UNDEAD

Rating:
Summary: comes out from lions gate film soon
Review: Don't pay an arm and a leg for this used it will be released early 2005 according to the movies web site

Rating:
Summary: Definately up there with Braindead
Review: I can't recommend this enough, I hired it out tonight out of curiousity and it was just brilliant. The complaints by another reviewer regarding the cop, well, he (the cop, not the reviewer) reminded me of a lot of people I grew up with here in Queensland; the desperate squabble for power and control no matter how pointlessly arbitrary it is and his funny, obscene ranting was spot on. If you see the movie and complain the cop isn't realistic, come to Queensland, pick a blue collar worker at random, get him REALLY drunk and ask mildly difficult questions and you'll see how accurate the character is. The other stand out characters, Renee and Marion, are so clearly pisstakes of Hugo and Kate in Van Helsing it doesn't warrant exegesis, needless to say, it's a pisstake only Australians could do; it's like a drunken, zombie version of the Castle.

As for the movie itself, bits reminded me of Night and Dawn of the Dead, in one spot I thought of Cocoon (explaining would ruin it), the absurd gore of Bad Taste and Braindead, and arcade shooting games. Complaints about plot are pointless; this is a pisstake pastiche of a thousand different things. The plot is secondary in Undead, the gestures towards old horror, new horror, and myriad other points in film culture are the priority here.

I can imagine some of the humour being lost on Americans but that shouldn't matter: what I imagine being lost is the Australian in-jokes (like Dick Smart, Little Johnny and the cops) but there's plenty of the absurdity that came with Peter Jackson's films to sustain everywhere. Australian cinema is in great shape and I'm glad to see that it still doesn't take itself too seriously. Just watch it.

Rating:
Summary: Not your average zombie pic...
Review: I enjoyed this movie tremendously. I got the film because I am a fan of the zombie genre. And as someone who lives in Australia, the humor of a zombie film set in Queensland is inherently funny, even before you watch the film.

The entire movie is amazingly funny. The cliched pieces stolen from hollywood-esque action films are tongue-in-cheek and very well placed by the directors. Some of the humor is very Australian, which might be lost by international viewers. And the movie does become a bit flat in places. But that is to be expected for a film that was made by a couple of brothers who scrounged the hundred thousand dollar budget off friends and family, worked with unpayed actors, and did all the special effects (including one scene with airplanes and floating bodies) on their computers at home.

So I feel I have to disagree with the other reviewer - the fact that a film with no backing can have a market in the international film festivals proves to me that the Australian film industry has a real future.

This is a very funny film, created by kids who no doubt grew up watching hollywood monster-genre films. But I would recommend this movie to anyone who wants to see how those cliches are filtered through the humor of another culture.

And of course, for all you zombie-pic fans who want a good laugh.

Rating:
Summary: title of review
Review: Impossible to sit through. There's very few movies I pay money to see and then say that about, but this is one of them. I lost interest about 20 minutes in. Every scene is so excessively drawn out. It's like you might as well be staring at a silent still frame half the time. The characters are the least charismatic, interesting bunch in the history of cinema. Partly due to the actors, but mostly the script, which gave them nothing to work with. There's no point in having characters fighting for their lives if the viewer isn't invested in whether they live or die, and there seemed to be no effort put into making the characters sympathetic to anyone.
There was also no effort put into making the zombies vs humans plotline unique or original. It's just the stanadard zombies appear, zombies kill a few humans, a few humans kill a lot of zombies thing. It seems like ever since Scream came out most horror movies are too focussed on referencing the genre and being a tribute to it, and I don't find that interesting to watch.
Visually I have no complaints. It looks very professional and has some nice effects, especially considering the presumably small budget the movie had. The script is the backbone of a movie though, and if that is weak you have nothing.

Rating:
Summary: There is a reason to why Australian movies are bad
Review: This movie deserves to be shelved. I have losted faint in the Australian movie Industry, being a zombie movie fan you would think I would love this movie well no. House of the dead was way more enjoyable then this cliched pile of Aussie wonder. The gore scenes are big let downs sure there are moments but they are nothing to Braindead in which critics bascially say Undead is the Australia version of braindead. This is the reason why we shouldn't make movies unless we have decent actors and a directable script and it's shot overseas.

Here is two things people in the Australia movie Industry can change to make their movies more enjoyble
Sterotypical characters eg A facist cop that even with the undead hordes he is bent on taking the guns off Marion, come on who would do that in real life?

Be with the plot and the dialog don't make up dialog as you go.

In short this movie is a dog and needs to be put to rest.

Ignore my grammer and see that this movie is hopeless. I watched it twice to see if my mind can be change, I wanted to enjoy this movie as much as other decent zombies but Undead fell flat. Don't waste your money house of the dead was better.