FrightFest

4/10 - Good photography, and it sort of came together a bit at the end... but ropey acting and some fairly implausible sequences made it a bit frustrating. Added nothing new to the original.

I walked out after 45 minutes. The editing was choppy and bizarre, the cinematograpy was trying too hard to be stylistic to the point it became tedious and distractin. I left and came back for Chucky. Points for the soundtrack. It was bad, and not in an enjoyable b movie way.

2/10

I heartily agree with the negatives, I'm afraid. Seemed like a step up from the first film, but the pacing was interminable again, and the editing was just flouncy, artless nonsense (so many unnecessary slow-mo close-ups of Doc Martens trudging across deserts in these films). The performances were predictably duff, but the lead guy gave a decent account of himself, I guess. Loved the shoehorned-in paragliding bit; briefly, it was like an off-his-game Lucio Fulci doing James Bond.

3/10

As the original "The Dead" suffered from a lack of originality, I'd hoped that this sequel might try to put a new spin on an overworked genre, but instead the directors redo almost exactly the same film as the first one except a little bit worse. Again there's a white guy in a developing country who has to get from A to B during a zombie apocalypse. The film has the same concept and the same structure, only the details differ. It's extremely dull, with the hero moving from zombie attack to zombie attack until he gets to his goal, and problems abound: there's a silly escape from zombies on a paraglider, the hero has a handgun with infinite ammo and gets a zombie death exemption as he's frequently surrounded by zombies who then proceed to paw at him while he shoots them in the head one by one rather than bite a chunk out of his arm. Also, the camerawork which was one of the highlights of the first film is now mostly blurry, fast-edited shakeycam which prevents the viewer from seeing the details of the zombie attacks. The few things I liked about this film were that the scenery often looks good and the film doesn't shy away from some uncompromising and shocking violence. For zombie completists only.
3/10

Agreed, very dull and didn't really bring anything new to the table (except India). Its predecessor I quite enjoyed, the ultra slow shuffling zombies evoked the spirit of Fulci and had a cool retro to them. This was pretty much the same, just in India. I also thought the lead Indian actress who played Ishani was terribly wooden too.

Poor opener. 3/10

I did like the original, but this was just a dissappointing offering of more of the same that did nothing but Africa with India. Was soooooo slow, the whole film was just basically a tedious slow motion montage of him trudging through India...and his hand gun seemed to be like Legolas's magic quiver - did that thing NEVER run out of bullets??!! Some very nice scenery shots, and they did relatively well on a low budget, but the film was a bore sadly 4/10

And when a brisk stroll is enough to stay ahead of the zombies, it's hardly a threat worth worrying about. The only thing you'd need to do is avoid enclosed places with one entrance/exit point where you can be pinned in. Shame the characters didn't realise that.

Also, everyone in this film when running to safety behind closed doors, would always stop and gawp at the walkers for a few seconds before closing the door.

The first one bored me to tears. I prefered this one...although, not by much... maybe 5/10

For those wondering about guns... he pulled the automatic pistol from the belt of a military-dressed zombie in the scuffle after dropping from the paraglider harness. And he had plenty of ammo from the revolver... and it might fit if the automatic were the old US M1911A1 (which isn't that unlikely, it's the automatic pistol equivalent of the AK47). And he often had time to reload between scenes.

But it's not a good sign that we all spent the movie thinking about this...

Charlie wrote:The first one bored me to tears. I prefered this one...although, not by much... maybe 5/10

Yeah, pretty much my feelings...

The Spanish Last Days did much better with the "bloke trying to reach his pregnant GF during the apocalypse" plot. there is no excurse for such an ordinary zombie film. The location just gave an excuse for TV commercial visuals. Very dull indeed.

DJBenz wrote:And when a brisk stroll is enough to stay ahead of the zombies, it's hardly a threat worth worrying about. The only thing you'd need to do is avoid enclosed places with one entrance/exit point where you can be pinned in. Shame the characters didn't realise that.

Also, everyone in this film when running to safety behind closed doors, would always stop and gawp at the walkers for a few seconds before closing the door.

Why worry when there's a para-glider to hand?

bad start to festival. why they chose this as opening film, i have no idea.

so, the guy who filmed it is obviously very good at photographing a movie but whoever wrote the script/did the casting needs a slap round the face. it was frustrating cos some of it looked amazing, whoever was shoooting it had an amazing sense of space and depth (ok there was liittle too much slo-mo but whatever...) but whenever the human drama crept in i wanted to blow my own brains out. i know these guys are brothers and they are totally into being DIY or whatever but they need to hire a professional scriptwriter if they make another film, cos their brotherly-love DIY film making approach is not working out i'm afraid....

*** Spoilers ***
Similar to the first, with a particular style, a different setting to usual and lush visuals. I thought the leading man was better this time, but certain aspects let the film down, such as the limitless ammo and some of the acting in the supporting roles. 7.5 / 10

Beautiful to look at, but way too slow paced for me and I found it rather dull.