UNDEAD

Berkeley is a picturesque and tranquil fishing town at the heart of Australia. One day, strange rocky fragments begin to fall from the sky, causing the death of some citizens; soon after, the sky clouds over and an incessant corrosive rain pours down on the city. From that moment on, the people who died as a result of the falling rocks begin to resurrect, hungry for human flesh. A new beauty queen, a strange fisherman, a couple where she is pregnant, and two bumbling local police officers will find themselves surviving and trying to fend off the threat of the undead. Recent Australian cinema seems to be discovering horror films. Alongside the successful survival horror "Wolf Creek," in 2005 in Italy we were able to enjoy another horror film made in Australia, a horror film definitely of a different "genre" compared to the serious and pessimistic "Wolf Creek" by Greg McLean. "Undead" is a playful, entertaining, and exaggerated zombie movie that shamelessly mixes the undead with 1980s science fiction, seasoning it all with Western-style characters, John Woo-style action sequences, and demented ideas worthy of Peter Jackson's early work. The characters in "Undead" are divided into two distinct categories: the realistic and the over-the-top. Three of the main characters are definitely realistic: the protagonist, Rene (played convincingly by Felicity Mason), is the new queen of the Fishermen's Festival, beautiful and intelligent, burdened with responsibilities and not proud of her beauty pageant victory; Wayne (Rob Jenkins) is a selfish, somewhat slimy guy whose only interest is saving his own skin; Sally is Wayne's girlfriend, eight months pregnant, the moral loser of the beauty pageant because she couldn't participate due to her pregnancy, and she harbors an innate antipathy toward Rene. On the other hand, we have three other intentionally over-the-top characters, representing a stereotype taken to extremes: Marion (Mungo McKay) is a solitary fisherman, considered crazy by the inhabitants of Berkeley for his stories about alien abductions; an expert in weapons and trained in survival techniques, he believes he has a divine mission. Harrison (Dirk Hunter) is the local police chief, an arrogant, verbose, and very vulgar little man who acts like a leader to mask his fear; Molly (Emma Randall) has just been recruited into the police, suffers from asthma, lacks a strong personality, and suffers from an obvious inferiority complex. The two groups of characters find themselves interacting, highlighting both the most purely characteristic aspect of horror films and the most characteristic aspect of slapstick comedy, perhaps granting excessive mythologizing to the character of Marion (probably the name is a reference to John Wayne, since Marion was his first name), the true icon of the film. But the merit of the Spierig brothers, who direct, write, and produce the film, lies undoubtedly in their ability to make the film's numerous tones coexist in a completely natural way, creating entertainment that is surely of great impact for the horror lover. The makeup of the zombies is really convincing and the splatter effects abound (the scene of the zombies sliced by a circular blade and the one of the zombie flayed by a shovel stuck in the skull are anthology pieces!), and even the touch of science fiction, with aliens, in the second part, is inserted in a completely natural way, adding a touch of originality to what was shaping up to be the typical zombie story. Perhaps some criticism can be directed at the choice of actors, not always perfectly capable of adequately characterizing their characters as was intended on paper, and the soundtrack is a bit monotonous. In conclusion, "Undead" is definitely a successful film, a low-budget entertaining and entertaining film that will not fail to be appreciated by lovers of 1980s horror, a bit excessive and with splatter tones. It undoubtedly deserves half a point more.