Tonight’s movie is Australian Zombie film “Wyrmwood”. The movie is directed by Kiah Roache-Turner whose “Nekrotronic” from 2018, I saw a few years ago and was pretty impressed with (Worth checking, it’s like a B-Movie ghostbusters but very Australian). The movie stars Jay Gallagher (Who was also in Nekrotronic), Bianca Bradey and Leon Burchill as is written by Kiah and Tristan Roach-Turner.
October Review Challenge – Day 14
The movie starts after a brief lead in with some survivors telling their stories we go back to day zero of a zombie apocalypse, which appears to be tied to a meteor shower. Mechanic Barry (Gallagher) is woken up by a call from his sister who is basically stuck in her garage and pinned down by zombies. Not knowing what is going on, he hears a sound from downstairs and goes to investigate, finding a zombie in his kitchen that he just about manages to kill. He and his wife and kids head off in the car to reach his sister but part way through his wife and daughter turn zombie and he has to kill them.
Meanwhile his sister Brooke (Bradey), is rescued by some army men, but it turns out to be more of a kidnapping than a rescue. She finds herself in the back of a truck with a mobile lab and a mad scientist experimenting on her by injected zombie blood into her. The end goal is to then kill her and extract some kind of brain fluid. However, Brooke finds she can control the zombies also held in the lab and through that plots her escape.
Barry eventually finds another group of survivors. But they are stranded by a lack of fuel as all petrol has become non-flammable. However they have found that the zombies excrete a gas that is flammable and so they convert their vehicle (after beefing it up to cope with zombie attacks) to run off zombie gas. Heading out most of the survivors end up dead, but eventually Barry and Benny (Burchill) manage to catch up with the truck with his sister. This leads to the grand climax (Which I’m not dropping spoilers for).
What Makes a Good Zombie Film
The Zombie genre is a heavily over saturated one and as such can be hard to find one that stands out. That said, it’s not actually hard to make a zombie movie that stands out you just have to remember the three key ingredients: Tragedy, Dark Humour and Social Commentary. If you have one of these you aren’t going to stand out well, two of these you have a decent zombie movie, but three and you have something great.
I say tragedy instead of horror or gore because the thing that makes Zombie films dark is the inevitable loss of everything. Having to kill loved ones, running for all your worth but knowing that your pursuers will never stop and are everywhere. It is not a genre built for jump scares, gross out horror or situations that cause quick fear. It is a genre built sadness to it and a fatalism.
But that has to be balanced out by humour. Zombies are stupid, they act stupid and at their core they represent human stupidity. It’s important to recognise the insanity of the situation so a bit of humour is needed. That’s not to say it has to be a comedy. Finally and perhaps most importantly is the social commentary. That is what ties it together and what made Romero’s films stand out from the imitators. Even his bad ones nailed the social commentary. The key is the Zombies are us. You can tackle that in many different ways, but it’s what gives the genre a deeper meaning.
Wyrmwood Vs Z-Nation
So where does Wyrmwood lie? Well the social commentary isn’t really there. Instead it goes in the direction of the Z-Nation TV series, embracing the comedy but not at the expense of the despair. Like that TV series it comes up with interesting gimmicks for the zombies, in the case of Wyrmwood in how the zombies have to be used for fuel and how that only works in the day. During the night the zombies use their own “fuel” which allows them to move faster. This is a handy way of allowing both slow and fast zombies in one franchise.
The other way this is similar to Z-Nation is that though an attempt to create a zombie cure, one of the characters find they can control zombies. This is something we see evolve throughout the movie and while not the most original idea, is done quite well and is actually done as one of the more serious aspects, whereas in Z-Nation it was the primary source of comedy a lot of the time.
The loss factor is done well though. Right out the gate our lead has to kill his wife and daughter with a nail gun. He then is determined to kill himself and only brought around by remembering he needs to go rescue his sister. The movie doesn’t forget the tragedy and that is good, but as it moves on it embraces the goofy more and more and it really works for it. It reminds me of the earlier seasons of Z-Nation when it was at it’s peak. This movie has a sequel and apparently a TV series coming so we will see if they can keep up the quality or will it wane like it did with Z-Nation.
Assessment
Towards the end the acting quality drops off a little as other actors than the lead find themselves needed to express intense emotion and don’t really pull it off. But the film does pull off some fun set pieces and a lot of nice visuals. There is a lot of things here done because they are cool, but it’s the kind of film that can get away with that as it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The emergence of the “Final Boss” of the film seemed a little out of nowhere, but I guess they needed a fight to feel a bit more personal and it did achieve that.
The lack of any real social commentary apart from a vague “Greater good Vs individual rights” thing stops this from elevating itself to one of the great zombie films but it is still a lot more fun then you would expect from a random zombie movie from an (At that point) unknown director on a shoestring budget ($160,000… seriously that was the whole production budget).
Conclusion
I have nothing but praise for what they managed to do with the resources they had and between this and Nekrotronic I’m definitely a fan of the director. However, I can’t give more points for being done with little resources, I have to be objective and so this is a strong 6/10. With a bit more time, a bit better actors and a bit more depth this could have been pushing a 7. It’s not there, but it is well worth checking out.
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