The Undead Symphony

Episode 359: Michael talks REC and REC2 versus Quarantine

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2023354/fan_mail/new] And I have my dog walker and post man disrupting me too.

Episode 358: World War Dead: Rise of the Fallen or Rise of the Fallen. You decide.

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2023354/fan_mail/new] Somme-bies! Yes, that is actually one of the many Battle of the Somme jokes made by Marcus (played by the patchy bald soldier from 28 Days Later). Somme-bies! Somme-er Holiday. Somme-body get me out of here. I do hate found footage. I really do. I know some people love it but when it is done badly it is so bad. And this was bad. Given we have seen Live! Escape, Live! Survival, Godforsaken, The Bay, Zombie Diaries, Diary of the Dead, Savageland was more documentary style, but then the REC and Quarantine movies, I can easily spot the mistakes made. In this the mistakes are many. If you like camera glitches, camera glitches that somehow make you jump to past footage as filler, lots of people running about and screaming, but actual action and deaths off camera, if you like an annoying condescending director making unfunny Somme jokes and actually easy to kill zombies that for some reason are from the allies as well as the German ranks, and zombies obsessed with a van, then this is for you. It was the locations of Trench 11 meets Nazi Zombie Death Tales with the poor footage skills of Zombie Diaries and Goforsaken. It may not be the worst found footage zombie movie I have seen, but it is Somme-where around there. World War Dull! 3.5/10

Episode 357: Miss Zombie (2013)

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2023354/fan_mail/new] In this episode I shall be reviewing a zombie movie that I had seen before I started this podcast. And yet somehow 4 years into it and nearly 400 movies from 42 countries into it I haven’t gone back and reviewed the black and white Japanese movie Miss Zombie.  Directed by Sabu and released in 2013 this multi award winning zombie movie takes it in a different direction, in a post apocalyptic Japan zombies exist and are caught and domesticated as either slaves or pets by the humans. I am getting FIDO vibes here. Just tragic FIDO vibes. The blurb is simple, A wealthy Japanese family hires a female zombie to do their household chores. However, soon they realise that her presence is affecting everyone around. Hires? No she is bought as a slave, as all zombies are in this movie. So whoever wrote that is an idiot. She is a slave. She is abused by the locals, stabbed everyday, raped, attacked. But yet the doctor who bought her is now falling for her slow moving, scarred wiles, and the mother is now getting more and more jealous of her after her son dies and is brought back as a zombie, by the zombie. Filmed in black and white, with no music, and a repetitive style, each day Miss Zombie remembers more of her life before, and the tragedy of how it ended, as everyone else becomes more and more obsessed with her as we reach a violent climax. Definitely unique in the genre, true, it is a little slow, but haunting.  6/10

Episode 356: Ick (2024)

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2023354/fan_mail/new] American made with Arab oil money from the UAE. Is that why the Ick, a monstrous alien lifeform that has been around for about 20 years looks like oil? Maybe.  Starring Brandon Routh, poor, poor, Brandon Routh, I do genuinely feel bad for him, this tells the story, kinda, of the Ick, and how it has always there in the town where he loses everything after being the high school star quarterback and prom king, with Mena Suvari as his prom queen, to being a crippled alcoholic janitor, then science teacher, before the Ick then becomes aggressive and takes over the country. Nice idea? The Blob meets Venom in B-Movie madness? No, it is a fucking mess. Despite the acting, Brandon Routh, Malina Weissman, Taia Sophia, Zeke Jones, Jack Seavor and Mena Suvari are all great, a decent soundtrack, and Cold Storage level FX. A bag of cats no one should have opened.  This movie will cause severe brain damage to anyone higher up the evolutionary ladder than a demented bee. Despite a rocking early 2000s soundtrack (Good Charlotte, Blink 182, Wheatus, Toad the Wet Sprocket)  this movie was put together by a director who makes music videos, so has a max attention span of 4 minutes, and an editor with extreme ADHD. No shot lasts more than 15 seconds, no scene more than 5 minutes, there are scenes crammed in that don't fit, or have some sort of relevance but are filmed so differently that it's like we have ad breaks mid movie and those ads are for TikToks of a different version of this movie. I go back to my Hitchhiker's reference, "this movie will cause severe brain damage to anyone higher up the evolutionary ladder than a demented bee." 4/10 and very very disappointingly put together. Sorry, Brandon.

Episode 355: Zombie Reddy

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2023354/fan_mail/new] Zombie Reddy is a 2021 Indian Telugu-language zombie comedy crime thriller film directed by Prasanth Varma and starring Teja Sajja, Anandhi, and Daksha Nagarkar. The blurb Mario, a game developer, and his friends, get caught up in the rivalry between two families and a mysterious zombie attack in Rayalaseema where they go to attend a friend's wedding. That is the easy bit... but then we have two rival clans where everyone has the same name, and moustache, and there's a 25 year rift between the two, dishonour and bloodshed, all whilst a mad scientist with a God complex tried to cure COVID but ends up creating a zombie virus in the end. I won't lie. I didn't enjoy this. Too much insanity. Too confusing. Too many of those slow mo shots with a fan blowing the central characters fringe.  Am going to score it 5/10 but it earned 4 of those points in the last half hour of it's 124 minute run time, thanks to non stop running and fighting. If you want to watch an Indian movie watch Go Goa Gone.