The Dead is the Ford Brothers foray into zombie films. Filmed in Africa in many respects it truly feels like the Romero film that should have been made right after Day of the Dead. It has the look and feel of a classic Romero zombie film without the ‘subtle’ commentary on humanity that he likes to throw in. Sure the Ford Brothers do in a bit of social commentary into the film but not the singular in your face overall thought that follows through Romero’s movies.
We follow the film through the eyes of Lt. Brian Murphy who is one of the only survivors of a plane crash of military or mercenaries that were abandoning Africa after the zombie outbreak occurred. We follow him as he tries to find another way off of the continent and quickly he stumbles across a military deserter, Daniel Dembele, who is trying to reach his son and wife. Daniel helps Brian’s car out of a ditch that it’s stuck in and in return is offered a ride for his help.
Daniel, having deserted his post is now on the run from both the local military and the hordes of the flesh eating undead that are scouring the planet. Also when hordes are mentioned in this film it’s not an understatement. There are a ton of zombies in every single scene of the film aside from the introduction (which happens because of a zombie.) The zombies themselves are of the slow variety and clearly look to be from the area.
As we follow Brian and Daniel to look for a way out of the country and Daniel’s family we are shown time and time again how Africa has been devastated by the undead. While groups of soldiers are still somewhat safe in a variety of locations throughout the movie nearly every village that these two enter are either empty or filled with the dead (walking or those who have taken a headshot.)
There are two huge points that I have to bring up. Quite a few of early reviews have seen these two points as either flaws or what make the film and it’s really going to be a personal preference. The film can be very slow at parts and the film can be near silent on dialogue for a large portion of it. Honestly if you are easily distracted you are most likely going to have issues with parts of the movie. In some parts it works as tension building in some it works as what people actually would have to do when surrounded by hordes of zombies – be quiet or be eaten.
If you can’t stay hidden from hordes of the undead and there are too many to try to run from you need to avoid them and hide from them. This means you can’t stick on your headlights in the middle of the country when you were just making a lot of noise turning yourself into a homing beacon to the flesh eaters who are chasing you. You can’t have an introspective conversation about how lie is now compared to ‘normality’ just a few days prior. You can’t fall apart you just need to keep moving and this film embodies that perfectly.
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