Movie Review: DEAD ALIVE (1992)

Tonite I am reviewing, in my opinion, a classic. Dead Alive aka “BrainDead”. This is a film directed by Peter Jackson as well as Stephen Sinclair and Fran Walsh.

Synopsis via IMDB: Overprotective mother Vera Cosgrove (Elizabeth Moody), spying on her grown son, Lionel (Timothy Balme), as he visits the zoo with the lovely Paquita (Diana Penalver), is accidentally bitten by the fearsome Sumatran rat-monkey. When the bite turns his beloved mother into a zombie, Lionel tries to keep her locked safely in the basement, but her repeated escapes turn most of the neighbors into the walking dead, who then crash a high-society party thrown by Lionel’s boorish Uncle Les (Ian Watkin).

When I first watched this movie, knowing it was a Peter Jackson film, I was not sure what to expect.  The opening scene sucked me in pretty quickly. Gore splatter creating the movie title display on the screen “Dead Alive”.

Right from the start I loved how disgusting the movie was. The special effects are practical which is typically my favorite style of special effects in horror/gore movies. Limbs being visibly chopped off, puke-ish looking gore squirting out of open wounds and into pudding. Then seeing someone eat it. CLASSY!

The romance in this movie is really cheesy, but it sets this kind of funny undertone to the movie which gives off a bit of a “safe vibe” like you know the film isn’t really going to scare you.

The music worked really well with the film. Super weird with a hint of cheesy but ominous tones. I really liked the music, it actually had me excited in anticipation of what the music was building up to knowing the possibilities based on the direction the film was already going.

The end of the film was a straight up gore fest. Ridiculous death scene after ridiculous death scene. Brutality at its finest. This film features one of my favorite zombie slaughter scenes which I have actually seen floating around the internet in GIF form.

All in all, the movie is very entertaining. There really is not a dull moment in the movie, unless you consider a bit of dry humor dull. This movie not very comparable to any of the “Living Dead” movies, except maybe “ The Return of the Living Dead” which is a personal favorite of mine. Anyways, here is my overall rating for “Dead Alive” :

Story/Concept: 2
Direction/Style: 2
Scares:1
Atmosphere: 2
Rewatchability: 2
TOTAL: 9/10

Closing this review, If you consider yourself a horror fanatic, or just a fan of Peter Jackson, I HIGHLY recommend this film. FUCKING WATCH IT!!!

Devin March
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