THE PLOT THUS FAR
After crashing off the coast, Lt. Brian Murphy battles for survival across the vast terrains of Africa in search for a way to get back to his beloved family. Joined by local military man Daniel Dembele, who is also searching for his son, both men join forces, all the while battling against the ever-present threat of the living dead!
WHAT WE THOUGHT
Lt. Brian Murphy is having a bad day: After surviving a plane crash in sub-Saharan Africa, he now finds himself battling hordes of ravenous zombies. But by teaming up with a local military man, Murphy might just escape this nightmare alive. While the vast yet sparse locations bring to mind imagery from Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, The Dead is a driven more by its character’s journey rather than just zombie kills. That’s not to say that the gore isn’t there; the kills, both human and undead, are well done with excellent make-up effects and CGI that’s anything but overbearing.
The zombie plague is never explained, again a stylistic element from Romero’s movies. In fact, it’s not terribly important what caused it. The meat of the movie here is in the characters, the symbolism, and the social criticism. Like most of Romero’s movies, the social criticism isn’t particularly subtle. Early on, a white character remarks to a black character, “I thought you were going to kill me.” The black guy replies, “I thought you were going to abandon me.” Yeah, not so subtle. But that’s the nature of the zombie movie. I was really primed to enjoy this movie, given that it plays right into everything that I like about zombie movies, but a lot of the potential was ultimately wasted. A lot of the racial tensions, imperialism, and colonialism that could have been explored was given only a rather cursory examination. Scenes that could have been powerful and pushed the movie into really tense situations were resolved with the most anti-climactic results imaginable.
The Blu-Ray comes with commentary, deleted scenes and a featurette. The A/V Quality is pretty sharp for an indie horror movie, especially when you check out the range on that Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track. The 1080p transfer is pretty impressive, but I noticed a lot of jaggies and edge enhancement throughout the presentation. That being said, it’s still pretty loaded with material that takes you throughout the presentation. However, it’s still just an iffy horror movie that’s only worth a rental.
RELEASE DATE: 02/14/2012
