It truly saddens me to say, but stick with the fun trailer or just rent.
"Osombie"
Much hyped on-line due to the basic idea (Osama Bin Ladin comes back as a zombie) this is in fact, away from that most basic conceit, just another crappy new zombie film that could have been made by the SyFy Channel...aside from the unusually excellent zombie make-up.
First off bad CGI bothers us again.
CGI explosions! Yeah. That's right. *sigh*
If you can't do a good looking CGI explosion (or just have an actual explosion!) then don't have a damn explosion.
As having it hurts, not having it goes by unnoticed and is thus painless for the poor viewer.
And don't add rubbishy CGI helicopters either. Again, something not being in the film is less of a crime than having something rubbish in a film
Where the CG does actually work is in delivering some excellent (long distance) exploding heads. Although it is the same exploding head over and over again it seems like. And the blood splatter on the 'camera lens' is also way overused.
So even positives have negatives.
The practical FX on the zombies themselves, as said, is truly excellent though.
These are good and rotten, dried and flaky, zombies that stagger in that classic way and are thankfully physically well acted as well.
Most of the gore comes in the form of CGI bullet damage and the zombie make-up as sadly there is very little gut munching/bite gore to be seen at all.
A major let down.
And then the biggest problem; The absurd troop of soldiers.
They're gung-ho to a comic book level. But, not gung-ho in a brave way...but in a stupidly suicidal way that's utterly exasperates the viewer.
I kid you not, some of these soldiers literally run to their deaths.
As despite having guns to shoot the staggering zombies from a distance they run towards them and get in the middle of them! Meaning they get grabbed, knocked to the ground etc etc for absolutely no reason at all.
And quite why, in an almost flat desert, we have loads of scenes of zombies popping up completely unnoticed, worse unnoticed by a whole group of professional soldiers who are constantly taken unawares, is best left to the silly, silly, minds of the makers to explain.
And looking back almost of those that die in this film die purely because of their own comedic stupidity. It would be infuriating anyway, but for a bunch of trained soldiers? Christ!
And at one point one of them states how vital their mission is.
Which makes it even more infuriating that they act like they're on a weekend paintballing jolly.
Imagine the biker gang from the custard pie sequence in "Dawn of the Dead" only as soldiers and as the main characters.
They never, ever, take the zombie threat seriously, they laugh, shout, strip off to their naked torsos, fire madly for laughs and hit nothing. A right bunch of comedic yahoos.
EXCEPT they are not meant to be comical, and in fact nor is the film.
Yes, despite the bat *beep* crazy plot, the film is played and acted seriously...except when it isn't.
It cant seem to decide what it is, thus the serious stuff gets weakened and the humour becomes obtrusive.
And be prepared for lots of very dull talk, talk, talk as the soldiers slowly trudge through, or camp down in, the desert until the next, almost exactly the same each time to the point of tedium, zombie encounter.
Although there is a pretty effective tunnel sequence which is the only action scene not to seem tired or annoying.
And as for actual Bin Ladin himself, well that part of the plot is extremely anti-climactic in how it finally plays out. We're given no crowd pleasing scene involving him.
A real missed chance and another great looking zombie wasted in a poor film.
So sadly (and I mean sadly as I’m all for ‘out there’ ideas and go for it Indy spirit) despite some good flashes and a great basic idea "Osombie" should have remained just that, an idea.
In fact you know that great fun trailer you probably saw?
Well pretend it's one of those "Grindhouse" style fake trailers for a film that does not actually exist.
It's better that way.
But if you really need to see it, go the rental route.
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