Viking Night: Dead Alive
By Bruce Hall
May 19, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Probably because it's been eaten by zombies.
I'm not sure where all this came from. Fads come and go, badly wearing out their welcome and then coming back again with bigger budgets and better special effects (Miami Vice will one day rise again...you'll see...you'll ALL see). But by my count, there have been roughly 7,000 zombie films greenlighted for development since I started writing this paragraph. After the (brain) salad days of the ‘60s and ‘70s, followed by a brief resurgence in the 1990s, we seem to be enjoying the golden age of movies about spoiled meat that kills you from the outside in.
If you enjoy movies about partially eaten people who eat other people who then eat even more people until there are no more people, then this is truly a glorious time for you to be alive.
But at one time, the best zombie movies were about something. They were cautionary tales about consumerism, politics, or humanity’s general tendency to be inhumane toward other humans. These days, zombie movies are all self-aware irony and snark, just like the demographic they’re made for. But where, I ask, is the zombie movie about feral plague rats brutally raping helpless tropical monkeys, unleashing a horrific wave of slaughter on a sleepy New Zealand town, indirectly forcing a mild mannered young man to confront his unhealthy relationship with his domineering mother? Where is that movie?
You’ll be glad to know that Peter Jackson already made it. Long before he blew your mind and numbed your ass with his Lord of the Rings trilogy, he dabbled a bit in slapstick, allegorical splatter-horror with a little movie called Braindead. Or as we know it here in the States, Dead Alive. They’re equally horrible titles, and in either case the film might take some getting used to if you’re not an aficionado of the genre. But it’s kind of fun. It’s kind of stupid. It’s ridiculously gory. Plus, it’s got some delightfully warped mommy issues, an unusual take on zombie warfare, and an ass kicking kung-fu priest.
You’ll never look at zombies or sexually deviant rodents the same way again.
It begins in a place called Skull Island, which sounds like the kind of place Indiana Jones hangs around, and looks like the kind of place you’d film a Lord of the Rings movie. There, a shortsighted adventurer tries to abscond with an extremely rare Sumatran Rat Monkey, whose unholy origins we’ve already covered. It’s a physically repulsive, extremely bad tempered creature whose defining characteristic is that it tries to viciously kill and/or ravenously eat everything it sees. Also, thanks to that unspeakable ancestry we talked about, it’s carrying a super deadly murder-plague that gives its bite an immediately zombifying quality. Because humanity is foolish, the creature is brought back to New Zealand and put on display in a monkey enclosure at an unspecified zoo. Put a pin in that for now; we’ll come back to the Murder Monkey in just a moment.
In the nearby town, a punctual, well dressed young man named Lionel (Timothy Balme) lives with his horrible, awful, spiteful, controlling mother Vera (Elizabeth Moody). Vera is that kind of mother who would tolerate her relatives only because without them, she’d have nobody to victimize and control. And she’s fine-tuned her particular brand of rage and guilt on poor Lionel, who probably has no idea he can just move out, get an apartment and spend all his time unemployed, drinking beer, playing Super Nintendo and disappointing his girlfriend like all the normal guys his age.
Lionel’s first inkling of this comes on a trip into town to buy groceries, where he meets the lovely Paquita Maria Sanchez (Diana Penalver), whose deeply ingrained superstitions quickly lead her to perceive Lionel as the man of her dreams. Smitten, she more or less stalks Lionel in ways that would be creepy if she weren’t so pretty - but she is, so it’s totally okay. She finally corners Lionel in front of his house and convinces him to take her out on a date - to the zoo. Their adorably awkward conversation is observed by Vera, who of course will not stand for Lionel being happy without her, which basically means she will not stand for Lionel being happy. So, when the couple embarks on their date, she follows them.
To the zoo. Yes, THAT zoo. The one with the Murder Monkey. While snooping on her son, Vera is bitten by the monkey - which would be sad except that she kind deserves it. Soon after that, she begins to zombify, and Lionel does his best to treat it, contain it, and then hide it from the community at large. Dead Alive relies a great deal on dark, gory humor and a lot of that revolves around Lionel’s attempts to keep anyone from finding out what’s going on. Vera’s antics inevitably infect other people, leading to a minor outbreak. Lionel captures the infected, stows them in his basement, and tries his best to keep everyone sedated and under wraps.
While this is going on, Paquita continues to kindle their romance, oblivious to the obvious signs that something involving flesh eating freaks is happening over at her boyfriend’s house. To his credit, Lionel does his best to keep the zombie apocalypse from spreading while trying not to disappoint Pacquita, but it ends up being more than he can handle. In fact, the primary reason he seems reluctant to seek help seems to be his embarrassment at being unable to solve the problem on his own. This leads to some really morbid, disturbing incidents that are equal parts funny and revolting. Dead Alive is a comedy, but first and foremost it’s a horror flick, and an incredibly splattery one at that.
No matter how hard you look, it’s difficult to see the Peter Jackson we will all eventually come to know and love. Dead Alive is a largely amateurish looking film, its style defined by lots of unnecessary close ups and awkwardly staged scenes that suggest not so much artistic choices but a young filmmaker still mastering his craft. But parts of it are genuinely funny, albeit in a macabre way that requires you to really be invested in this brand of horror. The gore starts early and builds quickly, culminating in one of the most chaotic, blood spattered, disturbingly slapstick climaxes you’re ever likely to see in a movie. Perhaps more important is the fact that the story ends up being less about zombies than it is about an incredibly meek person learning how to be his own man and make his own choices. It’s a fascinating movie but it’s hard to give a blanket recommendation because you’re either going to be able to handle it, or not.
Despite the undeniable family allegory, the big sell here is going to be the ungodly amount of bloody humor. If this is your thing, and you haven’t seen Dead Alive yet, then you’re really missing out. There’s enough interspecies molestation, mutilation, cannibalism, dismemberment and kung-fu fighting clergy to keep you in stitches hours after the movie ends. If you’re anybody else, you might want to skip the bloodbath and stick to the never ending flood of super sanitary PG-13 flicks inundating theaters these days. And if you’re into landscaping, I can assure you that after Dead Alive, you’ll probably never again be able to mow your lawn without thinking some very, very dark thoughts.