UNDEAD

Australia, 2003, 97 minutes, Colour.
Felicity Mason, Mungo Mc Kay, Rob Jenkins, Lisa Cunningham, Dirk Hunter, Emma Randall.
Directed by The Spierig Brothers.

This is the kind of horror film that is very popular at horror festivals or at midnight screenings.

There is an apocalyptic tone about the narrative, invasion of aliens, taking over human beings and turning them into the living dead, the usual look for zombies in this kind of film, although it was made in 2003, a bit before the trend (or craze) for zombie films.

This is an Australian film and the main town that is attacked by the zombies is Berkeley in Queensland. There is something of a back story for some of the characters involved in the zombie invasion, Rene, a young woman who has financial difficulties as regards her family and property, who had won the beauty competition in the area, with some rivalry from another woman who lives in the town. There are the police, especially an ultra-gung-ho officer forever asserting his authority. There is his female companion, new to police work. And then there are a couple, she pregnant and he looking after her.

Mysterious things happen on the road. Cars crash. A mysterious stranger who seems to have some knowledge of what is going on takes the refugees into his home. While the group is terrified, there are tensions amongst themselves. Of all things, the mysterious man, a fisherman, has steps going down below his house, which seems in the middle of nowhere. And the house leads to a basement with all kinds of electronic equipment.

There are flashbacks about his story, his fishing, the aliens, his having some kind of mission in the zombie takeover.

Lots of zombie sequences, lots of attacks on house, within the house, the road, then in the town itself.

When the mysterious man succumbs to some kind of fate, he hands on the tradition of being something of the ambassador/mediator for the aliens to the woman, something she is reluctant to take on.

The main reason for reviewing this film is that it is the first feature from The Spierig Brothers, Michael and Peter, originally from Germany, who settled in Australia and made some short films, this small-budget aliens/zombie film but then went on to quite significant films: a much better living dead film, Daybreakers; something of a masterpiece of time travel and gender-bending, Predestination; a contribution to the Saw franchise, Jigsaw; and the ghostly drama with Helen Mirren, Winchester.