ene (Mason) is ready to skip out of the sleepy little town of Berkeley on the Australian coast. She can't get a bank loan to save the family farm, and the people of the town all know her—and many resent her—since she won the local beauty pageant and has her face plastered on billboards all over town. She represents the town she despises, and now she wants to abandon it.
But as she's driving for the city limits, strange things light up the sky. A meteor sends fragments down over the town, incinerating a little old lady crossing the dusty main street of town, lopping off the heads of guys playing cricket in the city park and spreading a virus that brings dead people back to life as flesh-eating zombies. What seems like a traffic accident pileup just outside town turns into a grotesque parade of bodies and dismembered body parts that become animated and attack anyone or anything with some life still in it. Yep, it's pretty bloody. Pretty soon, the survivors realize that the zombies are not friendly and that shooting them in the head can stop them, but there's more to the story.
Rene's run for the border is stopped by a giant impenetrable wall that surrounds the town. That's when the aliens show themselves. Unsure whether the space creatures are friends or foes, Rene unites with a few of the surviving townsfolk who wouldn't normally be seen in her social circle. One of those she teams up with is the town's odd loner, named Marion (McKay), who has some familiarity with the zombie virus and the aliens. He has an arsenal of weapons and some underground bunkers, and he's sure the whole thing portends the end of the world. His Matrix-like moves and Ash-like shooting make him seem like the right guy to follow, even if he leads them into what seems like a dead end.
Low budget, but high concept
Rarely does a movie mix so many genre elements with such success. Although this ultimately may be compared to 28 Days Later, Land of the Dead or Shaun of the Dead, it's more aptly compared to the campy low-budget The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, which was one of my favorite quirky films of the last few years. Undead, like Lost Skeleton, captures the feel of the 1950s SF films that throw every plot device, including the kitchen sink, into the storyline. Add to that some purposefully cheesy effects and intentionally bad acting and the movie ends up being rather enjoyable.
Sometimes the action looks like the shoot-'em-up massacres of the Evil Dead series, and some of the zombie scenes may be reminiscent of a Night of the Living Dead or Resident Evil film. But the homages to past George Romero, Sam Raimi and early Peter Jackson movies are obvious, and the writer/director brothers then try to spin the genre into something of their own. Their heroes have flaws, even though some of them may fight like Neo in The Matrix or shoot like Ash in Army of Darkness, but the zombies are a bit more menacing than what fans may be used to in this genre. When these creatures are sliced in half, for example, their spinal cords still stand up. And this virus infects animals, too, making for some fun zombie creatures.
The aliens look eerily familiar, but their ship and their wall barrier are different enough and original enough to be owned solely by the Spierig Brothers' imaginations. Expect the requisite amount of gore and some pretty great gross-out moments, like hands through bodies and holes through heads, as well as a few moments of nudity. Expect a few unexpected twists in the story, and a few surprises, but don't expect too much more. It's a good ride for a carnival, but it's not an A ticket.
