Undead ! and loving it.

Every once in a great while a movie comes along that grabs you by the scruff of the neck and pulls you along on a wild ride. In the 60's it was Night Of The Living Dead, in the 70's Romero struck again with Dawn of The Dead, and in the 80's Rami and Campbell dragged us around with the Evil Dead. Finally a movie has come along that once again takes the horror genre by storm, and it isn't even a US made film. The film in question is the Australian made Undead, by no way a new movie, but one just being made available to US viewers.

Undead is the work of Michael and Peter Spierig, 2 young Australian filmmakers, who set off in late 2001 to create a totally independent and original film. Over the coarse of 41 days in Queensland, the Spierig brothers, along with a cast, most of which this was their first feature film, brought the world of Berkeley Australia to life (or death depending on how you look at it) and in the process unleashed an amazing film that would soon captivate horror fans worldwide. the film was made on a shoe-string budget, with the Spierig's doing most of the post-production special effects on their home computers. With over 300 SE shots in the movie, the process took almost 9 months to complete.

The story centers around Rene (Felicity Mason), a past beauty queen who is dealing with the loss of her families farm. During her time in town a strange meteor shower falls upon the town and zombies start to take over. Rene falls in with a group of survivors at the home of Marion (Mungo McKay) and soon the group is on the run, following a path of survival and discovery.

The movie covers so many genres that at time you might forget this is at heart a horror movie. There is comedy (most delivered by Dirk Hunter), zombies, aliens, UFOs, and rampant infections. You can tell that the directors are fans at heart, with homages being paid in turn to Evil Dead, Night Of The Living Dead and even a little Close Encounters and Xtro thrown in for good measure. Also thrown in is one of the best and most satisfying endings to grace movie-dom in some time.

The movie premiered back in Feb of 2003 at the Fantasporto Film festival where it was nominated for the International Fantasy Film Award. Throught the coarse of 2003 and 2004 it ran at several different film festivals and won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2003 Melbourne International Film Festival. Lions Gate finally stepped in and the film was given a US release in limited theaters on July 1 2005.

Undead is a gem. Something new and original for those of us suffering from the Hollywood re-hash mill. I haven't had this much fun watching a movie since I first sat through a special screening of Evil Dead in Chicago back in '81. I do have to admit that I received my copy of Undead in Aug of last year, and it sat on my stack of "to be watched" films for some time before I finally watched it. I have to kick myself pretty hard for not watching it sooner. I did a reviews many months back for another website praising the work of the Spierig Brothers and with the US release I thought it was time to bring it to the attention of as many people as I could again.

This movie gets my highest recommendation. 5 stars out of 5. 2 thumbs up and any other positive sign you can think of. Any true horror fan, or just any ceniophile should not miss this film. There is also a very nice official site you can visit here. There are more and more independent first time directors making movies from their heart, on a tiny budget, that are far better than many of the muti-million dollar Hollywoodized movies in theaters today.