Dead Wrong

A friend recently loaned me a 2010 horror film written and directed by a pair of brothers, The Dead. In the sudden wealth of zombie stories now permeating pop culture, their twist on the subject was one of setting -- the story was set in Africa. A U.S. Army engineer survives a plane crash, and winds up teaming with an African soldier to survive the vast throngs of zombies overtaking the world.

I've essentially just provided you with all the characterization and plot in the film in that one sentence. These are ultimately the major shortcomings of the film.

When it comes to story, there's no real structure here. Characters run from set piece to set piece, but don't really settle on a goal until almost halfway through the film. We never learn anything about the background of the outbreak. It's just two guys running from zombies for almost two hours.

And the fact that it is just two guys for the bulk of the film leads to many other problems. There aren't multiple combinations that can be used to illuminate the behavior or backgrounds of the characters. There's only one relationship, and so there's very little friction, very little suspense or drama. And perhaps most importantly for a horror film, there are no expendable characters to feed to the zombies and establish anything that's happening as a credible threat.

If all you really ask from a zombie film is mindless killing of zombies, however, this movie might be for you. I just found the quality to be a long, long way from, say, season one of The Walking Dead. I'm not even sure it was as good as the lackluster season two of The Walking Dead. Overall, I grade it a D.