Siege of the Dead (2010)

God damn it HMV! I thought I was done with the ‘...of the Dead’ films, but noooo! I go into HMV with my mate, have a look through the horror film section as that’s the best place to find...unique films. And lo and behold, ‘Siege of the Dead’.

Known as ‘Rammbock: Berlin Undead’ in its home country of Germany, this is barely even classed as a film since it is 59 minutes long and, after watching the last film, I wasn’t expecting much. I was pleasantly surprised.

Granted, it isn’t a masterpiece, but it was actually much better than expected. We follow Michael, played by Michael Fuith, going to Berlin to try and get back with his ex-girlfriend Gabi, played by Anna Graczyk, using the guise of returning the apartment keys. However the dead have other plans and Michael and plumbing apprentice Harper, played by Theo Trebs are trapped in the apartment complex with other people, whilst the zombies roam the courtyard.

And for a film that has a runtime of less than an hour, it does it very well. We get the feeling of isolation, of entrapment. Whilst there are other survivors for Michael and Harper to interact with, they actually can’t, because in order to communicate they need to shout which would attract the zombie horde. It’s actually a really clever concept, one that was executed perfectly. It adds to the tense feeling of the film, which only intensifies when both the radio and television signals cut out, so the flow of information is gone. And any hope of rescue is dashed when Michael gets to the roof and sees Berlin burning; civilisation has collapsed.

And you know how most zombie films nowadays have to have an origin? In ‘Flight of the Living Dead’ it was a science experiment, in ‘Apocalypse of the Dead’ it was some kind of chemical, in ‘Armageddon of the Dead’ it’s theorised it was because of a train accident. In this film, who cares? It’s a good thing, don’t get me wrong, it goes back to the old Romero films where it makes the origin of a zombie virus unknown and NOT make it stupid.

The acting was really good, everyone was believable and realistic. The film actually has some of the best acting I have seen in a low budget film. And for quite a few big budget productions as well. I’m looking at you ‘Diary of the Dead’!

As said, for a low budget the film still comes off remarkably. I was slightly worried at first because the camera work looked shoddy, but in the end it was dark and gritty which really added to the feel of the film. And, unlike ‘Apocalypse of the Dead’, it wasn’t horribly dubbed. See ‘Armageddon of the Dead’! Subtitles are alright!

For the zombies, the film has decided to go for the fast moving zombies. Now there’s some which prefer the slow moving zombies, some which prefer the fast moving, then there’s those which don’t care (which I’m part of). And the fast moving zombies perform well in this surrounding. The low budget means that there’s a lack of effects and there’s hardly any other scene settings apart from the corridors and rooms. But the film makers use this to their advantage; the close quarters make it more intense and they demonstrate the best use of ‘less is more’ with the gore. Okay, the make-up I felt was a bit dodgy, but since the zombies aren’t on screen most of the time it’s forgivable.

Whilst they don’t give an origin for the zombie outbreak, they do go into detail about the infection. They say that the infection spreads through bites and via blood and cuts, but it accelerates when the blood starts pumping adrenaline. So a way that characters use to combat this, is to use sedatives. Which is pretty inventive, but it doesn't stop the infection, so some people who have been bitten are still ticking time bombs.

Characterwise, it’s really good again. As mentioned they are realistic, but it’s not just that. The character’s are actually given quite a bit of depth in such a short amount of time, we see the concern that Michael gets from not knowing where Gabi is, the intuition of Harper, the desperation of a man trying to help his wife, it was all welded together perfectly. All these characters come to the realisation that they have to come to terms with how to survive, something which is very realistic.

But it kind of worked too well. There was one character, Manni played by Carsten Behrendt, who looked very intriguing and mysterious. I wanted to know a lot more about him, but he then later hangs himself. That was a bit of a downer.

The characters are also, bizarrely, not stupid! Hallelujah it’s a miracle! When Harper finds a weakness in the zombies, which is that the flash of a camera scares them, they use it to their advantage! Harper chases all the zombies from the courtyard and is able to close the gate, enabling it so that they can’t get back in. Then the remaining survivors form a strategy to make their way to the docks where evacuations are suppose to be taking place.

Then again there was one idiot who tried to make a break for it, I don’t really know why, which results in his death (I assume) and Michael getting bitten. Yeah! The main character gets bitten! We actually like this guy, yet he keeps being knocked back. He finds Gabi in the attic and finds she dumped him for someone she was having an affair with, THEN he gets bitten? Jesus this film hates him. Even Harper agrees with me. But then, like some of the characters from ‘Armageddon of the Dead’, Michael stays behind so that he doesn’t endanger the others. This film has done everything right!

The ending was also remarkable. After Michael is bitten he finds Gabi has been infected, somehow, and he drops the last remaining sedative. I felt he wanted to live, but the second he saw the person he loves has become one of the dead, he gave in. He wanted to be with her, no matter what the circumstance, and we see, that he joins her and accepts their fate.

So despite the film being on a low budget, despite being less than an hour, it’s was really good. No, it isn’t a work of genius, it wasn’t a tour de force, but it’s one of the best zombie films to come out in recent years.

And thankfully there aren’t any more ‘...of the Dead’ films to do.

 

Ah, well, as long as there aren’t any more ‘...of the Dead’ films coming out soon.

 

......Screw this I’m doing other things.

Armageddon of the Dead (2008)

Oh my God I hated this film! I have never seen characters in a film so stupid in all my life, it even gives those in ‘Nuclear Hurricane’ a run for their money. Money! Pttf! As if anything was spent on this piece of crap!

Wait, $750,000? IMDB says that this film had a budget of $750,000?! It says this had a budget?! Where was the money spent?! Catering?!

It certainly wasn’t on the actors and actresses! Hardly anyone was able to portray any decency, let alone an emotion. The only two exceptions were Stephen (credited as Steven) Lee as Jack Hayes and Karim Irteim as AK. Those two were actually pretty decent, especially since this is Lee’s second film ever and the first for Irteim. Hayes and AK were the only likeable characters in this flick. AK even decides to go out in a blaze of glory when he’s bitten. That’s the only good news.

Because everyone else is horrendous! I had never been so mad at fictional characters before in my life. But who shall we start with? Let’s start with random rednecks shall we? Yeah, they’re not even supporting characters, but they’re still God awful! Because in every single scene they’re in, they call the Muslim characters terrorists and accuse them of causing the zombie uprising. Firstly, it’s painfully obvious that they’re not the cause of it, since they themselves are caught in it, but the rednecks even attempt to attack Hayes, who is a Texas ranger! And why? Because he and AK are actually friendly! These guys were only included to portray the ‘don’t paint all Muslims with the same brush’ message, but the rednecks are infuriating!

Actually, let’s go to the main characters now. We have Jenny and Sam Mills, played by GiGi Erneta and Joe Thackery respectively, a married couple who have left their daughter with her mother so that they can have a nice quiet evening together. However they’re interrupted by Nick, Sam’s brother who is played by Jason Harper. Despite only saying he’s just having a shower, this ruins Jenny and Sam’s evening. Seriously, Nick is yelled at for pretty much anything, he probably would have been blamed for the Beetles breaking up if anyone had the chance. I can understand why they can be a little bit annoyed as he has stayed with them for two months whilst he looks for a place of his own, but the thing is it’s only been two months! That’s not long enough! You can get start to get annoyed around six months but not two!

This isn’t to say that Nick is a moron though. There are times when he says insensitive things, including saying something about Jordan, the place AK is from, having camels. Wait, I just realised, AK says he’s from Jordan, but later says he was born and raised in Texas...THIS IS STUPID!

There’s so much stupidity in this film I need to break it down. Firstly in the supermarket, no-one hears people screaming! Jenny kind of has an excuse because she has headphones in, but she has to have very loud music on in order not to hear the screams. And what about everyone else? Why weren’t they too bothered?

This isn’t the only point Jenny is stupid though. A kid later gets bitten and Hayes handcuffs him and tells everyone to stay away from him to keep them safe. So, of course, Hayes is considered to be a jerk. He’s the only sensible one there you morons! Jenny wants the kid’s mother to be permitted to be with him, but Hayes doesn’t want to, prompting Jenny to say that he obviously hasn’t had kids. Hayes responds that he has a wife and child, but when he got back home when the crisis occurred the house was covered in blood and they were gone. He hopes they’re still alive, but has to live with the realistic fact that they’re more likely dead. So yes! Jenny is a bitch! Maybe she should get some facts before yelling things, or maybe think about the situation! It was stated multiple times before that Hayes didn’t want to kill the zombie-turning-brat, but wanting and needing are two different things.

But she’s not the only one to think Hayes is crazy. The mother of the zombie-turned kid thinks he is crazy, for doing what he should be doing! Even shooting one of the rednecks who was trying to kill him and AK! Then again this was a pointless plot point which goes nowhere when the zombies break into the shelter.

Sam meanwhile is so stupid he looks out a door, sees an obvious zombie AND OPENS THE FRICKING DOOR! He thinks it’s Nick’s coked up girlfriend, but 1. It’s obviously not her, 2. Even if it was, from her appearance DON’T LET HER IN! 3. I know you don’t know about the zombie uprising, but did you not think she looked slightly, what’s the word, zombieish? While being attacked by the zombie he slightly raises his voice to call out to Nick (seriously, SHOUT FOR HELP YOU IDIOT!), and he ‘accidently’ drops his phone in the bin. I say ‘accidently’ because he actually scoops it into the bin. I don’t even know how you could do that or why. THEN! Oh yes, it doesn’t end there, he and Nick devise a plan to use duct tape to restrain the zombie. The door is opened and Nick says he has no idea who the zombie is. This apparently made everyone just stand still, as the zombie attacks Nick and Sam just stands there for several minutes before doing anything.

But wait! There’s MORE! After defeating the zombie, Sam and Nick discuss what to do. Nick wants to call the police, but Sam stops him, throwing Nick’s phone into the bin as well (again?!), thinking that Social Services will take his (and Jenny’s) daughter away because the dead person is ‘on drugs’. Yes, because self-defence when someone is trying to kill you isn’t a viable excuse in this situation! Then, when Nick is suggesting ways of disposing the body, Sam says they should call the police. So why did you stop Nick from calling the police?!

 

But at least they have some redemption Sam sacrifices himself to save Nick and Jenny herself is later bitten herself, cruelly when she finally finds her daughter. Jenny decides to stay outside the quarantine zone and asks Hayes to shoot her. It’s actually a pretty emotional scene, but it’s instantly ruined when Nick finds he has been bitten as well, AND HIDES IT! And while you think the film would end here, it doesn’t. It shows how Nick screwed everyone by showing that, as a result, EVERYONE WAS KILLED! No-one survived, not Hayes, not Sam and Jenny’s daughter, NO-ONE! Well done for killing everyone you dick!

Granted the aftermath does actually bring up a pretty cool image. Amongst the carnage, we see the stuffed bunny which Jenny had been carrying around for her daughter the whole film. It’s slightly covered in blood, but is relatively clean. This object lying in the middle of a bloodbath, it shows the innocence lost in this crisis, but is also a stark contrast to the carnage surrounding it.

But thinking about all the stupid things in this film makes my brain hurt, and believe me there’s a lot more. Now, the zombies themselves were just stupid. Some ran while others staggered, they somehow managed to break through shatterproof glass, and the time it takes to change into a zombie drastically changes; at first it’s immediate then it’s a few hours. And don’t get me started on the stupid grinning zombie which tries to attack Jenny in the supermarket. At least they don’t sleep or roar like a T-Rex. Though they do a random shot at the end of the end credits to show a zombie crawling round a corner in a corridor, which the film fast-forward at one point, which I guess showed that there were still zombies around? Even though it was plainly obvious before? And just in case you forget there’s zombies in this, we see about five hundred shots of them outside the shelter.

And where were the two people from the cover? They looked interesting!

Everything else was just awful. The acting was bland, the dialogue was terrible, it does a ‘Birdemic’ where it lingers on shots after the scene has finished, everything was just horrendous. It’s worth watching with mates when getting drunk, but I watched it on my own without any alcohol. And I got a migraine from this.

Apocalypse of the Dead (2009)

Oh my God. That’s basically all I can say about this film. Okay, I understand I need to go into further detail for this review, so here goes.

Released in its home country Serbia as ‘Zone of the Dead’ and in the UK and Ireland as ‘Apocalypse of the Dead’, we follow Agent Mina Milius, played by Kristina Klebe, on her first assignment, escorting dangerous prisoner, literally called prisoner and played by Emilio Roso, whilst being supervised by Agent Mortimer Reyes, played by Ken Foree of ‘Dawn of the Dead’ fame, and Agent I will be killed off soon, played by Miodrag Krstovic. Elsewhere though a train carrying a tanker of goodness knows what enters a station, where some soldiers (part of a military exercise) are being jerks and thinking they’re above the law. A guard on the tanker is shot and chemicals are released, turning all but a professor, played by Steve Agnew, into zombies.

Now, to start off with this film has some of the worst dubbing I have ever seen. The voiceovers don’t even sound realistic, let alone match the mouth movements. There were even points when people weren’t even opening their mouths, yet the voices continued. What was wrong movie? You didn’t think subtitles were a good idea? The audience can read! We can handle it! It would certainly have been better than the horrendous dubbing.

Second, the acting was God awful as well. Ken Foree was the only strong actor in this, but even then at times it’s like he said “Screw this,”. Kristina Klebe was just terrible, she couldn’t deliver a line with a shred of dignity, and she had the same vacant expression on her face throughout the whole film. Emilio Roso was okay with his facial expressions, but that’s the range of his acting talent. Everyone else meanwhile was just bland; it would appear they had decent, interesting characters, but the people playing them had the acting range of a brick wall.

Bizarrely despite this, Steve Agnew was actually pretty decent. He still had the problems the others had, but I actually still liked him. He was the only character who truly reacted with fear to whatever was going on, and he had a pretty emotional scene later in the film. It followed something stupid, but it still tugged at the heart.

We also have a group of three friends, there’s Jan, played by Marko Janjic, a wannabe journalist and a professional jerk. He tries to comes off as the sympathetic character, but we can’t like him when he was, at one point, more concerned about his camera than anything else. There’s a scene where he goes to prepare a boat so that they can escape, but he takes off in it, even leaving his friend behind! What a douche! But don’t worry, he dies in a post-credits scene. The other two, two girls, well, one is Yovana, and I’m guessing here because the one time I actually hear her name it’s barely distinguishable. Guess what? She’s a moron! She hardly does anything and when she does do something, it’s something stupid like removing the barricade holding the zombies back! I swear she looked high most of the time:

“I knew I shouldn’t have taken those mushrooms,”

Oh, it’s because she was.

The final girl is...I don’t know, I didn’t hear her name. I’m dead serious. I have no idea what her character name is and, therefore, have no idea who the actress is. She wasn’t the only one though, I had to quickly go through the film again just to get Yovana and Jan’s names. That’s one of the major problems with this film; how can I care about these characters, if I can’t even get their names?

And one other person whose name was not mentioned was Armageddon, played by Vukota Brajovic. Yes, his name is Armageddon. At least I think his name is, as mentioned I didn’t hear his name and only got this from IMDB. My God was he terrible. He apparently lived at a nunnery, where they taught him all he needed to take on the zombie Apocalypse. Seriously! He asks a zombie-turning-nun if the “prophecy” was coming true! The only part of his acting I can comment on is his vacant expression about 95% of the time and his smirk the remaining 5%. I can’t comment on anything else because he was the recipient of the worst dubbing in the entire film! And I’m pretty sure he was suppose to be the same guy on the front of the box, the only problem is it isn’t! It would have made sense if he played an antagonist, but he just plays some random mild religious fanatic who pops up to save other characters whenever they need help.

But that isn’t the extent of this films stupidity! Oh God no! Prisoner does a random slow motion leap to shoot at zombies (which are obstructed by a barrier) which was effectively pointless, Armageddon appears to have an endless supply of every single weapon imaginable, and this ‘military exercise’ is a plot point used to explain why nothing works! “Your mobile won’t work because of the military exercise, but the landline might work. The trains aren’t stopping because of the military exercise. You car broke down because of the military exercise,”, and we aren’t even told what the military exercise is for! I think it was a cover-up so that the train carrying the chemicals can go through, I kinda lost attention at one point. And zombies roaring and sleeping. SLEEPING!

And we have the most pointless characters to ever appear on screen, the President, played by Nenard Ciric, his secretary, played by Maria Kawecka, and I think it was the Chief of Bureau, played by Eugeni Roig. How pointless are they? They have no impact on the plot whatsoever! The President and Chief guy may be responsible for the chemical train (again, I wasn’t really paying attention, I had fallen into a mini-coma at this point), but apart from that they were meaningless. At least Ciric was actually pretty decent in his role, I’ll admit that, but Kawecka sounded like she was reading her lines off-camera...badly, and Roig was forgettable.

Prisoner also seems to know everything to do with the zombies; how to kill them, how they infect one another. And why? “Instinct,”. Bullshit! It is later revealed that the zombie infection had happened before when he was a kid, which resulted in his father’s death, but it still left the viewer with a very long time to be angry. And where did this happen before? Chernobyl. That’s right, Chernobyl. And you remember that real life nuclear incident that rendered Chernobyl a wasteland, killed thousands of people and caused a radioactive dust cloud to drift over Europe? Yeah, that was a cover-up to hide the zombie infection......ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

In its defence, it did pretty good on such a low budget, the finale was pretty fun and I did enjoy the references to ‘Dawn of the Dead’, like Foree saying that a mall would be too hard to secure and that the zombies will get in eventually. But overall it was a complete mess. Horrible dialogue, terrible acting with the exception of the legendary Ken Foree, mediocre effects and a stupid plot line makes this one awful film.

And a character called Armageddon? What a stupid name for a character! Boy, a character called Armageddon in ‘Apocalypse of the Dead’. Can you imagine a film called ‘Armageddon of the Dead’?

 

Screw you movie!