoned metropolitan area where a woman wanders around and finds a mass of hungry zombies we are then presented with a flashback of how the city became deserted. Chien borrows from the best, which is a good thing but sadly Zombie 108 biggest slip up is an unnecessary off-putting subplot where a sordid pervert kidnaps women and traps them in his apartment. He keeps them locked up, tortures, rapes and murders them.

It's messy, chaotic, graphic and at times borderline incoherent in keeping with many Asian zombie outings. That said, it does have its eerie creepy moments, it's played serious and the zombies are well executed. However, you'd be excused if you skipped this mainly due to the distasteful secondary plot and went straight to Chien's more rounded Zombie Fight Club.

Well I must say that I was also riding along on the hype-wave about this being Taiwan's first zombie movie, so I had put up some big hopes and expectations for the movie, especially as I was really surprised by "Juan of the Dead" ("Juan de los Muertos") from Cuba. So these movies just go to prove that you don't need a massive backing up from Hollywood in order to make a good zombie movie.

And now having seen "Z108" I will say that I wasn't surprised, and I think that they actually managed to pull it off nicely enough. Sure there were some mistakes here and there, but in overall, I think that Joe Chein managed to make an impressive movie, so Taiwan can now be ticked off on the zombie world map.

The story in "Z108" is about a scientist who had discovered a new gene, but the gene caused unforeseen changes and mutations. With a couple of disasters striking his life, the material gets unleashed upon a part of Taipei, and we find ourselves along with a SWAT group, as they strike down upon the infected area. But in the middle of the chaos is a local gang, totally unaware of the chaos that is unfolding around them. The two groups, SWAT and gang members, have to unite and put aside their differences in order to overcome the common threat of the ravenous zombies.

Yeah, the storyline itself was fairly average for a zombie movie, and it wasn't really anything that you hadn't seen before in other movies of this genre. But still, it was entertaining enough.

The zombie make-up and effects were actually quite good, although it wasn't as gore-filled as some of the Western or Japanese zombie movies can be. But there was a decent enough amount of blood and mayhem, and I was kept entertained by it, though I could have wished for a bit more.

As for the acting, well I think that people were doing good enough jobs with their roles. It wasn't really anything outstanding or overly impressive, but it was above low-budget standards. And I wasn't familiar with anyone in the movie, as I haven't really had much chance to watch Taiwanese movies in general, so it was nice to see a movie with all new faces and not have any prior idea of their acting and previous characters associated with their faces.

There were a couple of things that didn't fall into my personal liking in this movie. The first was the speed of which people turned into zombies, it took less than a couple of minutes; but to make matters worse, then for some reason, newly deceased people that came back as zombies had decaying and mangled faces, even though prior to dying their faces were intact. That was just a tad too stupid. The second thing was the rip off of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" with the human flesh-leathery facial mask that the 'pervert' was wearing, it was so unnecessary, and it really brought the movie down a bit in originality. And finally I wasn't overly impressed with the death metal music in the movie. Yeah, I listen to metal myself every day, and nothing much aside from metal, but the metal music in this movie was so misplaced and out of touch with the rest of the movie, plus it just wasn't that great to listen to anyway.

Aside from these small irritations, then "Z108" was actually a good movie in itself, and a well worthy addition to the DVD collection of any zombie aficionado. And for it being Taiwan's first zombie movie, then way to go! Thumbs up.

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.