I just watched “The Dead 2” Sunday and it blew me away! It is as good as the original “The Dead” if not better!
The like Romero’s zombie films, this film does not carry over characters from the previous film. Although you get a little glimpse when the previous films hero Brian Murphy is picked up on radio by this film’s hero when he is trying to use his CB.
The setting has been changed from Africa (specifically Burkina Faso and Ghana) to India. Nicholas Burton (played excellently by Joseph Millson) is an American electrical engineer working on a wind far in central India when the zombie plague that is ravaging Africa spreads to the subcontinent. He is desperately trying to reach his pregnant girlfriend Ishani in Mumbai with the aid of an orphan boy named Javed. Like Romero’s zombie films, the living dead are just one of their problems as the must also contend with desperate survivors and the Indian Army’s desperate attempts to control the zombie plague; including executing potential carriers.
This film has a lot of the same elements as the first. An American engineer trying to get to his family, people of different races and cultures coming together in the face of adversity and the importance of the family.
Its just as gory and violent as the previous film with lots of gruesome gore effects and scenes of gut wrenching violence.
The cinematography and direction are spot on. It is beautifully filmed and well paced. It has a lot of good scares and action sequences that never let up on the tension. And you never really think about how big India really is until you see two figures on a motorcycle crossing one of its deserts.
I highly recommend this film and the first film, and I hope they make more. (Maybe next the will go to China or Russia or South America)
If you have not seen the first film then get both and make a double feature of it. Some critics have even gone as far to say that the first film was the best zombie film since Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” or “Dawn of the Dead”.
War of the Dead
aka Stone’s War
2011
directed by Marko Mäkilaakso
Lithuanian-Italian-US co-production.
A World War II zombie film about a Finnish, American and Russian soldiers who must band together when they encountering the hideous results of Nazi experiments in re-animation.
This is by far not a good movie, but on the other hand it does not commit the worst sin a movie can: be boring. This film never slows down and keeps you entertained all the way through. This film had a lot going for it. It is beautifully filmed, the action and horror sequences well put together, the creature and gore effects are great. This is a beautiful film.
But the down side is that this film is poorly acted. Most of the performances are wooden. The dialogue is sometimes almost painful to hear, but rebounds to be actually deep and thoughtful. And the story makes not sense historically or politically.
It is set in March 1941, long after the Winter War was over and months before the German-Soviet War/Great Patriotic War was about to begin. In the middle of this setting a team of Finnish and American soldiers are on a mission to find a hidden German bunker on the Finnish-Soviet border, while the whole time in conflict with the Red Army. To put this into historical context, the US was not involved in the war yet, and Finland was actually allied with Nazi Germany, and the US was friendly with, and eventually allied with, the Soviet Union. In the crazed world of this film it has Finland and America vs German vs the Soviet Union.
If you like films like “Hell of the Living Dead”, “Flesheater” or “Zombie 4: After Death” then you will love this! Its probably the best looking cheesy zombie movie ever made. Shot in Lithuania on a budget of about 1.3 million Euros ( or about 1.8 million US dollars) this film drips style. Its main problem is that it is style over substance, but there is a lot of style.
