THE DEAD (Anchor Bay, 2010) D: Howard Ford, Jonathan Ford, w/ Rob Freeman, Prince David Oseia. Rating: NN Blu-ray package: NNNN Rating: NN
A couple of twists on the standard zombie apocalypse make The Dead both more and less interesting than the recent run of walking dead entries.
For starters, co-directors the Ford brothers have chosen the action-adventure genre, not horror, and a duo, instead of the usual group trying to survive. A pair of soldiers, one American, one African, make their way across west Africa to find the latter’s son. It’s a good premise, but it tells you right away that one of these guys will certainly die, and it leads to repetitive action: zombies lurch up, heroes drive off.
Second, they’ve shot in backwoods Burkina Faso, with local villagers as zombies. The landscape is so harsh and beautiful that it yanks you right out of the story, while the zombie-killing conjures horrific but irrelevant recollections of the Rwandan genocide.
The Dead faces a third problem: much of what the Ford brothers wanted didn’t get shot. Check out their commentary for a breezy account of the shoot from hell, including their own bad decisions and star Rob Freeman’s getting malaria.
EXTRAS Commentary, on-set footage. English audio. English SDH, Spanish subtitles.
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