The Dead

Starring: Rob Freeman, Prince David Oseia

Synopsis:

The very near future.

The last evacuation flight out of war torn Africa crashes off the coast, and American Air Force Engineer Lt Brian Murphy (Rob Freeman) emerges as the sole survivor in a land where the dead are returning to life and attacking the living.

On the run in a hostile and inhospitable parched landscape, where sudden death lurks around every sun-burnished corner, Murphy has to use his wits and ingenuity if he is to get home alive to his family.

When Murphy’s path clashes with that of Sgt Daniel Dembele (Prince David Osei), whose village has been torn apart by the reanimated dead and now desperately searches for his son, they reluctantly join forces.

Two desperate men from two very different cultures fighting together side by side to survive across the incredible vistas of Africa, as the world succumbs to the deadliest of viruses.

If you only like high speed zombies that rival marathon runners for energy and the ability to sprint to capture their prey, you might not want to read any further.

If you’ve continued to read, then you’re either just curious or have a love for zombie movies that have depth and slow shambling creatures.

The Dead begins with Lt Brian Murphy (played by Rob Freeman) walking across a desert plain, dressed like Mad Max at the beginning of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. He appears to inwardly curse as he hears and then sees a zombie stumbling across the sandy terrain. This zombie moves very slowly, not least because one of its legs is clearly broken. We can hear the grating of bone on bone as the creature walks. Murphy contemplates blowing the head off the zombie and the movie flashes back to how he got to this point. The methodical pacing of this scene illustrates the pacing of the entire movie; it’s slow, tense and contemplative. There is a repetition to the movie that works for it rather than against it, as we’re reminded that one should never assume that even only one zombie won’t be sneaking up on you or appear with any warning. A great example is when Murphy attempts to get some sleep amongst a tree’s branches and a lone zombie shuffles on below.

The Dead is full of atmosphere. The filmmakers make no apologies for the slow pacing of the movie; it’s intentional and a welcome break from the ADD style that Hollywood is currently going through with no sign of a let up. That’s not to say that there isn’t any action scenes in it but they are abrupt and seemingly over quite quickly.

The Dead is a love letter to those zombie films that stood out amongst the crowd – good and bad. Like Romero’s original trilogy of Night, Dawn and Day, the movie is bleak. Death permeates every single frame, from the harsh terrain and environment to the weapons that the soldiers carry, and the hungry corpses that plague the land. The sound of the zombies seems almost disembodied, like the sound in Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue, the effect is quite creepy.

This film is an original take on the zombie genre but contains a number of interesting reminders of what I could call “The Golden Age” of the zombie genre; the Italian splatter years (1970-1980). The Ford brothers went for the recently dead look, that Romero’s Dawn of the Dead favoured; like Dawn, that’s not to say that the dead don’t have some elaborate damage, but overall, the make-up is restricted to contacts and a pale pallor. Scenes where only a few of the dead are trailing the protagonists reminded me of the creatures in Zombie Flesh Eaters (particularly, a shot of zombies wandering the desolate village in Matoul). The distinct atmosphere of desolation fills the screen in The Dead and some of the village scenes call to mind African Mondo movies from the 60s and Zombie Creeping Flesh. The opening scene set in a desert location called to mind Dawn of the Mummy.

None of that list makes The Dead derivative. There really hasn’t been a movie quite like this because of the very nature of the movie and where it was filmed. Normally, the siege movies in the zombie genre tend to be restricted to a few locations and are fairly static, with the antagonists constantly threatening and picking off the survivors. In The Dead, most of the events take place in daylight and in open ground. For this reason, The Dead is somewhat creepier and as realistic as a zombie movie can get. The acting is, on the whole, very good. Rob Freeman comes across as a battle weary, grizzled individual that has one sole purpose; to get back to his family. Prince David Osei brings more heart to the movie and generates just a little more sympathy to his plight.

The film builds slowly and inexorably to an inevitable and predictable finale, but I feel that zombie film fans would have felt cheated had the movie ended in any other way.

Summary:

The Dead is one of the most uniquely interesting zombie movies to come about for some time. It has a wonderful air of familiarity about it whilst seeming totally original. It has an understated depth to it as we witness the plight of the African villagers. There is an allegorical content that appears to reflect the West’s inability to help African nations, either using military intervention or through major charities battling with the effects of famine. The movie inspires this kind of intellectual input from the viewer; Of course, you could just watch it as a tense, scary horror flick.

Judging from what I’ve seen of the upcoming adaptation of World War Z, the Ford brothers would have done a far superior job of bringing that book to the screen. The Dead, in fact, could well have been one of the opening chapters.

9 out of 10 (Wayfarer)

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