The Dead 2 hits Blu-ray September 16th from Anchor Bay Entertainment
With The Dead 2 (sometimes called The Dead 2: India, which tells you virtually everything you need to know about the movie), the Ford brothers (Howard and John as both writers and directors) cement a frustrating pattern of alternating beauty and boredom that they laid the foundations for in the first Dead film. That isn’t to say that The Dead doesn’t have its merits. It really does. This film series tells a traditional, “Romero rules” zombie outbreak tale, and then sets its stories in exotic locations. An effective hook. The Dead was set in Africa, and the horror of zombies in third world deserts and villages, was more than just a novelty… it was a fresh lens through which to reflect on the themes that run through all zombie films. What does it mean to be human? Does mankind deserve the apocalypse? Where does our hope stem from and what’s the point of existence without hope? All of this stuff combined well with remarkably beautiful cinematography to create a better than average zombie film. But the issues with the film are legion as well. The lead actor is flat and ranges from acceptable to painful. The narrative just seems to careen from narrow escape to narrow escape, almost as though there is no script at all. And due to the complications of shooting a zombie film in Africa… one gets the sense that what script there was had to be repeatedly jettisoned and re-worked.
Why am I talking so much about the first Dead film when this is a review of the second one? Great question. That’s because The Dead 2 makes all of the same mistakes as the first film, and has all of the same strengths as well. Perhaps even more beautifully shot than the last film, The Dead 2’s protagonist Nicholas Burton (Joseph Millson) fares somewhat better in the acting department than the first film’s lead. He’s an electrical engineer who works on giant windmills in India and who has just found out that his Indian girlfriend Ishani (Meenu, in the film’s roughest performance) is pregnant when the zombie outbreak hits. There’s a drone-controlled shot of Nicholas working on the windmill that starts close in and slowly pans out farther and farther, revealing a field of windmills that is breathtaking. Impressive cinematography like this will continue throughout, with chaotic tracking/steadicam shots, and further brilliant use of drone cameras capturing shots that will make you wonder “How did they do that?” There are also some set pieces and passing moments that flirt with brilliance, such as a sequence when Nicholas must use a paraglider to escape a zombie horde, or when he comes across a woman and her child who are still alive, but are trapped in a car with zombies slowly approaching. And believe it or not, there’s a child sidekick named Javed (Anand Gopal), who surprisingly not super annoying, and is probably the best actor of the whole bunch.
You take all of those “plus column” elements of The Dead 2, and you add to it the beauty of shooting on location in India, and there is something special about the film. One has to appreciate the extreme conditions under which the Ford brothers create these films. But also through this series, you tend to see exactly why no one else has really ever attempted indie, Western, genre filmmaking in places like Africa and India before. Behind the scenes content of both films explains the hardships they faced, forcing them to change sequences they had planned and jettison others. The Dead films feel like a series of compromises (I know, all films are), so while you gain production value on a monumental scale in India… you apparently lose control over your narrative. Both Dead films meander, bouncing from incident to incident and feeling more like vignette films than real, compelling narratives. And the themes of Indian religion and mythology, such as various discussions of karma and whether the zombie outbreak implies that our religions are all false, come across as forced and on the nose… which was not the intention, to be certain.
In the end, I personally would be interested and willing to follow this series into a third installment… some new exotic locale that would bring further fresh visuals to the overcrowded zombie genre. The Dead and The Dead 2 are better than the vast majority of zombie dreck that is getting churned out ad nauseum right now, but their flirtation with possible greatness is what makes them such frustrating experiences. The poor acting and floundering plotting are all the more pronounced after you’ve just been thrilled by a particular set piece or fleeting shot that was gorgeously captured. It feels like the Ford brothers have locked themselves into a formula here, falling into all the same traps they did in their first film. So I got more or less exactly what I expected here with The Dead 2, and would imagine a similarly frustrating experience awaiting me if they do a third. Anyone curious about this series should consider checking it out with all the caveats I’ve listed, but I can’t offer a strong recommend to anyone outside of zombie fans dying for a fresh approach.
The Package
Probably the greatest strength of The Dead 2 are its visuals, so since there’s very little chance you’ll ever see this movie on the big screen, this Blu-ray is none too shabby in the visual department. A veritable “planes, trains, and automobiles” bevvy of transportation options present themselves to Nicholas as he and Javed race across India to rescue Ishani, and they all look awesome. From a full speed motorcycle shot across a wasteland, to the aforementioned paraglider, there are simply things in The Dead 2 that you’ll never see anywhere else, much to its credit. But the film as a whole doesn’t come together, and this package is limited to a single “Making Of” featurette and a couple of brief and uninteresting deleted scenes. The Making Of featurette does offer some insights into how various shots were captured and what some of the Ford brothers’ challenges were in crafting the film, but overall this package screams “rental” versus “must own”.
And I’m Out.