1

So, this was pretty unexpectedly amazing. I hadn’t heard anything about this until it turned up on the internet - apparently the makers have been sitting on this for a couple of years now trying to get distribution sorted and prevent it being pirated - so that obviously worked. Anyhow, if you can see it, do so - this is the best zombie movie in years, and a good contender for best zombie movie of all time.

I don’t really want to colour people’s expectations going in too much - but it’s amazing what good lead actors, a competent script, an original location, great cinematography, and a dedication to showing rather than telling can do for a movie.

2

Too late, jerk! Where can I see this?

3

It’s been out in the UK for a few weeks and it will be out in october in the US.

Ed - also - this movie has possibly the spoilingest trailer of all time, so you might not want to watch that.

4

All right, I guess I can wait until October.

5

Wait, this isn’t a Jerry Garcia biopic?

6

October 28th for Atlanta? /shakes fist

U.S. release dates and cities.

7

Slow zombies, lots of gore, survival focused story, decent actors, good script, fantastic ending. Other than a few slow bits at the end, there is really nothing to find fault with. At the very least, it is the best zombie movie since 28 days later.

8

Wait, this isn’t another adaptation of the James Joyce short story?

9

It’s a deeply racist movie, insofar as it depicts Africans as tearing each other apart (literally) while the Western White Man gets to heroically persevere.

This is how many westerners view the African continent and their own role as (according to them) helpful outsiders.

Zombie mythology is about the special few (the chosen ones) defending themselves against the subhuman masses. It parallels the movie 300, as well as the many action hero movies of the 1980s such as Commando where one White Man murders hundreds or thousands in the name of justice (or self-defense). One wonders how someone can travel 4000 miles from his home and then claim to be defending himself.

Zombie mythology allows for mass murder without conscience getting in the way.

The parallels to typical role-playing games abound, where amazingly just about every living creature in the world other than the small band of special people are monsters while the special people are doing the world a great favor by exterminating them.

When one examines the outcome of all of these zombie movies, these role-playing games, these action-hero movies, one finds a depopulated world, largely due to the actions of the “hero” himself. Rather than look in the mirror the “hero” congratulates himself on how awesome he is and laments everything he had to do in the name of justice and self-defense.

Such a sad world, he thinks. I just did what had to be done. Now the world is empty, except for me. It’s a good thing I’m so awesome, I can rebuild the world from scratch.

10

Wow. You must have watched a vastly different movie than I did. I just thought it was an AIDS metaphor, where death was always lurking around, often just a few dozen yards away, shambling in slowly, but not necessarily killing you until right at the end, and everyone outside of Africa had pretty much given up hope on a solution within a third world country in the interests of what could very well be an ultimately untenable quarantine situation.

Either way, it’s a pretty good flick, but I like my version better. It has a lot less baggage.

11

Brian, what did you think of the script giving the white man a little handgun, and the black man a big rifle?

12

I don’t think it’s possible to make an african zombie movie with a white lead and not take on a giant amount of subtext with it, even if they’d never mentioned this in any line of dialogue. It’s not a particularly moralising movie and the two leads talk about it about as much as you might expect a militiaman and an exhausted, plane crash surviving mechanic to do so. Murphy is basically good at fixing machines and walking and not much else, and Daniel isn’t particularly magical.

A lot of what makes it a good movie is as much about the directions they don’t take it as what they actually do with it, though - just the extent to which they manage to shoot the movie and not fuck it up is pretty remarkable, I think. Just keeping on rolling without trying to clobber you with The Message through dialogue is just another one of those instances.

13

Some Spoilers Follow

Consider this: the movie doesn’t explain the precise nature of zombiedom, other than it’s transmitted through bites. A reasonable guess is that it’s a disease of some sort which affects the body and brain and is present in the bloodstream. Therefore a cure can be developed for it.

Neither lead character in the movie knows how far the contagion has spread. They also know very little about the disease itself. For all they know, the disease is even temporary, like cocaine in the system.

Rather than take the human approach of considering these people potentially curable, their sole reason for not shooting them is “wasting ammo”. A dead zombie doesn’t even get the dignity of having been a worthy place to fill with lead. And of course in order to defend themselves they will kill 1, 10, 100, 1000, or however many it takes to keep themselves non-zombie. If they keep coming they will potentially kill ALL of them without hesitating for a moment.

A version of The Dead 2 I wouldn’t mind seeing would feature African doctors travelling across the country administering the cure and finding a bunch of shot-up hacked-apart zombie corpses who can obviously no longer be cured.

The doctors get a disgusted and angry glint in their eyes: “Zombies don’t shoot. Zombies don’t use machetes”.

The rest of the movie is about finding the perpetrators and bringing them to justice, which in practice means African militias as well as white “heroes” like Brian Murphy, as well as whatever forces initiated this disease in the first place.

But we all know that movie won’t happen. We all know why.

Once we render a human subhuman there is no end to the terrible pit of actions which become justified to the perpetrator. We kill 3000 “monsters” in an RPG and feel no remorse whatsoever. The more cruel of us feel elation. A job well done.

They are “just XP”. More XP for us, more death for them. The way it should be.

Except - we are wrong.

djotefsoup writes: “Brian, what did you think of the script giving the white man a little handgun, and the black man a big rifle?”

I thought that was in line with the racism and classism of the movie.

People like being small. The reason is obvious - if they can be as effective or more effective as someone larger they feel superior to them. This is in line with the movie, where 1 white man kills dozens of blacks.

The black man, being inferior due to being black, of course needs a larger gun, just like he needs a larger penis, just like he needs larger gold necklaces, just like he needs more bitches, just like he needs to knock more bitches up.

14

Seen many zombie movies, have you? This is pretty much part and parcel of the underlying mechanic for a majority of them, and in almost every case, there is no cure.

Because they lack the motor skills. They’ll damn well bite the hell out of you, though, and frankly, given a choice, I’d rather be shot in the head than eaten alive any day of the week.

O…kay… You clearly have issues that can’t readily be addressed by the zombie movie community at large.

Wait, am I being trolled here?

15

Fuck, Koontz is back.

16

I have my doubts. For one thing, Koontz never needed to watch movies before. He could just glean all the relevant information he needed off the poster.

17

It’s confirmed as him by Guido Jones over in P&R, as Brian posted on his blog about it.

For those who joined post-Koontz, no, you are not being trolled, this is Brian Koontz. There’s even a gif:

18

this is why we can’t have nice things.

19

In reply to drake113:

You are talking about conventions of zombie movies. However, the actors in the movie we are talking about are playing characters who don’t know they are in a zombie movie.

Imagine for a moment that you wake up, go outside, and see a bunch of people shambling about, and notice a couple of them murder “regular people”. You have to analyze what’s actually going on, not pretend it’s just like those zombie movies you’ve seen. Real life rarely corresponds to Hollywood.

Black men in America, having been trained for centuries now to believe themselves to be inferior, overcompensate. Whites encourage them to overcompensate as part of the ongoing abuse. This overcompensation has some very tragic consequences which is the point of the abuse, such as black on black violence and unwanted pregnancies. The result of the abuse is then used as justification for a continued need for white domination of blacks.

Another movie details this fairly well - Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song.

20

Yeah, that’s Koontz all right.