Undead (2003) Review

I remember renting this from Blockbuster video a year or two after it came out, at the time I didn’t have a clue if it was any good all I saw was Australian comedy horror. All us horror fans know Australia and New Zealand specialize in these type of horror films, so recently when I needed something to watch and this popped up on TV I thought why the hell not!

“I loved this film all the way until the last 20 minutes or so, if it had a better ending I’d rate it much higher.”

Budget

AUD 1,000,000 (estimated)

Trivia – Over 600 liters of fake blood was used for special effects during filming.

Trivia – The original screenplay did not have any swearing. Most of the swearing in the film was ad-libbed by the actors.

The film is set in the peaceful town of Berkeley where local beauty queen René Chaplin has lost her family farm to the bank so decides to leave the town and head for the big city, accompanied by a sleaze ball of a man who’s giving her a ride. As she’s leaving there’s a down pouring of meteorites on the town. Unfortunately, these carry an alien infection that turns everyone into a zombie. After a gruesome and violent escape she stumbles to the nearest house she can find, this house belongs to local nut job Marion (the highlight of the film is him) For years he’s told people that aliens abducted him and crazy zombie alien fish attacked him but no one believed him.

Marion is the star of this film, one of the all time best characters in horror comedy

At his house they are then joined by a complete arsehole sheriff, his deputy and a man and his pregnant woman who’s jealous of Rene being crowned beauty queen of the town. The police despite there being an obvious zombie outbreak continue to disarm Marion of his weapons despite him being an awesome shot and their only hope of surviving. After being swamped they make their way into Marion’s fallout shelter but they know they need to make a move soon. After lots of killing they find the whole town is cut off by a massive alien wall, so they decide to fly out of there as the guy with the pregnant wife is a pilot. The film then focuses on them trying to get to the plane and after that it all goes a bit weird.

Dirk Hunter plays the angry sweary arsehole cop you’ll hate extremely well

The Good

As usual the gore and effects are spot on the deaths are great fun. As I said the highlight of the film is Marion and his endless supply of guns which culminate in him producing two handguns to fight the zombies despite him being unarmed and naked! There’s some cool deaths as I’ve mentioned and even the CGI effects are pretty damn good and I normally dislike that type.

As expected this film is filled with good gory deaths

The Bad

The ending is the main bad point once the film tries to bring more sense to things than a simple alien zombie infection it all goes wrong. I loved this film all the way until the last 20 minutes or so, if it had a better ending I’d rate it much higher. That’s probably the only bad point along with a few annoying characters but Marion makes them worth putting up with.

A decent film that despite the pretty poor ending is well worth a watch if only for Marion and the gore. I mean who doesn’t like seeing zombies cut to pieces paired with some comedy and a brilliant character!

Overall Rating