I signed up for a two week trial with Netflix. You know what that means? Zombie Movies for free!

I’ve been waiting a while to see the movie ‘Zombie‘ and ‘Dead Alive‘. I was suprised a while back to find out that critically acclaimed director Peter Jackson, of Lord of the Rings fame, produced a Zombie flik. As a huge fan of his work I had to get Dead Alive. The reviews for the movie were all good so I rented it and now here is mine:

It’s tough to evaluate the technical quality of a movie like this. The whole thing is a gag, a parody on the whole Zombie genre. Yes there is cheesey stop motion, cheesey puppeteering and unreal amounts of blood, but that is the whole point now isn’t it? The camera work is seemless (unlike the first movie I watched, Zombie) and overall the production is very professional, but you have to be looking for a fun experience to really enjoy this one. Think Evil Dead and Army of Darkness.

The plot goes like this: Mom controls boy, boy meets foxy italian girl, mom hates girl, boy tries to dump girl and mom gets bit by rabid zombie rat monkey and soon turns into a zombie herself. The subordinate son spends the majority of the movie trying to hide her from the public while dealing with this girl, who lucky for him is not content with being put off once, twice or three times during this whole ordeal. Eventually the infection spreads and soon you have a classic zombie mob vs a few survivors scenario.

There are plenty of unique deaths in the movie and plenty of variation on the way the zombies are dealt with. There is even zombie sex and a little annoying zombie baby that you’ll want to punt across the room. There is no nudity that I can recall, which is rare for the genre. Overall if you liked Sam Raimi’s series, you’ll probably have fun with this one too.

I give it a 8.5B for b-movies.