The Undead Symphony

Spanish, based on a trilogy of books and new on Amazon, I was excited for this one. The trailer looked great, and boy, did it not disappoint.

In what I think of as a top 20 worthy zombie movie, certainly the best new zombie entertainment I have seen since Last of Us, and before that, All of Us Are Dead. This had it all, a decent led character who wasn't invincible and overly macho, great writing, great acting, superb camera work, great tension. It looked and felt like it was the apocalypse.

It ticked all my boxes. I had the realistic spread, the government and military trying to shut the place down from What We Become and FEAR the Walking Dead, it had the survival elements of Night Eats the World, Rammbock and #Alive before expanding out with a lot of World War Z style chase tensions, then more traditional survival elements. 

I don't want to wax rhapsodic about this but I loved it.

7/10 for me and hoping the others will watch it too, so I can go gooey over it for a second time. 

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My issue with this movie was not the plot. It was basic, but it was fair. Zombie outbreak, I am guessing the zombie outbreak from the original 2006 movie that cost £8100 to make and made £2M at the box office, and soldiers holed up at a camp. The country is going to be fire bombed scorched earth style, and they are told on the radio to get to a camp on the coast before heading to the Netherlands.

Ok, plot holes and stupidity. Just find another boat. Use vehicles. Use the humvees in the camp, not the broken down WW2 style truck but that aside. 

We meet Jonesey, a pathetic creature of a soldier who has a handheld home movie camera. And it through the lens of this handheld movie camera that we see the whole gory story, including, but not limited to:

• the camp being overrun seen through the camera with nightvision - during which Jonesey does not fire a single weapon, or help his colleagues
• investigating noises in a house, during which zombies chase one of the soldiers, and Jonesey just films it
• Leane, a journalist with the party, nearly getting raped by bandits, and despite him being a soldier, Jonesey just filming it
• Leane, and Nicholson going down under a hoard and just filming it rather than helping them
• Kayne being shot, the Corporal carrying her, and Jonesey just filming it under fire rather than... you know... shooting back, or helping Kayne
• Them getting to the camp and Jonesey filming it all rather than helping anyone doing anything

I HATE this subgenre with a passion, POV wanky handheld cameras, and used for the entire film! THE ENTIRE FILM! Even when they are captured by the bandits when one of the bandits picks up the camera to film a rape and torture.

3.5/10 and that is because Jonesey being pathetic the whole movie and not helping in any way to a point where almost everyone dies, and does nothing to stop it.

Jonesey, you are a twat.

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Netflix 2024, this Filipino effort joins Block Z and Day Zero as modern zombie movies from the Philippines. Following a family Francis (dad), Iris (mom), Josh (teen) and Lucus (younger tween) escaping the zombie apocalypse and going back to Francis' childhood home, a huge plantation house surrounded by sugar cane fields.

The issue, and the zombies are well done Korean style black eye, black veined, fast moving zombies, isn't the undead at all. It is the enemy within. Francis was abused by his bully of a father in that house, in the basement of that house. On top of that it turns out Iris had an affair with Francis' handsome younger brother Diego and Josh is likely the outcome of that. 

This is more about the mental deterioration of Francis as what little of the family unit falls apart, as he remembers his abuse at the hands of his father and starts to become him. It did feel very Harrison Ford Mosquito Coast. He is more dangerous than the zombies, becoming more and more isolated until he pops. And there is carnage, oh, is there carnage? Yup. Just wait for the breakfast scene.

Superbly acted, tense when it needed to be, no music, great special effects and cinematography. My issue with it, is that it was just too long by half an hour or more.

Still, a solid 6/10 for this one.

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Scottish 2008 and set in a desolate farmhouse in the middle of nowhere during a global pandemic where the infected are violent, jabbering crazies. We meet Daniel, who has lost his wife and child to the infected version of his mother but didn't have the courage to kill his own mother. His car runs out of fuel and he seeks shelter in the farmhouse that is protected by a particularly barky dog.

The farmhouse is home to hunting rifle toting teen April, who runs very hot and cold, or luke warm and cold. Her range is from apathetic and disinterested to shouting and storming off. There is on in-between. So, practically all teenagers then.

April's story doesn't really make sense, there are a quite a few plot elements introduced but not used, such as an attic, a white van with boxes of old knickknacks, and a wheelchair, and we soon learn April is not April, April was her mum, and this was her grandparent's farm.

The infected are around the countryside, screaming, and shouting and jabbering. When they get caught on the barbed wire around the farm April takes care of them. And it is obvious that she is immune.

Enter Kay, a woman closer to Daniel's age who Daniel wants to stay, but April wants to leave and it all kicks off... to a degree.

It isn't particularly well acted. The cast didn't go onto great thing. In fact the writer/director didn't either. However, even with poor cinematography at times, and dull, emotionless performances, this was tense, atmospheric and watcheable.

4.5/10 Not as a good as the US Alone, but better than the UK Alone.

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Celebrating the 20th anniversary, Michael and I are joined by Brian from Zombpocalypse for a wide-ranging and rambling talk about all things Simon Pegg, UK-US translations, finding and then annoying a friend named Pete, Spaced, Channel 4 vs BBC comedies, and the legacy of the 2004 game changer that was Shaun of the Dead. Have you run it under a cold tap yet? We hope so. So come join us at the Winchester for some hog lumps, a pint and a game of darts so we can wait til this all blows over.

Always a solid 7.5/10 and a game changer for the zombie genre. The first best comedy, and one that many have tried to emulate, not least I Survived a Zombie Holocaust, Juan of the Dead, Dead and Breakfast and Go Goa Gone.

Enjoy.

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I loved this movie from the moment I saw it. 2019. First Nation characters being downtrodden by the white man finally getting their chance for a better life when mother nature infects mankind with a zombie virus that they are immune to.

Beautifully shot, with some scenes reminiscent of art house cinema, and a growing tension that puts it up there as a mashup of True Detective and Fear the Walking Dead, and an excellent First Nation cast this stood out to me so much it was in my top 10 for a long while. It is certainly one of the highest scoring recent movies and part of a selection including Yummy and It Stains the Sands Red that are just head and shoulders above a lot of zombie entertainment out there.

Michael's first viewing of the movie, and he is being spoiled at the moment with this, Yummy and ISTSR on his watch list, and he and I both loved it. 

If you haven't seen it, check it out on Amazon.

For us a solid 7/10

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It is zombified tortoise meets trailer trash hare in this 2016 indie zombie horror. As the zombie apocalypse rages in the background trailer trash lovers Nick and Molly head out of Las Vegas to catch a plane with Nick's associates. The plan is to fly to Mexico. Do they get there? Do they f*ck! After their Porsche gets stuck on a desert freeway Nick is killed my a shuffler and Molly has to head out on foot across the sands.

This movie is great. Brittany Allen from The Boys, Jigsaw and 13 Eerie (we reviewed in ep 59) stars as Molly, who has to survive with no training or supplies, or even basic survival skills as she is pursued by the zombie killer of Nick, who she dubs Smalls.

But over time her talking to Small, akin to Tom Hank chatting with Wilson!!!!! We learn more about her, about her addiction and losing her son to social services, her bad life choices. This is a zombie therapy session. And we care about Smalls too, in a Bub kinda way.

I always list this movie along with Yummy and Blood Quantum as one of the three zombie movies that people maybe haven't seen and need to.

Check it out.

6/10  

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We are both back and Micheal is playing catchup. He is watching the DVDs of movies we have covered in previous episodes. Here we talk the Canadian 2017 Canadian Death Trench aka Trench 11, a particularly dull WW1 parasites themed zombie movie. It should have been good, it could have been good. It was wasn't. It was dull. The parasites were good practical effects, the acting, cinematography and story was ok. But the claustrophobia just wasn't there in the tunnels, the zombies were few and far between. 

Our score 5/10

And we also talk Zombie Wars from 2007. This was a mess. Stolen mostly from Planet of the Apes the zombies are smart and are farming humans for food, by breeding them. Set 50 years after the zombie apocalypse somehow everyone still talks, dresses, acts and is armed and equipped like modern day. Soldiers taught to fight zombies from birth get killed easily. There were no kids to show the breeding program worked. And there was nothing good about this.

Our score 3/10  

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This was awful. What drew me to it? The name? Zombie Town. Tick. It was made in 2023. Tick. It starred Dan Ackroyd, Chevy Chase and Henry Czerny. Tick, tick and tick. But...

It was a 12. A 12! Not even a PG. A 12! Which meant no gore at all, no violence even, no blood, no swearing, no nudity, none of the good stuff. But then what did we expect from RL Stine the creator of Goosebumps.

In this overly convoluted nonsense of a movie zombie movie director Carver (Ackroyd) lives in a town where he is so revered the townspeople renamed it after him. The townspeople are desperate for him to make a new movie, as it brings success to the town and he reluctantly does. However, his movies are all cursed. All the b-movie actors from his zombie movies are never seen again. Why? Well, it is a load of horse shit about ancient Egypt, and movie reels turning people into zombies then sending them to the netherworld. 

There is a lot to ate about this movie. Too much actually. What was there to like? Czerny, I guess. Amy's Zombie 1982 t-shirt. The soundtrack including Sparks and The Hollies. The rest? Horse shit of the highest order. I can see why this isn't being promoted at all in zombie movie circles. The zombies don't even bite or want brains.

IMDB 3.8/10

Rotten Tomatoes 43%

The Undead Symphony 2.5/10

The zombies take over people using a "soul suck." When I think of the movie, the word "suck" does come to mind

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Heading away for a few weeks but wanted to get all my DVDs seen. This will just leave me with the Negan and Maggie show to watch when I am back. But onto this:

1966 and made by Hammer House of Horror, we have Plague of Zombies, starring Quatermass himself Andre Morrell as Sir James, a professor of medicine who head with his daughter to investigate a dozen unexplained death in a small Cornish village.

Add a pretty daughter, a former star pupil, Servalan from Blake's 7, and a dodgy local Squire who "spent some time in the Caribbean" and you have a pretty good forerunner to a lot the movie we see nowadays.

It was probably one of the first movies to have zombies looking dead, even though they are voodoo zombies. They don't look like sleepwalkers as they did in other voodoo movies from the 40s and 50s. They look like decaying, blue faced undeads. The dark plot and the Squire and his use of the zombies felt quite White Zombie, combined with the sear Dr Who's in particular the Dr of Hammer stalwart Peter Cushing.

It is dated, not for everyone, but better than most of the crap that would come out in the 1970s. It is said it had an influence on Romero pre-NOTLD.

A solid 6/10 from me 6.6/10 on IMDB and 83 on Rotten Tomatoes. Check it out. 

I'd love to hear from my dear listeners. Recommend a zombie movie or show I haven't covered, or some on and chat all things zeke. Or just like and share.