Written by: PBF
My first impression of this film was that it was like a zombie film made specifically for Cinemax to air at around 3am. There was plenty of (somewhat justified) nudity almost immediately. However, it vanished just a quickly as it had come. FYI: If you are going to make a marginally engaging film, try not to blow your nudity wad all in the first 15 minutes. It leaves nothing much else to pay attention to.
Brain Dead, directed by Kevin Tenney, doesn’t really show us anything new in its zombie story. Not that it is trying to. It’s the story of 6 random people (actually, 3 random groups of 2 people) who for one reason or another end up in an empty fishing lodge. We have Bob and Clarence, who are brothers and escaped prisoners. They arrive first, and end up holding the others hostage. Next to arrive are Claudia and Sherry, who were hiking and swimming naked. Last is Reverend Farnsworth and his assistant Amy. The Reverend would like to pork his assistant. What these people don’t know as they arrive at the cabin is that there are zombies lurking about. A space “amoeba” shot into a local fisherman’s head and promptly turned him in to a zombie host body. He in turn killed his buddy, and so on. Later in the film it is “figured out” that the parasites find a host body and then eat brains until they can reproduce. Reproduction involves a zombie vomiting a black oily substance onto someone. The substance (another parasite) enters the body and another zombie is born. Eventually these zombies make their way to the cabin.
So, if the film wasn’t made to show us anything new, why was it made? Just to be purely entertainment? Sure, I can buy that. The writing wasn’t completely terrible and I laughed out loud a couple of times. The acting sure was a mixed bag. No one was bad enough to make me wince. There were a couple of cool scenes. You ever watched a movie where someone punches another person through the chest and rips their heart out? Imagine that scene but instead of the chest, it was the head, and instead of the heart it was the brain. That was a pretty entertaining scene, yes. There is plenty of gore for those of us who like that, but it was well placed and not that over the top.
The biggest problem with this film is that it focuses largely on character interaction, and these people were complete bores. I either didn’t care about them or they were complete assholes. In that case, you would think they would be dispatched rather quickly so we could enjoy their demise, but no. I was forced to listen to sometimes barely tolerable dialogue and questionable decision making. Compounding that is the involvement of women whom I had already seen completely naked, thus during their scenes I would drift off to those earlier parts of the film, as nothing they were doing or saying was interesting.
I was intrigued with how the film ended; it was an interesting and comical choice, and it worked for me, given the silliness of the film overall.
This is a zombie film rife with varying degrees of comedy and purely exists as a “fun” ride. Nothing more. Honestly, how fun the ride is, will be completely determined by the mood of the viewer. I didn’t hate it.
My first impression of this film was that it was like a zombie film made specifically for Cinemax to air at around 3am. There was plenty of (somewhat justified) nudity almost immediately. However, it vanished just a quickly as it had come. FYI: If you are going to make a marginally engaging film, try not to blow your nudity wad all in the first 15 minutes. It leaves nothing much else to pay attention to.
Brain Dead, directed by Kevin Tenney, doesn’t really show us anything new in its zombie story. Not that it is trying to. It’s the story of 6 random people (actually, 3 random groups of 2 people) who for one reason or another end up in an empty fishing lodge. We have Bob and Clarence, who are brothers and escaped prisoners. They arrive first, and end up holding the others hostage. Next to arrive are Claudia and Sherry, who were hiking and swimming naked. Last is Reverend Farnsworth and his assistant Amy. The Reverend would like to pork his assistant. What these people don’t know as they arrive at the cabin is that there are zombies lurking about. A space “amoeba” shot into a local fisherman’s head and promptly turned him in to a zombie host body. He in turn killed his buddy, and so on. Later in the film it is “figured out” that the parasites find a host body and then eat brains until they can reproduce. Reproduction involves a zombie vomiting a black oily substance onto someone. The substance (another parasite) enters the body and another zombie is born. Eventually these zombies make their way to the cabin.
So, if the film wasn’t made to show us anything new, why was it made? Just to be purely entertainment? Sure, I can buy that. The writing wasn’t completely terrible and I laughed out loud a couple of times. The acting sure was a mixed bag. No one was bad enough to make me wince. There were a couple of cool scenes. You ever watched a movie where someone punches another person through the chest and rips their heart out? Imagine that scene but instead of the chest, it was the head, and instead of the heart it was the brain. That was a pretty entertaining scene, yes. There is plenty of gore for those of us who like that, but it was well placed and not that over the top.
The biggest problem with this film is that it focuses largely on character interaction, and these people were complete bores. I either didn’t care about them or they were complete assholes. In that case, you would think they would be dispatched rather quickly so we could enjoy their demise, but no. I was forced to listen to sometimes barely tolerable dialogue and questionable decision making. Compounding that is the involvement of women whom I had already seen completely naked, thus during their scenes I would drift off to those earlier parts of the film, as nothing they were doing or saying was interesting.
I was intrigued with how the film ended; it was an interesting and comical choice, and it worked for me, given the silliness of the film overall.
This is a zombie film rife with varying degrees of comedy and purely exists as a “fun” ride. Nothing more. Honestly, how fun the ride is, will be completely determined by the mood of the viewer. I didn’t hate it.
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