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In the midst of this, she discovers the mental ability to control the zombies (although how and why is never made clear). The main action with Jay Gallagher and Leon Burchill setting out on their cross-country trip is intercut with an ongoing B-plot about Bianca Bradey tied up and being experimented on by a mad scientist (Berynn Schwerdt) who seems modelled on Richard Liberty in Day of the Dead (1985). Keith Agius also gets a speech where he explains what is happening as being part of the Biblical Tribulation, which strains to almost seem convincing, and sets up the title and the intriguingly unexplored idea of crosshatching the zombie film with the Christian End Times film.
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There are few new ideas thrown into the mix that are odd to say the least – the idea that gasoline is now useless (a wave of the hand explanation that has something to do with the comet) and that zombie blood can be used as a fuel substitute. All of its ideas are by the book – slow stumbling zombies, the need to kill them with headshots, almost instant infection from a bite – and have been well and truly milked out by the zombie film in the last few years. Amid this, I am not sure that Wyrmwood adds anything to the mix, other than simply being a capably well made zombie film. (For an overview of the genre see Zombie Films). The zombie genre is one that has become creatively strip-mined to the point of exhaustion in recent years. Scientist Berynn Schwerdt (c) in his mobile lab of zombies with an imprisoned Bianca Bradey (far right) The sheer visual energy of the film alone should have you cheering in the aisle. And it all comes with an appealingly sarcastic sense of humour and buckets of gore.
Wormwood road of the dead professional#
(And yet for all that, Wyrmwood is surprisingly professional looking – Kiah Roache-Turner and co did manage to raise a $160,000 budget).Įverything has been filmed in sharp, hyperkinetic images – you feel like that the medium of film is doing it a disservice and that Wyrmwood should come in comic-book panels with accompanying onomatopoeic dialogue balloons. Comparable others might include the likes of The Evil Dead (1981), Re-Animator (1985) and early Peter Jackson films like Bad Taste (1988) and Braindead (1992). It is the kind of insane determination and fierceness that you only find in low-budget films by people wanting to break into the industry. The film premiered at SXSW where it was clearly hoping to become a midnight favourite and received generally positive reviews from the genre press.įrom the very opening shot, Wyrmwood kicks in with a crazed energy that keeps going without let up until the end credits roll. Roache-Turner shot the film over a four-year period, along with friends and family. Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead was the directorial debut of Australian newcomer Kiah Roache-Turner.