by Brendan Foley
Two Cents
Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
THE PICK
This Two Cents runs on zombies. No zombies? No Two Cents.
Luckily Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead has zombies. Lots of them! Hailing from Australia, a nation that likes its Maxes mad and its crocodiles nice and dundee’d, this micro-budgeted gore-epic got big responses when it played at last year’s Fantastic Fest, and it’s easy to see why a raring-to-go, genre-friendly crowd would respond to a film loaded to the breaking point with blood-dripping undead, head-shots, souped up rigs and women controlling zombies with psychic powers.
But do all these oddball pieces add up to a whole? Or is Wyrmwood little more than a recitation of cult horror greatest hits, mixing and matching elements from Raimi to Jackson to Miller without adding anything of its own?
We posed the question to the Two Cents crew, and after a quick gearing-up montage, the team is ready to weight in on what sort of ride you might find on the road of the dead.
Did you get a chance to watch along with us this week? Want to recommend a great (or not so great) film for the whole gang to cover? Comment below or post on our Facebook or hit us up on Twitter!
Next Week’s Pick: Before he was a character inhabited by Johnny Depp in terrifying, terrifying blue contact lenses, Whitey Bulger cut a swath of fear through South Boston for decades.
As Black Mass and the attendant non-stop Boston accent jokes roll out into theaters, the Two Cents team will be checking out Whitey the recent documentary from acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger, a film that includes everything from Bulger’s early career to his recent trial. Berlinger’s earlier films, the Paradise Lost series, paved the way for the liberation of the West Memphis Three. Could Whitey prove to be every bit as incisive and incendiary?
Join us next week as dig into Whitey, Whitey, and (presumably) make lots and lots of jokes about how people from Massachusetts talk.
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review to twocents(at)cinapse.co!
THE TEAM
Justin:Like Honest Abe, the renowned vampire slayer and zombie hunter, I cannot tell a lie. Or was it George Washington? Either way, I must admit that this film does little for me.
It took me three separate sittings to get through it and I found myself drawn to my iPhone more often than I should be while watching an action flick. It simply couldn’t keep my attention. Perhaps in a different moment… a moment with a less zombie obsessed culture… but I digress…
It did get me thinking though thinking about the age old “zombies” vs. “infected” argument. I saw a few decries on the Interwebs of how the creatures of this film were not true zombies and it reminded me just how much I hate when nerds argue about the distinction. Seriously, shut up!
So, yeah, if you didn’t catch this, I thought it was okay… I guess… (@thepaintedman)
Ed:Being that I’ve now reviewed Wyrmwood twice on this very site, both from last year’s Fantastic Fest run and upon its home video release, there isn’t a whole lot about Wyrmwood that I have left to say. I really like it and think it offers entertaining twists to a couple of well worn subgenres. But what I’d really like to note here is how differently some films can be experienced based on our prior knowledge of them. Since I saw the film at a festival with its creators present, I knew that the production shot on weekends for years. I respected the movie before it even started. And that likely swayed me into digging it a lot harder than someone might who simply catches in on Netflix one night while browsing. I believe Wyrmwood stands on its own as a high octane piece of genre entertainment, but knowledge of the commitment these friends and filmmakers put into this makes it all the sweeter for me. (@Ed_Travis)
Brendan:Wyrmwood often feels like it is operating as its own prequel. There are images and ideas that really work, or at least so delightfully gonzo that you want them to work, but those moments are often stranded beneath the conventions of the oh-so standard zombie apocalypse narrative. If the movie had arrived where it was going narratively earlier, I’d have an easier time recommending it. As is, it feels like the entire movie is a run-up to the last five minutes, which are a run-up to the (presumable) sequel.
Which, fine, I will watch that sequel. There’s enough verve and visual style (even if much of the visual sense is taken almost wholly from Raimi and the Evil Dead films) to suggest that this movie was made by genuinely talented folks who possess the ability to make great films, possibly even within this universe. And there are fun personal touches, like the whole idea of zombies being used as energy, or the film’s (too rare) spots of cheerfully mean humor. But I can’t get past the feeling that this is mostly just a slick copy of a copy, running through the tried and tired tropes of low budget zombie films. (@TheTrueBrendanF)
Austin:There is no Mad Max but Mad Max, and it’s probably best to ignore such comparisons, as they will always disappoint. The promising-sounding Bellflower was a nasty, hate-filled letdown, and even the goofy Italian knockoffs, despite their charms, simply don’t hold up. New Australian entry Wyrmwood kind of falls in with that latter category. The comparisons to Mad Max — and the apparent Fury Road knockoff subtitle Road Of The Dead — don’t do it any favors, instead reminding us of a better film created with much greater resources.
For what it is, though, it’s not bad. It’s a genuinely fun, occasionally goofy, and splatter-filled zombie flick with some unique twists on the genre that we haven’t seen before, tying into the Biblical apocalypse and rewriting zombie biology. One of the major plot twists is an overly convenient Deus ex Machina, but aside from that quibble I found it a stylish and action-horror experience. (@VforVashaw)
Frank:Before checking out Wyrmwood, I was feeling a bit done with the whole zombie horror genre mainly because more than any other sub-genre of horror, it’s difficult to find new places to take it. While it’s far from perfect, the ambitiously fun Wyrmwood comes pretty close to giving zombie filmmaking a hard-to-get reprieve.
Let’s get what doesn’t work out of the way, shall we? The film is so hopelessly indie that even the flashiest of visuals, can’t hide its seams and the humor doesn’t always hit home the way it should.
Yet there are still plenty of laughs to be had here and more in this B-movie throwback. The zombies, and more importantly the zombie destruction, are cool, while the movie’s guerrilla-like camerawork and cinematography give Wyrmwood the right kind of manic feel it needs to work. There’s some great use of the Australian outback as the backdrop for the film’s madness and the cast knows the right marks to hit when it comes to delivering either terror or laughter.
Above all thought, Wyrmwood is a pretty decent form of escape for genre nuts, especially in the wild roller coaster type of ride into the never-ending world of zombies. (@frankfilmgeek)
Our Guest
Cole Bradley:It’s garbage.
Consider this my submission. (@ColeWBradley)
Get it at Amazon:
Wyrmwood [Blu-ray] | [DVD] | [Instant]
Did you all get a chance to watch along with us? Share your thoughts with us here in the comments or on Twitter or Facebook!