Braindead/Dead-Alive Review

Braindead / Dead-Alive:

A.K.A No such thing as 'too much gore'

What happens when you mix gore, zombies, Peter Jackson and more gore? The answer: the new-Zeeland movie from 1992 BrainDead (or 'dead-alive' in northern America for legal reason apparently). This movie is without a doubt the goriest movie ever made, and I’m not even kidding. Don’t believe me? Well go judge for yourself, one thing is certain, it won’t be a waste of your time.

Plot:

The plot resolve around Lionel, a shy young man who lives alone with his mother as only companion. His mother is a bit …well let’s just say she wins the b8tch mother of the year award hands down 0_0 she’s the closest thing that resemble everything anyone ever said about their mothers in their angsty teen years. So Lionel finally meets a woman who is obsessed with him because her Voodoo big mamma told her that Lionel will be her soul mate. Of course, shy boy’s mother isn’t quite happy with the idea that her only son is going away with another woman, so she’ll try anything to stop them. What’s that? How can this be the gore mother lode of a movie I promised? Oh trust me, that’s just the beginning. The mother gets bitten by one the ugliest motherf8ing rat that ever roamed the earth and slowly turns into a zombie, that’s when the movie starts getting good. Instead of just killing her, our hero decide to keep her in his basement, and feed her like he used to when she was alive, but of course more people get infected and his basement becomes one big happy pile-up zombie hotel, all that until they finally escape and the gore meter meets it’s much anticipated climax. There is also a sub-plot throughout the movie with Lionel's uncle being a giant A-hole and how he tries to get Lionel's house to sell it or something trough blackmail.

Like I said, its gore at its finest, if Evil Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Re-animator would have a re-re love child, it still would feel like watching the Teletubbies compared to this masterpiece. I mean, how many movies have you heard of that gave airplanes puke-bags to the guests at the cinemas? But the movie can have its flaws for some who don't like waiting and a slow setting of the story in motion. For a zombie movie, it's pretty slow at the beginning. It’s not necessarily a bad thing but it does feel like a romantic comedy at first if you ignore the awesome opening scene where a guy gets chopped to bits. The special effects are pretty sweet too, the rat is animated with stop-motion and the zombies looks awesome and you can tell the makers had a sh8tload of fun coming up with new ideas for the zombies. Oh yeah, and here's another thing that rocks about this movie: in most zombie movies, the Romero rules state that to kill a zombie you either destroy the brain or remove the head. Well, those zombies are more like the ones from Return Of The Living Dead but less smarter. In other words, the zombies are pretty much indestructible, if you cut off a arm it still would try to get you, both the arm and rest of the zombie. There is as example one zombie that gets cut in two at the waist, both the legs and the torso go their own way, and later on the guts goes on without the torso and crawls all over the place strangling people, and that's just one of many example showing how creative the writers got with the undead.

So yeah, if you ever get your hands on this movie, grab a few friends, a puke bag and enjoy, you won't regret it. Good story, awesome effects, great comedy, lovable characters and a ton of gore, good one Peter Jackson.

And here are a few things I’ve learned from this movie:

- How to make zombie soup...oh god why???

- Don't f8ck around with priests, because they (quote): Kicke aaars for tha lhooord!

- Zombies can have babies apparently, and they are a b8tch to baby-sit

- lawnmower strapped to your chest = Epic Carnage :D

Personal rating: 8/10

Critical rating: 7/10