This schlocky, infamous dose of early '90s body horror waves its admiration for the Evil Dead films like a flag. More specifically, it sets out to emulate the campy humor, cheeky one-liners and gross-out special effects of Sam Raimi's slapstick screamers. As story goes, Dead Alive only provides the bare minimum. There's a plot, some silly gibberish about a Sumatran rat-monkey whose bite induces zombism, but it's nothing more than a vehicle from one zany, gore-drenched horror-gasm to the next. The monkey gets its claws into an old woman, she spreads the infection, her doting son takes it upon himself to clean up the mess... that's really all you need to know.
At heart, this is a fond, playful farewell for budding director Peter Jackson; his last (and bloodiest) low-budget splatter-fest before moving on to more serious material. And why not shift genres at this point? He's just left everything on the abattoir floor. Dead Alive is so morbidly droll, so wickedly juvenile, so blissfully profane, it's impossible to imagine a bridge much further. Any time it seems the hijinx cannot possibly get any more obscene, whoops, here comes something much, much worse. The unregulated mayhem is admirable, absurd hilarity at its best, but even at a breezy ninety-odd minutes, the total reliance on shock value wears thin. I cackled for an hour, but somewhere between the food processor baby and the shoulder-mounted lawnmower, I could feel my smile fade. Diminishing returns, I'm afraid.
Make no mistake: Dead Alive is bad cinema. It's crammed full of weak performances, overbearing camera angles and cut-rate soundtrack riffs (at unnecessary volume levels). And man, it's ruthlessly stupid. But stupid doesn't always equate to no fun. This is a ball while it lasts, and there's no question that Jackson and company are in on the joke, but it doesn't last forever. Not as long as the film does, anyway. Bad + entertaining is still bad.
At heart, this is a fond, playful farewell for budding director Peter Jackson; his last (and bloodiest) low-budget splatter-fest before moving on to more serious material. And why not shift genres at this point? He's just left everything on the abattoir floor. Dead Alive is so morbidly droll, so wickedly juvenile, so blissfully profane, it's impossible to imagine a bridge much further. Any time it seems the hijinx cannot possibly get any more obscene, whoops, here comes something much, much worse. The unregulated mayhem is admirable, absurd hilarity at its best, but even at a breezy ninety-odd minutes, the total reliance on shock value wears thin. I cackled for an hour, but somewhere between the food processor baby and the shoulder-mounted lawnmower, I could feel my smile fade. Diminishing returns, I'm afraid.
Make no mistake: Dead Alive is bad cinema. It's crammed full of weak performances, overbearing camera angles and cut-rate soundtrack riffs (at unnecessary volume levels). And man, it's ruthlessly stupid. But stupid doesn't always equate to no fun. This is a ball while it lasts, and there's no question that Jackson and company are in on the joke, but it doesn't last forever. Not as long as the film does, anyway. Bad + entertaining is still bad.