In 2005 genre friendly Lionsgate finally brought two long-awaited import horror flicks to North America with French director Alexandra Aja’s 2003 flick High Tension and this 2002 Australian zombie flick, Undead.

Directed by the brother Spierig (Michael and Peter), Undead is obviously inspired by Peter Jackson’s earlier “gore-omedies” such as Dead Alive and Bad Taste, but they’ve decided to toss in an alien invasion subplot just for the heck of it and while I’m glad they were trying for something new, for the most part it just didn’t agree with me and felt like it has the opportunity to be more outrageous, funny, and gory without really cashing-in on that potential.

In the small Australian outback town of Berkeley meteors start crashing into the ground, which doesn’t bode well for the small population, and residents are quickly turned into flesh-craving zombies. Heroine Rene (Felicity Mason) has just recently inherited her parents farm and has returned home to Berekeley in order to try and get here life in order, but little did she realize soon she’d end up holed-up with the owners of the local air charter, two policemen, and a soft spoken undead killer who sports a triple-barreled shotgun (Mungo McKay, who gets to do tons of over-the-top action hero moves such as a scene where he hangs from a doorframe from spiked boots blowing away zombies).

It’s up to the group to try and escape the town, avoid being eaten alive (and turned into gut-munchers themselves), and figure out just what the Hell is going on. This leads us to lots of set pieces of attacks by zombies (including one awesome moment involving a shovel during a general store attack sequence), liberal doses of blood and gore, and a finale that just doesn’t gel with the rest of the movie. In fact, the entire “aliens” angle manages to stop Undead, err, “dead” in its tracks. If I’m going into something expecting a zombie movie, then that’s all I damn well want! I’m not faulting the Spierig’s for attempting to take it in a new direction; I just think it wasn’t the best decision on their part.

It’s things like this little frustration on the viewer’s part that makes Undead a lot less enjoyable than it could’ve been. Granted, it’s still fairly watchable and there’s some things here that are done extremely well (more about that in a moment), but generally the entire thing feels like it’s missing something. I can’t quite put my finger on what that is, but I have a hunch it’s a little thing called “chutzpah”.

For a debut film the Spierig brothers have done an admirable job. They’ve done the entire thing with goofy vigor and have captured the films comic book presentation look perfectly using over-exaggerated action, a cartoony score, and such small touches like having “glittering” off a door key (when our heroes are looking for a way through a locked door and the key in on top of the frame); but that feeling of “emptiness” just kept on being a persistent bitch and worming its way into my brain thus making Undead what could best be termed as an “interesting failure”. (Chris Hartley, 4/5/06)

Directed By: Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig.
Written By: Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig.

Starring: Felicity Mason, Mungo McKay, Rob Jenkins, Lisa Cunningham.

Picture Ratio: 1.85:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: The picture here is clean with no evident graininess, but it does seem a little bit soft, at times overly dark, and sporting muted colour (not sure if that was intentional or not). Still it's a pretty solid presentation for a low-budget movie.

Extras: Lionsgate have gathered a lot of extras for the Undead disc, so be prepared for a long sitdown if you're a fan of the movie.

There's three trailers, a gallery of artwork and design sketches, 5 deleted scenes, 5 extended scenes including the alternate title sequence, 7 featurettes (a Supanova convention Q&A session, a "making of", footage from the Toronto Film Festival screening, one simply about the zombie make-up, camera/make-up tests, how to make a homemade camera dolly, and animatic to film comparisions), as well as two commentary tracks one with the cast and the other (more talkative one) with the Spierig's and select members of the crew.

Overall a worthy disc with a lot more to chew on than expected.