BRAIN BITES

  DEATH OF THE DEAD (2011) USA 1hr 24mins Director: Gary King "They're eating her, then they're gonna eat me... oh my god!!!" Hysterical onlooker. "I just want a little bite of brains is all." Cut in half ninja zombie. "Wanda, we're halfway through the montage and you're just as terrible as ever!" Master Sensei. Wanda (Christina Rose) may be a bit of a nerd but she certainly tries her best at everything she does. Being that she is an uncoordinated mess means her best is just awful.  Her chosen activity of karate is the only thing she looks forward to and her weird, creepy, perverted mentor and sensei tries to discipline her in this delicate art, but it turns out he is not much better. Still he endeavours to support her through a tournament with their arch rivals The Killer Ninjas. After suffering an embarrassing defeat at the hands of the ninjas a disgraced Wanda goes running home. The Killer Ninjas victory is short lived as their bus crash...

TRAIN TO BUSAN (2016) South Korea 1hr 58mins Director: Sang-ho Yeon "Fellow citizens, please refrain from reaching to baseless rumours. We believe your safety is not in jeopardy." - Government announcement "I heard you're a fund manager. Then you're an expert at leaving useless people behind." - Sang-hwa "Mister. I'm scared. Take me home. My mother is waiting for me." - Yon-suk As the province of Jinyang puts up yet another quarantine zone, it turns out that this is not just a case of foot and mouth disease. Due to a 'tiny' leak in the Biotech District, strange things begin to happen in the surrounding areas. Firstly, with the wildlife then spreading to the human population in the cities. Seok-woo (Gong Yoo) a busy fund manager is in the midst of a messy separation with his wife but has custody of his young daughter Su-an (Su-an Kim). A relatively absent father, who mostly leaves raising his daughter to his mother, is reluctantly force...

  ONE CUT OF THE DEAD (2017) Japan 1hr 36mins Director: Shin'ichiro Veda "ACTION!!!" - Director Higurashi (at various intervals) "POM!" - Nao "There is no fiction, no lies. This is reality!" - Director Higurashi ONE CUT OF THE DEAD (2017) is not exactly a zombie movie per se,  it's more a movie with zombies in it that still isn't really about zombies. That being said it is one of cleverest zombie movies that 's not about zombies of modern times. ONE CUT OF THE DEAD (2017) is more a movie about making mediocre, budget TV shows. ONE CUT OF THE DEAD (2017) is also a movie about family and staying true to yourself but it does all of this with a great sense of humour and best of all... zombies! When I say that it is cleverly done it's a movie that lulls you into believeing it is a one dimensional budget B movie when it is so much more.  ONE CUT OF THE DEAD (2017) is really hard to describe without spoiling it, or at least I can't, so I ...

  DEADSET  (2008) United Kingdom 2hrs 21mins  Director: Yann Demange "What is television anyway but a big arrow pointing away from the problem?" - Joplin "You killed Davina!" - Pippa  "I hired her... I can do what I like." - Patrick This British mini series was written by satirist, presenter and producer Charlie Brooker. His background in political satire from shows like THE 11 O'CLOCK SHOW (1999) and  BRASS EYE (2001) may not seem like a gate way to horror but probably had some hand in him delving into more fictional satire and set him up perfectly to come up with the idea for a show based around a popular reality TV show and a fictional phenomena like a zombie apocalypse. The two concepts are not completely different from each other and he makes the point of saying that the human race is never going to be ready for a real apocalypse. We will never heed the warnings until it is too late. There may be a pocket of society that will survive but you can g...

 ZOM 100: BUCKET LIST OF THE DEAD (2023) Japan 2hrs 8mins Director: Yusuke Ishida "If I can't live my life the way I want. I'm better off as zombie food!" - Akira "Zombies can't have bucket lists." - Shizuka ZOM 100: BUCKET LIST OF THE DEAD (2023) is the live action remake of the anime series of the same name which came out about a month before this did. Not that this really makes a difference to me as I am not much of an anime fan so had the movie not come out, I would probably would never have watched it. The film (and series) is about a young guy called Akira (Eiji Akaso) who gets his first job and is really excited. His enthusiasm soon wears off as he is made to work all hours, do everyone else's  job and gets no appreciation. He loses all connections with his friends and goes from a being a happy, lively person to a tired, depressed "zombie like" shell of his former self. When the zombie apocalypse hits the city where he lives he bare...

  For this instalment of Brain Bites I thought I would make a slight deviation from the norm. I wanted to do this purely because this movie franchise is just as dear to my heart as zombie movies are. In fact, when I was a kid I thought that Deadites were zombies. Yes that's right... I would like to talk, for a moment, about our lord and saviour Sam Raimi who brought us his vision of a gory, splattery possession movie about a cabin in the woods, a book bound in human skin and a hapless doofus that becomes an unlikely hero. He created an unapologetic trilogy of humour, slapstick and horror with monsters, madness and a whole host of inventive camera work and practical FX. The first movie THE EVIL DEAD (1981) got banned in most countries for its depiction of a woman getting violated by foliage in the forest plus various acts of violence and scenes of people getting dismembered, EVIL DEAD II (1987) is a kind of reimagining of the first movie but with less tree rape, instead revamping th...

  DEAD RISING: ENDGAME (2016) USA 1hr 36mins Director: Pat Williams "Since when do Z's move that fast!!" - Garth "The virus will wipe us all out." - Dr. Rand DEAD RISING: ENDGAME (2016) is a direct sequel to  DEAD RISING: WATCHTOWER (2015) and is again set in between DEAD RISING 2 & 3 in terms of the video game but I'm really not sure of it's relevance to the video games this time around. There certainly isn't that style of the video game shooter camera POV's like there was in the first one at all. It does however follow on WATCHTOWERs story, so reporter Chase Carter (Jesse Metcalfe) is back and is as determined as ever. Sneaking around the ruins of East Mission trying to uncover more plans by corrupt military leader, General Lyons (Dennis Haysbert). This time Chase has stumbled upon some kind of human trafficking ring that involves human test subjects being given to mad scientist Dr. Rand (Billy Zane) who as well as working on a cure is als...