The Dead Review

Release Date: 2010.
Directors: Howard J. Ford, Jonathan Ford.
Producers: Howard J. Ford, Amir S. Moallemi.
Written By: Howard J. Ford, Jonathan Ford.
Cast: Rob Freeman, Prince David Oseia, David Dontoh, Ben Crowe.
Running Time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

It is not Night of the Living Dead. It is not Dawn, Day, Land, Diary or Survival either. It is just The Dead and is a true spiritual companion to any of Romero’s best zombie flicks. Like its British brethren, Shaun of the Dead and 28 Days Later, The Dead gives a very passionate take on the now charred, overcooked and overdone zombie genre.

Saving Private Ryan’s Rob Freeman and Prince David Osei are hardened soldiers on opposite sides of an African conflict. A zombie outbreak erases the line in the sand as the living dead become everyone’s mutual enemy. Freeman’s escape from the All-You-Can-Eat zombie buffet is thwarted when his plane hits West Africa like an errant lawn dart. Freeman survives the crash and the instantaneous zombie smorgasbord.

After zombies overrun his village, a distraught Osei finds his wife is dead and his son is missing. Hearing the boy may have been picked up by local soldiers and brought to a nearby base, Osei goes AWOL in an attempt to reunite what is left of his shattered family.

Before the two warriors eventually cross paths and set aside their differences in order to simply survive, they each embark on their own solo treks. Because of this, both Freeman and Osei don’t have a lot of dialogue to speak of for part of the film so most of their acting is done only through facial expressions and body language. Together, they are dynamite, apart Freeman and Osei are nuclear.

Although a very human drama at its core, like Romero’s classics The Dead never loses sight though of its true purpose and that is to gleefully horrify us. If you are a mite peckish you might want to wait until after the film to fill your belly unless you don’t have a gag reflex.

Gravestones

24 zombies shot in the head.
34 zombies blasted by firearms.
1 suicide by handgun.
7 people eaten by zombies.
2 zombies get run over by a motor vehicle.
Zombie gets a machete to the head.
Zombies gets a fire extinguisher to the head.
Two humans put out of their misery.
A woman drowns.
Six people or more die in a plane crash.
Rampaging zombies kill about 30 to 40 people in total.