Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead (2014)
Horror, Comedy
Directed By: Kiah Roache-Turner
I'll be honest, I had never even heard of this movie before
opening my Netflix queue at three in the morning last night and seeing it
plastered all over the home page. Right away I was intrigued by the look of ultra-violence
and excessive gore, I hadn't a clue as to what it was about but I knew it was a
movie I needed to watch. Anyone who knows me knows I love some good slapstick
horror and gore and there is no better place to find it than Netflix. Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead is precisely
the kind of movie we need more of, much like last year’s Zombeavers and 2011's Hobo With a Shotgun, this movie is paying homage
to the old B and C horror films that help create the genre we love today. Not
only that, but writer/director Kiah Roache-Turner has found a way to retool the
zombie movie into something rather new and refreshing. In an overcrowded
sub-genre Wyrmwood manages to set
itself apart from the countless other movies of its kind being released every
year.
The film opens right into some great action, as we watch a
few men in full armor attempt to pull a truck into a garage while countless
zombies attack from every angle. Just as things get good though we quickly jump
backwards in time with a small series of flashbacks that set up how we got to
this point. By having two of our main characters tell their "stories"
we quickly get caught up with how the infection broke out and what these guys
have to do to survive going forward. Our main character Barry (Jay Gallagher)
makes it clear that after losing his family the only thing that matters to him
now is finding his sister (Bianca Bradey). Unfortunately for him, she has been
kidnapped by a group of mysterious military men and they are now performing
strange experiments on her and a truck load of zombies. These experiments begin
to change her in a way no one could have expected and by the time Barry catches
up with her he may find himself needing her help more than she needs his.
What makes this film stand out among so many other zombie
movies right now is its sense of self awareness and the willingness to be
totally silly with their material. Rather than just trying to be another
Walking Dead rip-off they go to the complete opposite end of the spectrum and
create a movie that is just flat out fun. Borrowing from the B-movie mentality,
Wyrmwood is almost constantly winking
at you to let you know that it is okay to chuckle during that guy’s death or to
burst out laughing as a man screams like a little girl as he cuts his own hand
off. It is completely tongue-in-cheek, slapstick horror that is simply meant to
entertain the biggest of horror fans and it’s done beautifully.
An easy way to sell me on a zombie flick nowadays is to be self-aware
and slightly Meta, I love when the movie understands how silly it is and
utilizes it to enhance their picture. It also wins me over when the characters
in the film are aware that they are in fact fighting undead hordes of ZOMBIES.
How many more movies can be made where the characters don't know what zombies
are or how to kill them? They have been a part of the horror world for over
fifty years, stop trying to convince me they don't know what zombies are just because
they call them "walkers". This is what attracts me to movies like
this and Cockney's Vs. Zombies, I
love when they play with the fact that these people actually know what they are
fighting and in turn know how to defeat it. This also allows you to get into
the thick of your story much quicker, rather than try to explain how these
people discover ways to kill them and what they are we can skip of all that by
one character saying "oh shit, it’s a zombie!" and then move right
into the juicier stuff.
Aside from the self-awareness and B-movie attitude this
flick also offers up a clever new take on the zombie story. They kind of leave
the source of the outbreak unexplained and through the experiments done on
Bianca Bradey's character they create a new twist that I personally have never
seen done with these kinds of films. They dig a little deeper into the sci-fi
realm than most other movies of its kind and come away with a plot twist that
is so damn cool and it sets up a wonderfully insane finale. Roache-Turner has
also devised an ingenious use of the undead to help further the story and give
the characters something to do with the walking corpses besides killing them.
If you're going to honor the old B and C movies then you
have to capture the essence of those films and that all starts with the action
and gore. In this regard the film spares no expense as the blending of
practical and digital effects makes for some beautifully grotesque blood and
guts action. Not mention the art direction and set design is incredible, when
these guys armor up it's like watching a group of Oakland Raiders fans charge
into bloody battle with the undead. This is a zombie movie made for hardcore
zombie fans, the ones who play all the videogames and watch all the shows, the
ones who see all the movies no matter how campy or cheesy they are. This film
is a thank you to all of those fans who have stuck with the genre for so long
and it reassures them that regardless of how overcrowded it has become, this
sub-genre is far from dead. Treat yourself to the bat-shit insanity that is Wyrmwood, I know my horror buddies will
love it.
No comments:
Post a Comment