Zombie Undead (2010) Reviews

• Indi Brit Zombies

  roderic-duncan2011-05-31

  This is a zombie movie. There are zombies. People get chased and consumed. I don't think it is giving away much to say that. On the negative side, the storyline is unsurprising and the acting is variable. Perhaps that is why some of the reviews and ratings of this movie have been negative. But the impressive things are the stylish look, sharp editing and satisfying music. I liked it, anyway. I saw it in a cinema alongside a load of enthusiastic zombie fans, and we all had a great time. If you get this movie expecting it to be Avatar, you are sure going to be disappointed. But if you get it knowing it is an indi Brit zombie flic, then you can sit back and enjoy the gore.

• Utter piece of crap!

  tomrunelian2011-06-03

  After 45 minutes of "Zombie Undead" I fell asleep. Woke up 10 minutes later, renamed it "Directors family & friends in extremely bad make up" - and didn't bother to rewind, as the 10 minutes of sleep probably saved me from further agony. I just wanted it to be over and forgotten as soon as possible - just as the careers of anyone who had anything to do with this "film". Listening to paint dry is more entertaining than this, having my left arm ripped right out of the socket is less painful than watching this, watching snails crawl across a piece of cabbage is more exciting than this, a fart in outer space has more impact than this, a deaf hamster with one eye and a wooden leg can act better than this...etc. etc...you get the general idea? Just stay away...

• bad acting, boring, directing disaster.

  gabppl2011-06-01

  The female lead showed very inappropriate amount of "fear," if you can even call it that, at different times. The male lead was decent/good most of the time. the plot was boring and most of the "acting" was bad. However, I also blame the director (or lack of?), it seemed like the actors were reacting poorly to the situation, i think they even acted too soon in at least one scene (water closet / bathroom). I've seen many low budget zombie and/or undead movies, but this was one of the worse. I only sat through it because I'm a fan of the genre. There were obvious plot holes at times, for example: they get outside the building for the first time but it's a dead end / no way out, they entered an enclosed area that seems to have no street access. But, why is there a bicycle rack and a few bicycles? Also, why are the words "no parking" painted in huge letters on the wall if there is no street access? I suppose people could have driven their cars through the building and illegally park in the enclosed area. Overall, skip this movie.

• A boring mess which zombified me

  existential-tom2011-04-05

  As much fun as a zombie film set in Leicester sounds, if you're expecting a modern-day Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue from this low-budget indie film, I'm afraid I've got some disappointing news for you. Yes, despite its amusingly tautological title Zombie Undead is an amateurish and punishingly dull addition to the world of morti viventi cinema. The movie opens with a terrorist detonating a dirty bomb somewhere in Leicester city centre (which is presumably the cause of the zombie virus in this film), before cutting to our heroine, Sarah (Ruth King), and her badly wounded father being driven to a hospital on the outskirts of the city by Steve (Barry Thomas). Upon arrival it's clear that something is amiss as the hospital's patients exhibit all manner of exotic flesh-wounds and seem to be bringing up blood left, right and centre. When Sarah's father goes into cardiac arrest, she faints at the sight of a surgeon ramming a hypodermic syringe of adrenalin into his chest. Once she awakes the hospital seems deathly quiet, and she wonders around for a while before being confronted by a long-haired zombie who overpowers her. Luckily for Sarah, a survivor named Jay (James Corden-lookalike Kris Tearse) appears from nowhere, machete in hand, and returns the shuffling cadaver to the land of the dead. From there, the two of them spend a very long time indeed wondering around the hospital looking for fellow survivors and occasionally bumping into the odd zombie or two. Eventually a party of survivors is assembled and the group attempts to battle its way past the hordes of walking corpses on their way out of the building. There's little more to say about the film's plot, although there's an interminably boring segment tagged on at the end which sees Sarah fleeing the hospital and ending up on a farm owned by the world's chattiest farmer before the movie ends abruptly (and inexplicably) with footage of a group of soldiers being attacked by zombies. Now, I know what you're thinking: it sounds good, doesn't it? Sounds like it'll be an utter trash-fest, reminiscent of Bruno Mattei's Zombie Creeping Flesh. Well it's not. There's so little action in this film it makes Oasis of the Zombies seem positively fast-paced, and what little there is suffers from a case of the Andy Milligan 'swirl-camera' technique every time a special effect is deployed. The characters are boring, flat and underdeveloped and spend absolutely ages standing around in rooms or lifts exchanging dialogue like: "We've got to go, now! Do you understand?" "Yes, we need to move." "Let's go, we've got to keep moving" and so on, to the point of absurdity. Every dialogue scene is stretched out as long as it conceivably can be, presumably to pad the running time out to 80 minutes. The film is shot on what looks like digital video, which isn't a bad thing necessarily, but the result looks so cheap and washed out that it doesn't even have the production values of a TV soap opera. And the direction? It's hideous. The first few minutes of the film play like a crummy music video, with frantic coked-up editing and eye-straining fades, wipes and dissolves (Homer Simpson's obsession with 'star wipe' leaps to mind), and as I've said above, any scene which requires anything other than a static shot of the characters is clumsily handled and fumbled through, presumably to disguise the lack of SFX available to the makers. And the acting, while not terrible, is very am-dram. A great many scenes reminded me of theatre workshops I did in GCSE drama lessons. In fact the whole thing plays very much like a student film, which is perhaps what it began life as (one of its principal shooting locations is De Montford University in Leicester). Sadly what we have here is a pretty crummy film wrapped up in tantalising advertising and boasting a juicy title, much like The Astro Zombies from decades ago. There's nothing to recommend this film, really. It's not funny, not even unintentionally so; it boasts so little gore it's a wonder the thing received an 18 certificate; its plot is threadbare and padded out to the extreme and, ultimately, you'll be pining for your DVDs of classic Italian zombie gut-munchers before even half the running time has elapsed. Though, that said, the disc makes a great coaster…

• as rotten as a zombies armpit

  patvoid2011-06-30

  according to the DVD case"Romero cant wait for this"so i can only assume that he hasn't yet seen it...lucky bugger. the great mans work might not be up to par these days but he doesn't have to worry about the competition on offer here,he could have wrote and directed better with his milk bottle glasses off. but don't go thinking this is the new"Birdemic",its not even that good,if this was to get a midnight movie release it would be to counter insomnia. i cannot say anything good about it,low budget is no excuse for a mind-numbingly awful script and since anyone with a pound of butcher meat and a make up kit can produce a half-decent zombie,that is what was needed for this to have any chance of standing out.