Tag Archives: zombie

Movie, Review, Zombies

The Girl With All The Gifts (2016)

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The Girl With All The Gifts immediately
makes the viewer begin to ask questions…

The Girl With All The Gifts
If you found this movie poster disturbing, it’s supposed to be

A 10 year-old girl wakes in the cell of a seemingly military controlled facility, possibly underground.  She rises from her bunk, dresses in a set of faded red sweats, then voluntarily sits in a wheelchair.  Moments after two soldiers enter her cell at gunpoint to strap her arms, legs, and head to the chair, followed by rolling her in to a classroom with similarly secure children.

As class begins you find that all of these kids are very intelligent … and seemingly happy … but soon you find out why these children are so closely controlled. In a post-apocalyptic dystopian future, society has broken down after a fungal disease has infected and all but destroyed humankind.  This mysterious fungus turns its victims into flesh-eating “hungries” – fast moving, mindless, and ravenous zombies.  They are capable of running over long distances, and quickly transferring the infection through their bites.

Let's roll!
I don’t know about you but being strapped to a chair  could have helped me to get through some of my college classes…
RadioTimes.com said that The Girl With All The Gifts is “The best zombie movie since 28 Days Later”
… and BagpiperDon is inclined to agree!

The bar for zombie films
Has Been RAISED.

You know when you hear an album that’s so good you play it twice in a row?  Have you ever had that with a movie?
That was this film for me — I watched it back to back!

Sennia Nanua and Glenn Close
Sennia Nanua and Glenn Close

The Girl With All The Gifts is the most unique and original Z-film I have seen since 28 Days Later and World War Z.  BRILLIANTLY acted by Glenn Close (yes, six time Academy Award-nominated actress Glenn Close is in a zombie film), along with Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine, and staring new-comer Sennia Nanua as Melanie, the little girl.  What is it about Brits and Z-movies – The Girl With All The Gifts is SPECTACULAR!  And if Sennia keeps acting like this … she’s going to go FAR — what a treat to see such a future talent!

act 2
The gang hangin’ out up on the roof

By the way, this was directed by Colm McCarthy, one and the same as Peaky Blinders — unbelievably for £4 million, which is about $5 million.  Filming lasted seven weeks in The West Midlands, taking place in Birmingham city centre, Cannock Chase, Dudley and Stoke-on-Trent.   Aerial views of a deserted London were filmed with drones in the abandoned Ukrainian town of Pripyat, which has been uninhabited since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

book cover
Book cover

The Girl With All The Gifts is rated dark Green Ooze and is one of BagpiperDon’s Favourite Zombie Movies.

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OH YEAH!

I even plowed through the book!

The original science-fiction novel, The Girl With All The Gifts, is by M.R. Carey.  Published in June 2014 by Orbit Books, it based on his 2013 Edgar Award nominated short story “Iphigenia In Aulis“.

And now, every e-thing you want about Pripyat…

Movie, Review, Zombies

The Return of The Living Dead (1985)

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Okay, here’s the crazy thing about The Return of The Living Dead from 1985 . . .

I’d rate it as a Yellow Puss film. While it’s kind of a cruddy film, I’d also have to say that as zombie films go, it’s kind of an important film of the genre.  Crazy, huh?!?

 

So here’s the gist . . .

Fifteen years ago a medical supply warehouse was contracted by the military to store some specialized barrels containing cadavers preserved in an experimental gas.  While two employees are in the basement — a young buck new hire and an old pro — they accidentally release vapors from one of the barrels which reanimates the corpse into a flesh-eating zombie.  After fighting off the zombie, they illicit help cremating the body at the mortuary across the street.  As smoke and ashes are expelled through the chimney, rain begins to fall outside … onto the cemetery … where a group of punk rockers (friends of the warehouse new-hire) are screwing around and killing some time.

From here the film turns into something not often seen in a zombie film….  MANY zombie films have what I call ‘The Journey’ — the human survivors have to get from Point-A to Point-B for one reason or another.  They can survive in the other location, the cure for the outbreak is at Point-B, whatever the reason they have to travel from one place to another usually failing to work together, occasionally being attacked by zombies to move the story along, and the survivor group loses its numbers through attrition. This doesn’t have The Journey.  In place of that, the punks and the professionals retreat into the warehouse and mortuary to try and stave off the attacking zombies.  Instead of a journey story line this film works in a siege setting, where there is B-film corny-ness and constant action.

Without giving anything more away, I’d like to touch on why this film is important…  Simply, it stands as an icon of the genre.  For a budget of $4M it was actually decently made in that it actually still looks pretty good.  I’ve seen The Return of The Living Dead II (1988) recently, and comparatively it was poorly made.  The original also has two of the biggest icons of the Z-film genre…

WHAT — you didn’t think I was going to post a graphic picture did you?!?! That’s a different website — look through your search history…

The Return of The Living Dead quite frankly has The Most Iconic Zombie Film Boobs … or in this case a completely naked dancing woman — delivered by scream queen Linnea Quigley playing a punk rocker girl named Trash dancing naked at the cemetery and selling loads of tickets at the box-office.  DO NOT WATCH THIS FILM WITH YOUR KIDS … or your parents.

Remember that cadaver in the experimental barrel I mentioned above?  The zombie that comes out of it is known within the zombie genera as “Tar Man” and made a distinct play on the zombie desire in saying “BRAINS!”

Okay, now, things I’m not so good with from this film …

The zombies are fast moving — I’m cool with that. The zombies are cognizant, and 90 times out of 10 I’m not cool with that. In this film they can also talk and problem solve …. I’m not just talking about beating their way through doors and windows, I mean they can open doors, apply tools to barricades, it just doesn’t work for me…. But It Could Have…

The ‘How’ part of the zombies being cognizant wasn’t developed. Watching the film, I saw how this could have been done within the story but I’m not going to take the time to propose this about a decades-old film because what’s the point? I have better things to do. Seriously, were I to put that time and thought into this film I’d be no better than the people that claim to be major Star Wars fans and yet spend LOADS of time complaining about how wrong and poorly-done Star Wars is.

The way the film ends it should have created an unstoppable world zombie outbreak. The Part-2 film doesn’t start based off the ending of this film but it does draw from the military chemical barrels — but at least they did bring Tar Man (or another Tar Man) back onto the screen.

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Movie, Review, Zombies

Warm Bodies (2013)

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Green Ooze
(This review is in unfinished note form … deal with it.)

I’ve been aware of a few Z-films out there told from the perspective of a zombie and this was the first I viewed … fortunately it was gentle with me.

The beginning of the film — the opening slacker zombie monologue — had a good/funny commentary on modern life. From the set-up of the film I could see that this flick offered a few new ideas — and I’m pleased when I see that within the zombie-genre.

This is a story of when zombie boy meets, er, doesn’t eat girl. When a teen zombie boy meets a scavenging teen girl his own age and finds himself attracted to her his heart begins to beat again, which starts to bring him back to life.

And these would be boneys

Humans as usual are survivors. There are two generations of zombies — corpses and boneys. Corpses have limited thought & speech capacity, along with all the usual hunger for flesh of the living. Over time corpses degenerate into boneys — absolute thoughtless, hunger-driven creatures comprised of hardly more than bones. If a corpse eats the brains of a human that corpse gains the memories of the person they ate; if they only eat some of their flesh and leave their brains intact that human will become a corpse. Boneys go after anything with a heartbeat. When the main zombie character — a corpse-boy named R — falls in love with a teen human girl, Julie, R’s heart starts to beat again and he starts to return to being human. R’s love begins to cure his zombieness, and this starts a movement with the other corpses. This is a problem as it also makes them a target for the boneys.

This film is fun because it give things everyone can identify with — teen angst & self doubt, judgment & acceptance, the haves & have-nots, overcoming our prejudices, trying new things, and falling in love. Oh, did I mention that this film draws from Romeo and Juliet (note “R & Julie“).

The wall in the film seems to be a symbol, a metaphor — figurative walls between people

I like that in the meeting between this corpse-boy and human girl they build a friendship, familiarity, and in time interest, which suggests the lost romantic practice of courting — in this case because of the distance they must keep, the living/dead barrier between them

The music selection is amusing.  Songs are funny, fitting, and if you’re of the right age group they are nostalgic.

When I turned on this film I had other things to do — I was only going to watch for a few minutes — and while this is not a fantastic big-budget thriller, I found it to be a well-made cute zombie/comedy/action film. As people say “I couldn’t put it down” — I watched it through to the end.

At the end of the film there is a strong statement of social commentary — we need to accept each other, love each other, teach each other, we need to connect with each other.

I am often a non- John Malkovich  fan.  It’s not because of him or his work — I think the problem is that he doesn’t fit in everything he’s in, but the things that he is right for he’s really shown his brilliance.  He’s in Warm Bodies and IMO he’s a good fit in here.  Where I really liked him was RED and RED 2.

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Movie, Review, Zombies

ZA: Zombies Anonymous (2006)

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ZA is a budget Z-flick, but I have to say that whoever made this film knew what they were doing with their iMac and the $20 on-sale digital camera they bought at a liquidator store.  I’m impressed with it enough to rate it Green Ooze.

The concept is well presented through the script and the acting delivers … for a B-film, mind you. The back-story states that for no apparent reason people are no-longer dying, they pass away and then get up and walk away — and now, retaining their human characteristics, they reside within civilization among the living.

Right now I’m only 30 minutes into the film and I’m rather impressed — from the looks of it, the film is really about prejudice among humanity … though the recovery support group aspect is also amusing. Would I tell film fans to make sure they see this flick — no — but Z-film fans who would understand & appreciate it, yeah probably.

By the way, this is also supposed to be a comedy; while there were a few slightly humorous elements, I thought it lacked in this area, but enjoyed the couple of laughs it gave … some of the costume elements were pretty funny too. Oh, and here’s one joke most folks might not catch — around 1hr38m a shotgun that fires 8+ times but likely holds less rounds … that’s funny like in one of the Airplane movies when you see a jet but hear a prop plane, just I don’t think this was intentional.

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Movie, Review, Zombies

Zombie High (1987)

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Zombie High – Yellow Puss – also known as “The School That Ate My Brain“.

No, this is not a flick about junkies turning into zombies — not that with some of them you could tell the difference — this is about kids at a prestigious boarding-school in the 80s.

One-by-one their instructors steal their sleeping students away at night to steal parts of their brains for their own sinister reasons, and then to make up for the loss they’re implanted with a chip. The next morning the students wake up as mindless well disciplined — and well dressed — learning machines starting the first day of their very successful and yuppie lives.

Surprisingly I have not seen gratuitous breasts yet — hey, it is an 80s horror film — but I have seen a number of little known actors in their early days who later went on to be ever so slightly better than little known actors. Watching this I’m half tempted to honor this flick by pulling out those 2 Shaw Safari shirts hanging in the back of my closet that have been waiting to come out for the right retro party. Frankly, maybe something that would have turned us more mindless like this back in the 80s would have been better, helping us to chill out instead of wearing all that obnoxious crap we used to wear and listen to that music, 1/2 of which was worse than our hair-doos.

If you’re a zombie fan, watch this film; if you’re a retro fan, watch this film; if you don’t have anything better to do, find something other than this film. Oddly, there’s another high-school flick where the students are being turned into some sort of learning zombies which is what I thought I started …. this is not the zombie film I was looking for, but they were the droids I was looking for.

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Movie, Review, Zombies

Zombies of Mass Destruction (2009)

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Yellow Puss nearing light-Green Ooze

This was a fun film to watch, in fact I viewed it with my parents — my dad didn’t seem to say much but my mom was amused, and we got a kick out of watching it together … so if you’re looking for a Z-film to watch with your mom, this just might be the one!

I believe this was the other zombie film that was being shot in Washington State while I was a part of the making of The Book Of Zombie — the difference being that this B-film actually had some money behind it while the one I was a part of had only scrapings.

I had a laugh in that they kept referring to their location as “the island of Port Gamble” — Port Gamble is in Washington State, but not an island. This film was humorous but without being forced and makes social commentary in similar vein as some of the George A. Romaro films.

Would I recommend it, heck yes — I’ve seen better, I’ve also seen a LOT worse — it was fun!

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Movie, Review, Zombies

Zombie Town (2007)

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The viewing of this Z-film is best left to die-hard zombie fans — I rate it Yellow Puss.

My impression is that this B-film was financially backed by … well, possibly little more than everyone who was directly involved, made in peoples’ spare-time, assembled on an iMac, and acted by people who both wanted to be in this film and others that just agreed to fill bit-parts. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing — this is how the budget Z-film I was an extra in was made — it’s just that I think many viewers would realize that this is how some films (albums, books, etc) are made.

Zombie Town is chocked full of small-town red-necks, bad dialogue and often poor line delivery, and an unnecessary excess of swearing. I was amused to see something more or less new to me in a zombie film — the zombies live for a limited amount of time (24hrs?) and then die, with fanged slug parasites pushing out of the body seeking a new host, however those parasites die when they come into contact with salt … which is kind of like that 80s film where a bunch of university students get over-run by giant leaches from a pod that was carried aboard an alien space-craft … and I don’t know about you, but weird things like that happen to me all the time. Oh, and apparently the zombies can die from salt too — I’m going to have to watch the other 1/2 now.

DUDE — attack of killer zombie grandmothers from bingo!!!

Zombie Town at IMDB

Movie, Review, Zombies

Zombie Wars (2007)

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I rate Zombie Wars as Yellow Puss

This Z-film was a B-film — in fact I fairly well got the impression that when it came to funding and production that these folks were only a little more connected than the folks I worked with who were doing The Book Of Zombie.

I would not recommend that anyone break their neck to see this flick — the acting and action was better than garbage, the writing was debatably better … or maybe worse. I did appreciate that this film showed me something new and different (and no journey) — the zombies in the film have developed a certain amount (albeit low-level) of awareness/communication/leadership. With this they have organized, and without giving too much away, they have captured and been breeding humans for food.

If you want a so-bad-it’s-good film to laugh at, this just may be the flick for you.

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Movie, Review, Zombies

The Book Of Zombie (2010)

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What happens when a small, sleepy Utah town gets an undead wake-up call when all of the townspeople of Mormon faith suddenly transform into flesh-eating zombies?  A group of nonbelievers, unaffected by the mysterious epidemic, band together to survive the night and answer the burning question: “How do you kill a Mormon zombie?”

I have not only seen this film … I acted in it!

YES — I was an extra in The Book Of Zombie on two nights of shooting! The second night was early in the film during the initial outbreak. On the first night we appeared to be shooting the final horde attack on the town; I was one of the three zombies standing behind (one of?) the main zombies as he got killed, so I’m visible in the film. I should be visible with a wound appliance just above my forehead. I’ve been told that my name is listed in the credits as one of the extras.

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That was the trailer — here’s the full movie!

Movie, Review, Zombies

Zombies Zombies Zombies (2008)

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“Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!” … I rate this film Yellow Puss.  By the way, it’s also known as “Strippers vs Zombies” … which is not to be confused with the 2012 film “Zombies Vs. Strippers“.

Zombie strippers, hookers, pimps, and johns … wait, read on … this film isn’t as bad as it sounds. Low budget, but not poorly done. I get the impression that this is another one of those films some friends wrote, produced, directed, and acted in — which usually results in garbage — but this was pretty well done. Is it all that good of a film? Ehh …no. Ask yourself though — are you like me — when you read the title you hear an echo in your head of “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!”? Seriously … that just might be more disturbing than this film.

Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! IMDB, Wikipedia, and probably most important of all in respects to this film RottenTomatoes

Oh, and here’s the film’s Official Website