#249: War of the Dead
The shit I put myself through for y’all
This review was originally posted to Twitter on April 20, 2020.
Initial release: October 22, 2011
Director: Marko Mäkilaakso
I have a high tolerance for bad movies. I found Trench 11 entertaining if not particularly brilliant for the most part. I’ve defended the much-maligned Alien 3 for decades. But even I have my limits. War of the Dead is 87 minutes of absolute, utter bullshit.
War of the Dead is a movie about zombies running loose in Finland during the Continuation War (Finland fighting off the Soviet Union.)
That’s it. That’s the movie.
The premise: in 1939, somewhere in Finland, the Nazis are running an experiment deep in a bunker to create… something. Super-soldiers, probably. After an opening scene where they inject a Soviet prisoner with something that seems to kill and then resurrect him, we jump forward. It’s now 1941, and a joint Finnish/American (!) unit are on a mission to take out a bunker occupied by the Soviets.
Can you spot the historical inaccuracy here?
Why would the Americans, who aren’t even in the war yet, help the Finnish against the Soviets? None of this is ever explained. The most confirmation we get that this is an unusual situation is when the lone remaining American captain is asked “why are you even here? It’s not your war!” But that’s it.
There’s a lot of things that simply aren’t explained. We learn nothing about what the Nazis were even doing down there. We learn nothing about the black goop that seems to be the source of it all. We don’t even learn anything about the strange clockwork keys connected to all this. Instead, we get an hour and a half of near constant zombie combat. They come from everywhere, popping out of vents, dropping from trees, bursting through doors. They’re fast moving, they’re violent, and they’re grabby. They’re literally the only reason to watch this. So we’re treated to scenes right out of that iconic first zombie map at the end of Call of Duty: World at War, some fairly tense moments deep in a bunker that’s of fairly strange construction, and a few boring scenes where a bunch of bad actors bicker with each other. We also get to watch the lone remaining American (played by a Brit, natch) get into an actual fist fight with the zombified Finnish lieutenant who somehow is stronger and meaner than the others. There’s no explanation for that, either.
I like zombie movies, but a big part of what makes zombie movies work is the human element. The zombie film is inherently a subgenre of disaster and apocalypse cinema, and those genres built themselves on character drama. We get very little of that here.
This is apparently the most expensive film Lithuania has ever made, and I have to be honest, you’d think they’d have spent that money on something good. The special effects are mostly decent, the cinematography is acceptable, but that script, my god. Watch Trench 11 instead.
