Undead (2003)

A quaint Australian fishing village is overcome by meteorites that turn its residents into the ravenous undead, leaving a small group of those unharmed to find a way out.

Directors:

Michael Spierig (as The Spierig Brothers), Peter Spierig (as The Spierig Brothers)

Writers:

Michael Spierig (as The Spierig Brothers), Peter Spierig (as The Spierig Brothers)

Stars:

Felicity Mason, Mungo McKay, Rob Jenkins

3 wins & 4 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Felicity Mason	...	René Chaplin
Mungo McKay	...	Marion
Rob Jenkins	...	Wayne
Lisa Cunningham	...	Sallyanne
Dirk Hunter	...	Harrison
Emma Randall	...	Molly
Steve Greig	...	Agent
Noel Sheridan	...	Chip
Gaynor Wensley	...	Aggie
Eleanor Stillman	...	Ruth
Robyn Moore	...	Officer in Locker Room
Robert Jozinovic	...	Man in Office
Peter Mensforth	...	Cricket Batsman
Jacob Andriolo	...	Yougn Cricketer
Michele Steel	...	Screamer

Storyline

Peaceful, rustic Berkeley is a charming fishing community where life is sweet and the people friendly. All that is about to change. After losing her childhood farm to the bank, local beauty Rene decides to leave town and head for the big city. Suddenly, an avalanche of meteorites races through the sky, bombarding the town and bringing an otherworldly infection. Departing is going to be much more difficult than she had planned. The living dead are awakened and Rene is now caught in a nightmare of zombies hungry for human flesh. She manages to find salvation in a small isolated farm house owned by the town loony, Marion. There she is met with four other desperate survivors. Together they battle their way through a plague of walking dead and discover that there is more transpiring than just an infection.

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Plot Keywords:

pump action shotgun | shotgun | m1911 pistol | woman wearing a gas mask | cricket the sport | 

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Taglines:

Prepare Yourself

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Genres:

Action | Comedy | Fantasy | Horror | Sci-Fi

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for strong violence and gore, and for language

Details

Country:

Australia

Language:

English

Release Date:

4 September 2003 (Australia)

Also Known As:

A zombik városa

Filming Locations:

Queensland, Australia

Box Office

Budget:

AUD1,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$8,527, 3 July 2005

Gross USA:

$41,196

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$237,579

Company Credits

Production Co:

Spierigfilm

Technical Specs

Runtime:

100 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

During the beginning of the film, the man that Rene speaks to has a name-tag that reads Marvin "Chip" Chipperson. When he is a zombie later in the film his name tag reads Marvin "Chip" Marvinson.

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Goofs

When the party enters the General Store, Marion walks in completely naked. In the next shot, inside the store, we can clearly see him wearing striped boxers.

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Quotes

Marion: One day you're out on your boat and you get attacked by zombie fish, they munch at your face, like you're the main course at an all you can eat crazy country boy buffet. You walk away, tell the town your story; they think you're mad. Everyone thinks you're mad, you think I'm mad. It happens again, this time it's not zombie fish it's zombie Berkeley. But this time I'm prepared, I'm ready to fight whatever they can throw at me. Still i wasn't strong enough, the strongest ones are always the last ...

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Crazy Credits

"The characters and events depicted in this photoplay are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or living dead, is purely coincidential."

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Connections

References The Evil Dead (1981)

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Soundtracks

Little Green Men
Written by Cliff Bradley & Damien Taylor
Performed by Buttkrak
Recorded and Produced by Cliff Bradley
©Cliff Bradley 2002

User Reviews

Promising debut that fails due to clumsy narrative and characterisation.

When meteorite fragments land in the small fishing community of Berkeley, the townsfolk are exposed to an infection which turns them into flesh eating zombies. Trapped by a huge extraterrestrial wall, and surrounded by the ever growing legion of the undead, they battle for survival using whatever means possible....

There is a fine line between an homage and a rip-off and, unfortunately, the Spierig Brothers, the directors of Undead, veer towards the latter rather than the former. Stealing liberally from some of the greatest zombie and splatter pics of the last couple of decades, they have crafted a crazy, gory, FX filled debut that delivers ample bloodletting, but ultimately fails to reach the levels of success achieved by the films that they so obviously tried to emulate.

The Spierig Brothers are obviously big fans of the horror genre and I admire the fact that they have created such a technically impressive film without major studio backing (FX, both gore and digital, are impressive given the budget) but, hampered by lousy characterisation and a muddled script, Undead winds up being a second-rate BrainDead/Evil Dead wannabe.

Rather than being innovators, they are content to take the elements of the films they love (the gore, the outlandish plot, the absurd characters), without taking the time to construct a worthy script around them. When the king of rip-offs, Quentin Tarantino, fashions a script from the best bits of his favourite flicks, he makes sure that it reads like a dream – the dialogue zings and the writing has to be as sharp as a tack. The Spierigs fail in this department, with some awful dialogue and downright annoying characters involved in a ho-hum story.

Obvious influences are the movies of Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi, but directors of this calibre they are not – well, not yet, anyway. There are moments in the film which show promise, and I hope that their next project will see them develop as film-makers. In the mean-time, sit back, enjoy the gore, but don't expect a masterpiece.