As Hollywood prepares to unleash its revisionist fantasy take on the life of Abraham Lincoln, which see’s the 16th President of the US juggling his leadership duties with his other calling in life as a vampire-hunting, crossbow-welding action hero, a more recent historical reimagining comes to DTV land in the form of Ozombie, The Axis of Evil Dead (see what they did there?).
Set in a picturesque Afghanistan landscape, somewhere on the outskirts of Los Angeles, the film follows a ragtag American platoon who are completely ‘fubared’ (as one insightful grunt puts it) when their radio guy is blown up amongst a scuffle with insurgents. But this enemy are far from what could be classified as normal, as they are members of the flesh-eating, walking dead.
Into that mix arrives Dusty, a hot female yoga instructor from the US who is on a personal mission to find her fanatical soldier brother as he journeys to track down a certain al-Qaeda leader who has been confirmed dead by the authorities for many months. As the increasingly desperate troops fight off the growing, undead horde, will Dusty find both her brother and the truth?
With such a nutty premise, it’s hard not to be initially intrigued as to what Ozombie may hold, and one of the first things to come across is how decent-looking the film is. The production values are way higher that that of your average Asylum picture and the CG blood splattering action scenes are competently, if unimaginatively, handled. There’s even a couple of funny, knowing lines every once in a while (despite being delivered by a predominately wooden cast).
The real problem, however, is that the film doesn’t go anywhere close to as extreme as it could (and should) have. The makers appear interested in following a more traditional, action-orientated trajectory, despite what it says on the tin. Everything is played pretty much straight (it has the usual “stay with me, dammit!” death scenes and war clichés) and in the end it looks like a generic low-budget action film with the arbitrary addition of zombies thrown into the mix. A fun scene where one of the female troops (affectionately known as ‘Tomboy’) effortlessly slices through an enemy patrol with a ridiculously huge samurai sword hints at an outlandish tone which is mostly absent from the rest of the film.
Don’t expect to find any astute moments of social commentary (à la George A. Romero) within the setting either, just the usual stock characters instantly identifiable to the genre, all being slowly picked-off one-by-one, save for the ridiculously bluff hero (who manages to get his six-pack out on a couple of occasions) and his female companions.
While nowhere near as bad as it could have been, Ozombie offers only a modicum of enjoyment and exists as a missed opportunity which fails to exploit the more subversive and outrageous aspects inherent in the material.
[Rating:2/5]
