Posts Tagged ‘Zombie’

28 Years Later (2025)

Dir: Danny Boyle | Wri: Alex Garland | UK Thriller 131′

So 28 Years Later – the follow-up to Danny Boyle’s 2002 classic 28 Days Later – has finally arrived – and what a cruel disappointment, with its weak script by Alex Garland. Apocalyptic Zombie movie meets folkloric horror with a heart is the best description. I found it morbd, misanthropic and messy. But then my favourite Boyle is still Shallow Grave.

You’d be forgiven for thinking the opening scene of this latest affair is actually a disturbing trailer for a horror version of Teletubbies, but 28 Years Later eventually gets going to establish a parallel universe where on one hand zombies infected with the ‘anger’ virus have colonised England, and on the other, their disease-free counterparts – a bow and arrow-toting community – have retreated to a ‘Holy’ island across a causeway from the mainland, accessible at low tide. The only way for these healthy individuals to exterminate the virus-bearing ghouls (who are covered in guts and gore) is with an arrow through the neck; should they chose to visit the green and pleasant land. And that’s what Spike does in order to take his sick mother Isla to find a good doctor.

Alfie Williams is the highlight as the kind-hearted, humanistic little boy Spike, a one dimensional Aaron Taylor Johnson plays his philandering father Jamie and his mother Isla, is Jodie Comer in a difficult role as a maudlin cancer sufferer, and she does her best.

There are some stunning set pieces picturing England at its most verdant and resplendent, interwoven with montage footage from Lawrence Olivier’s Henry V cutting to World War soldiers marching through fields to a rhythmic dystopian soundscape with a repetitive refrain of ‘Boots’ (not the chemist) along with a few surprises on the visual front where DoP Anthony Dod Mantle gets creative with his camerawork.

On a hopeful note there are some lighter sequences with positive vibes featuring the comforting visionary Dr Kelson – Ralph Fiennes all covered in blood red iodine to protect him from the virus – but despite bringing it all alive with his superlative chops, he infects the hope with a touch of doom and a ‘memento mori’ skull mountain, reminding us that everyone is going to die: Well maybe not just yet, but this is a film that certainly left me feeling rather depressed and despondent. If there’s a deeper message here it was lost in all the crour and carnage and the reminder that Britain is really sinking deeper into the mire. @MeredithTaylor

IN UK CINEMAS FROM 20 JUNE 2025 | Nia DaCosta’s 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple January 2026 will complete the trilogy

 

Miss Zombie (2013)

Dir: SABU | Japan, Horror 85′

In Hammer’s The Plague of the Zombies (1966) the local squire was resuscitating recently deceased Cornish villagers in 1860 to work in his tin mine, while the American writer William Seabrook claimed to have watched zombies in the late 20’s working on plantations in Haiti.

George Romero later parodied contemporary society in his Living Dead trilogy, so it was only a matter of time – on screen at least – before 21st Century zombie farmers would eventually be supplying zombies (complete with instruction manuals) to do household chores for the affluent.

Shot for the most part in grungy black & black minus the breathless pace that characterised SABU’s earlier thrillers, Miss Zombie – SABU’s first horror film – is pretty evidently an allegory of the developed world’s increasingly insatiable appetite for cheap imported labour, and the bullying and exploitation – including sexual – that goes with it. When Shara starts collecting knives we seem to be entering Jimmie Blacksmith territory and order eventually breaks down with consequences that should be sufficiently bloody to satisfy the gorehounds in the audience. @Richard Chatten

 

The Dead Don’t Die (2019) ***

Dir: Jim Jarmusch | Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray | 103′ US Fantasy Horror

The peaceful town of Centreville finds itself up against it when the (un) dead start rising from their graves in Jim Jarmusch’s first zombie escapade.

THE DEAD DON’T DIE sees most of the starry cast ripped apart or thoroughly the worst for wear by the time we get Sturgill Simpson’s catchy title tune on the brain for the journey home. But this audience pleaser will certainly go down in history with the best of them – but my money’s still on Shaun of the Dead for sheer deadpan weirdness of the cult classic kind.

The police are the first to notice untoward goings on. Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver) and Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) are alerted to local power cuts and watches going awry in sleepy Centreville. And Jarmusch brings the same deadpan humour to bear as did Edgar Wright, the dead coming alive in the eerie torpor that many claim is due to climate change.

The town’s cop trio is made up by token female Mindy Morrison (Chloe Sevigny), and Danny Glover’s Hank Thompson is the token black resident who makes it possible for Buscemi’s Farmer Miller to add the requisite element of racial abuse. Other denizens include Zelda Winston (Tilda Swinton), who gets to flex her Scottish credentials with a hefty samurai sword. The younger generation are there in the shape of Caleb Landry Jones, Selena Gomez, Austin Butler and Luka Sabbat who roam around their numbers gradually multiplying as the story staggers on. Then there’s a classic village loner (Tom Waits) who seems to go under the zombies’ radar, perhaps because he’s so like them.

But a wry nonchalant bonhomie permeates this dozy undead drama and maybe Jarmusch is alluding here to the dumbed-down society we live in nowadays – their unaware, don’t care attitude is the most darkly worrying aspect. Crafty old Jarmusch is using his zombie outing as a wrapper to satirise all our current ills. Even the authorities seem brain dead with Tilda giving the only sparky thrill to the piece as the slightly unhinged oddball. MT

NOW ON GENERAL RELEASE

The Dead Don’t Die (2019) Cannes 2019 ****

Dir: Jim Jarmusch | Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray | 103′ US Fantasy Horror

The peaceful town of Centreville finds itself up against it when the (un) dead start rising from their graves in Jim Jarmusch’s first zombie escapade.

THE DEAD DON’T DIE is the first festival opener to also vie for the Palme d’Or in the main competition this year at Cannes. Jarmusch has won all sorts of awards in previous editions – The Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award (Broken Flowers); Best Artistic Contribution (Mystery Train); The Golden Camera (Stranger than Paradise); and Coffee and Cigarettes III was awarded the Best Short film in 1993 , but he’s never actually taken home the top prize. And it’s possible he will with this flip but fun affair with its slim but subtle undercurrents.

Most of the starry cast are ripped apart and end up thoroughly the worst for wear by the time we get Sturgill Simpson’s catchy title tune on the brain for the journey home. But this audience pleaser will certainly go down in history with the best of them – but my money’s still on Shaun of the Dead for sheer deadpan weirdness of the cult classic kind.

The police are the first to notice untoward goings on. Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver) and Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) are alerted to local power cuts and watches going awry in sleepy Centreville. And Jarmusch brings the same deadpan humour to bear as did Edgar Wright, the dead coming alive in the eerie torpor that many claim is due to climate change.

The town’s cop trio is made up by token female Mindy Morrison (Chloe Sevigny), and Danny Glover’s Hank Thompson is the token black resident who makes it possible for Buscemi’s Farmer Miller to add the requisite element of racial abuse. Other denizens include Zelda Winston (Tilda Swinton), who gets to flex her Scottish credentials with a hefty samurai sword. The younger generation are there in the shape of Caleb Landry Jones, Selena Gomez, Austin Butler and Luka Sabbat who roam around their numbers gradually multiplying as the story staggers on. Then there’s a classic village loner (Tom Waits) who seems to go under the zombies’ radar, perhaps because he’s so like them.

But a wry nonchalant bonhomie permeates this dozy undead drama and maybe Jarmusch is alluding here to the dumbed-down society we live in nowadays – their unaware, don’t care attitude is the most darkly worrying aspect. Crafty old Jarmusch is using his zombie outing as a wrapper to satirise all our current ills. Even the authorities seem brain dead with Tilda giving the only sparky thrill to the piece as the slightly unhinged oddball. MT

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 14-25 May 2019 | IN COMPETITION

Overlord (2018) **

Dir.: Julius Avery; Cast: Jovan Adepo. Wyatt Russell, Mathilde Ollivier, Pilou Asbœk; USA 2018, 109 min.

Britain won the war? Not according to OVERLORD. Julius Avery (Son of a Gun) and his writers Billy Ray and Mark Smith transform the 1944 Normandy landings into a Zombie action saga where the Americans save the world (so what’s new?) and fulfilling a clear demand for full-on confrontation in our increasingly divided society.

The first ten minutes are the best: shades of Saving Private Ryan, this time played out on board an airplane re-enact the brutality of the invasion and its countless victims. After the survivors land with their parachutes, they make their way to a small French village. Here the Nazis have fortified a church, and installed a transmitter in the tower. The Americans have to blow it up. Taking shelter with Cloe (Ollivier) in a small house, the Yankees have to listen to SS office Wafner (Asbœk), who blackmails Cloe to sleep with him – or else he’ll take her little brother with meet to same treatment as her disfigured aunt. Corporal Ford (Russell) and his men storm down from the attic, taking Wafner prisoner, before he can realise his threat. Meanwhile Private Boyce (Adepo), an Afro-American softie, discovers the Nazis are experimenting with the local population, turning them into Zombies in their quest to create a re-animation serum in a bizarre historical re-write. Apart from the historical faux-pas (American troops were strictly segregated in WWII), Overlord’s second rate video-game of makes the Normandy landings just an excuse: This is a cheap horror fest and even the decent production values cannot save it. AS

ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM Wednesday 7th November 2018

           

Copyright © 2025 Filmuforia