The Undead Symphony

American made with Arab oil money from the UAE. Is that why the Ick, a monstrous alien lifeform that has been around for about 20 years looks like oil? Maybe. 

Starring Brandon Routh, poor, poor, Brandon Routh, I do genuinely feel bad for him, this tells the story, kinda, of the Ick, and how it has always there in the town where he loses everything after being the high school star quarterback and prom king, with Mena Suvari as his prom queen, to being a crippled alcoholic janitor, then science teacher, before the Ick then becomes aggressive and takes over the country.

Nice idea? The Blob meets Venom in B-Movie madness? No, it is a fucking mess. Despite the acting, Brandon Routh, Malina Weissman, Taia Sophia, Zeke Jones, Jack Seavor and Mena Suvari are all great, a decent soundtrack, and Cold Storage level FX. A bag of cats no one should have opened. 

This movie will cause severe brain damage to anyone higher up the evolutionary ladder than a demented bee. Despite a rocking early 2000s soundtrack (Good Charlotte, Blink 182, Wheatus, Toad the Wet Sprocket)  this movie was put together by a director who makes music videos, so has a max attention span of 4 minutes, and an editor with extreme ADHD. No shot lasts more than 15 seconds, no scene more than 5 minutes, there are scenes crammed in that don't fit, or have some sort of relevance but are filmed so differently that it's like we have ad breaks mid movie and those ads are for TikToks of a different version of this movie.

I go back to my Hitchhiker's reference, "this movie will cause severe brain damage to anyone higher up the evolutionary ladder than a demented bee." 4/10 and very very disappointingly put together. Sorry, Brandon.

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Zombie Reddy is a 2021 Indian Telugu-language zombie comedy crime thriller film directed by Prasanth Varma and starring Teja Sajja, Anandhi, and Daksha Nagarkar.

The blurb
Mario, a game developer, and his friends, get caught up in the rivalry between two families and a mysterious zombie attack in Rayalaseema where they go to attend a friend's wedding.

That is the easy bit... but then we have two rival clans where everyone has the same name, and moustache, and there's a 25 year rift between the two, dishonour and bloodshed, all whilst a mad scientist with a God complex tried to cure COVID but ends up creating a zombie virus in the end.

I won't lie. I didn't enjoy this. Too much insanity. Too confusing. Too many of those slow mo shots with a fan blowing the central characters fringe. 

Am going to score it 5/10 but it earned 4 of those points in the last half hour of it's 124 minute run time, thanks to non stop running and fighting.

If you want to watch an Indian movie watch Go Goa Gone.

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A random DVD find, and a camp as Christmas Asian zombie movie that scores high on IMDB and RT and pays tribute to George A Romero's Dawn 78. Yes, it is set in a shopping mall, yes the zombie makeup is pretty bad and yes there are amusingly memorable kills as well as comic scenes.

We join low level criminals Woody Invincible and Crazy Bee who operate out of a bootleg DVD and computer game store in the mall, alongside Kui the stolen phone salesman and his long suffering wife, the salon with Jelly, Rolls and Cindy, and the sushi restaurant. Throw in some cops, some mall cops, and a boi-weapon in a bottle of Lucozade and it's about to get crazy, as this isn't a huge American style Monroeville mall here, this is the small glass units in a rat maze like rundown Asian mall.

What did I think? It was fun, unexpectedly so for a movie made in 1998. I could see the exact movie made now in the exact same way. The characters were all fine, and the two leads Woody and Crazy Bee were absolutely fine, cheeky criminals. 

If you are a fan of all Asian zombie movies then this is on par with Tokyo Zombie rather than Train to Busan, but it is an absolutely fun, camp as Christmas, decapitation and petty crime kinda story with an unforgettable ending.

5/10 from me 

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In our first catch up in 2  month I pose Michael the question, "was the 2007 Spanish found footage movie REC a game change in the zombie genre?"

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.

It is actually surprising how many Australian zombie movies and shows we have seen thus far…

 We Bury the Dead | 6.5 
 Little Monsters | 6.5
 Wyrmwood: Apocalypse | 6.5 
 Cargo | 6 
 Wyrmwood: Road Of The Dead | 6
 Undead | 5.5
 Neighbours versus Zombies | 5 
 Last Hope | 4
 Infini | 4
 Plague (2014) | 4 
 Me and My Mates Versus the Zombie Apocalypse | 3.5 
 Zombie Brigade  | 3 

Over 3% of our 376 zombie movies and shows are antipodean.

And so to Residence, an enigmatic hero, a speechless child, and a ragtag motley crew of arguably the most poorly written and annoying characters ever to grace the screen journey through a zombie filled apocalyptic landscape to seek refuge in a medieval fun park, whilst pursued by an unstoppable, deranged lunatic. 6.2/10 on IMDB which ridiculously high, and probably inflated by the cast and crew, or friends of the cast and crew, or idiots given a watch link who don't realise you can still be critical even when it's free. Where is you objectivity, man?

Anyone recognisable from the cast? Libby and Harold from Neighbours

The humour is idiotic. I don't think I can even describe it here as it requires me to stop swearing loudly in my head and think about it sensibly.  Is it as bad as me and my mates versus the zombie apocalypse? Or worse? It is definitely down there. You know when you fast forward you have the >> for twice the speed, the >>> and finally >>>>. Well I was wishing they had invested 5 speed >>>>> fast forwarding as this was utter shit.

KJ was horrible, the vacuum salesman was terrible, and the writer, director, and the king, Cyril… was about as funny as cancer. 

And then even when we get a semblance of a story with the diabetic girl's dad being the monster we have a weird serious ending.

3/10

This movie is so bad I am glad it had adverts, as at least then I had the chance of a minute of entertainment every quarter of an hour when the ad breaks came.

Would I watch it again? I would rather shit in my hands and clap

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.

Set during the brokering of a deal in a top end hotel local sleazebag Fu Gui tries to use junior newsreader Cindy to seduce Director Wu, the university headmaster so he can make money on a demolition and relocation real estate deal. Booze is plied, and food, whilst Fu Gui's long suffering driver and handyman Gou Sheng is told to wait down in the underground car park. But the zombie apocalypse is bubbling in the background caused by food, or so we think.

Before long Director Wu's bitten driver bursts in, kills two of the guests and Gou rushes up the building to save his boss, Cindy and college buddy Dongzshi.

Based on the graphic novel by Ruibo Cao this is a two location survival story that really fits into the out of the frying pan into the fire idiom. The hotel in which they are trapped in in the beginning and need to fight and escape from the zombies, picking up 12 year old schoolgirl Xiao and losing a couple of others along the way, and then a warehouse complex of orange jumpsuit wearing criminals and their pedophile boss. Yes, there is a lot going on.

Not ground breaking but better than expected, a 5/10 from me, on par with the other YouTube offering of the weekend, Extinction: the GMO Chronicles, which was slower but had some good zombie elements, whilst this was faster paced but lacked anything new.

Both were 5/10 for me and both are free on YouTube.

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A 2011 German effort on YouTube for me now. Extinction: the GMO Chronicles. GMO = Genetically Modified Organism. And we meet hero Tom, a former Spec Ops operative who casually drove around the city on day zero, ignoring pleas for help, before taking up resident in a disused US missile base from the cold war era. He does that annoying and obvious Vlogging thing to a laptop, and says there are no other survivors. Cue the survivors!

We gain elderly American former NSA spook Bill, his estranged German daughter Lisa and her dickwad of a boyfriend Martin. Martin is a very "don't look at my girlfriend!" kinda guy. We then gain Zara a nurse, and then Max and his nerdy brother David before two separate zombie attacks drive them out of their camp. Why? In this movie the zombies evolve. We start with boring day walkers that nap at night, then get day runners, then night runners, then a blind screamer, then parkour zombies, and finally night vision parkour zombies. Phew! It is like Dead Island all over again.

Tom is looking for his sister, but she is zeke, and they gain a baby for their efforts, the most dangerous thing in the zombie apocalypse is a baby. And worse still, all the nuclear power stations are going to go critical soon. Shit!

Ok. This did have some good bits. I did like the blowing the zombie up in the car scene. I did like the zombie evolution. However, the terrible cuts, and making poor Germans act in English in a German film was cruel, and caused this to be scored down.

It is a 5/10 for me, so still ok. Better than a lot I have seen, but not that much better that I need to see it more than once.

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With a slightly different take on the zombie apocalypse this monochrome modern Indian American family story tells of three siblings surviving in their own different ways. Older brother Hari and his wife Barbara stay in the large family home drinking cocktails, playing piano and keeping safe. Younger brother Rishi cannot bring himself to kill the biters he sees around town, and Vinita lives vicariously through others, travelling long distances to record their survival stories for her podcast - Didn't Die.

Film in high def black and white, this movie leaves the zombie violence and gore behind to tell the story of how people survive. There is heart, and there are both tears and laughter, there were a couple of comedic moment I did laugh at, but maybe that's just me.

When Vinita's ex Vincent comes onto the scene with a baby he rescued, the delicate balance in the family home changes, but will it change for the better or worse?

After the arty nonsense of Ever After last time out and the crap of Stink of Flesh before that, this was a change. It was heartfelt, showing a Hindu family, the parents from India, the kids born in the US, or at least brought up in the US, with the memories and nostalgia of family meals and photo albums seen through flashbacks to home movies.

It's not a feelgood movie and the ending of the larger part of the movie annoyed the shit out of me, but still, I am going to be generous and give it a 5/10 score

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A 2018 German movie, our second after Rammbock: Siege of the Dead. Set two years after the fall of civilisation, it follows Vivi, a twenty something girl living in Weimar, one of two remaining cities. In Weimar they kill the zombies and anyone infected, in Jena they are trying to find a cure. No one lives outside of the cities, and they are linked by an automated shuttle train.

With some pretty gorgeous cinematography at times, and pretty decent acting, we follow Vivi and badass Eva as they leave Weimar and start on the journey to Jena on the train, only for it to break down half way. And from there they are on foot.

The tension is good, and there are some pretty decent action sequences, including the chase across the dam, Vivi getting a set of decortive antlers in the eyeball, and the mad zombie bride with her pet bird, however this movie is let down by having a mad lead character. Vivi is just too insane. She talks to herself all of the time, and nothing that makes sense, she is pretty useless, dresses inappropriately for survival in the zombie apocalypse, and makes the worst choices.

The ending is not remotely satisfying, and the near constant overly dramatic cello will get on your nerves.

There is enough to like, so it is a 5/10 for me, but I don't seen to see it again. It would have been better to follow Eva, who is hot, strong and capable.

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A Canadian effort to save me from Daniel Baldwin on TUBI. An eco-warrior group are demonstrating the logging of an island, but the company doing the logging, or raping the land as the hippies say, are doing far, far worse. They are pumping the trees with a chemical that makes them grow three times as fast.

The trees, understandably, as not happy about this and are not going to take it lying down, unless they have already been chopped down, of course, and start spitting out this red ooze. A logger gets the red ooze in his blood stream and we have a survival story where loggers, scientists and tree hugging hippies are having to work together to make it out of there.

TBF the acting was fine, the gore and zombie make-up was fine but the pacing was all off, the edit was messy and padded with scenes and shots that didn't work. We had way too many cuts away too soon, to show a fucking misty lake, or the tree tops, random POV night scope zombie footage once, and some awful repurposed footage.

It was a 4/10 for me with the idea of an eco-disaster causing it, and it being the trees. The trees! It is in the trees! 

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