I was very disappointed by this film. In part that was down to the DVD marketing company, who marketed it as "Shaun of the Dead meets Bad Taste". They wish. But aside from false hopes there were problems aplenty for this film.
It knew what it wanted to be. It wanted to be Night of the Living Dead crossed with Evil Dead 2, via Close Encounters. Sadly it ended up as Return of the Living Dead crossed with Resident Evil via Contact. It professed to being comedy horror, but somehow forgot the comedy. The acting was generally very poor, from Mungo McKay's terse weirdo-abducted-by-aliens (cliché) to Dirk Hunter's dreadful turn as an uptight cop (cliché - oh, I think I'd better turn off the cliché detector or I'll never get anywhere). The scene in which they enter the basement to escape Marion's house is overacted by all concerned, hyper-ventilating like there's no tomorrow. The scene was difficult to sit through.
Some ideas were clearly present purely because of the homage to other films - Marion's triple-barrelled shotgun, and ridiculous (and unexplained) acrobatic gun play was the film's most obvious attempts to ape Evil Dead 2 (and where did they get so many handguns in Australia?). Rene's daft massacre of zombies using a circular-saw blade stuck on the end of a broomstick was a low-rent version of the classic scene in Braindead in which Lionel deals with a zombie problem using a flymo.
There was only one good idea in the whole film - that of the red herring surrounding the (peaceful) aliens, and their cleanup campaign. But even that was totally unexplained, and the subsequent, larger zombie outbreak could surely be cleaned up as well - but oh dear, the aliens have inexplicably vanished.
I wanted to like this film. I had nothing at all against it. But it was poorly thought out, badly acted and unlikeable. If you think you want to watch it do yourself a favour - watch Shaun of the Dead, or Braindead, instead. You'll thank yourself afterwards.
It knew what it wanted to be. It wanted to be Night of the Living Dead crossed with Evil Dead 2, via Close Encounters. Sadly it ended up as Return of the Living Dead crossed with Resident Evil via Contact. It professed to being comedy horror, but somehow forgot the comedy. The acting was generally very poor, from Mungo McKay's terse weirdo-abducted-by-aliens (cliché) to Dirk Hunter's dreadful turn as an uptight cop (cliché - oh, I think I'd better turn off the cliché detector or I'll never get anywhere). The scene in which they enter the basement to escape Marion's house is overacted by all concerned, hyper-ventilating like there's no tomorrow. The scene was difficult to sit through.
Some ideas were clearly present purely because of the homage to other films - Marion's triple-barrelled shotgun, and ridiculous (and unexplained) acrobatic gun play was the film's most obvious attempts to ape Evil Dead 2 (and where did they get so many handguns in Australia?). Rene's daft massacre of zombies using a circular-saw blade stuck on the end of a broomstick was a low-rent version of the classic scene in Braindead in which Lionel deals with a zombie problem using a flymo.
There was only one good idea in the whole film - that of the red herring surrounding the (peaceful) aliens, and their cleanup campaign. But even that was totally unexplained, and the subsequent, larger zombie outbreak could surely be cleaned up as well - but oh dear, the aliens have inexplicably vanished.
I wanted to like this film. I had nothing at all against it. But it was poorly thought out, badly acted and unlikeable. If you think you want to watch it do yourself a favour - watch Shaun of the Dead, or Braindead, instead. You'll thank yourself afterwards.