½*/****
starring Felicity Mason, Mungo McKay, Rob Jenkins, Lisa Cunningham
written and directed by Peter Spierig & Michael Spierig
by Bill Chambers For novice directors, even genre can become an irresistible new toy. So it is with the Spierig Brothers' Undead, an Australian film that liberally applies CG but more detrimentally cribs from every and any horror flick that fanboys ever extolled; those mouth-breathing types who post talkback at AICN have never been this condescended to, yet I fear that Undead's pandering will sail over their heads and lead to a misguided appreciation of the film as a one-stop shop for all their geek cravings. Borrowing the alien conceit and over-the-top splatter from Peter Jackson's Bad Taste, the super-prepared, avenging quasi-cowboy from The Evil Dead and its innumerable rip-offs (Undead's wannabe Ash totes a cumbersome three-barrelled shotgun), the zombies from Day of the Dead (actually zombie cinema in general, but the third entry in George Romero's Dead trilogy specifically for a gruesome decapitation-by-shovel), the pretty heroine who stays clothed throughout from the annals of slasher tradition, the space creatures with inverted knees from The Arrival, the transporting beam of light from Fire in the Sky, and the miracle cure from Signs, the picture is exhaustively derivative. Unendurably boring in its superfluousness, its ersatz feel accentuated by a plethora of digital effects, Undead is simply a stiff. Programme: Midnight Madness
