By Keri O’Shea
The zombie, one of our most well-worn movie monsters, shows no sign of letting up, and even though zombies have made it into the mainstream, they remain a temptation to indie filmmakers keen to exploit the relatively easy-to-create hordes that bring the horror. All the same, I really wouldn’t want to make a zombie movie these days. The market is just so crowded, and more often than not the end result is not particularly noteworthy – or it’s even worse than that, when even the guy who spawned the whole genre is churning out guff like Survival of the Dead. That said, the movie-buying public certainly haven’t lost their taste for the resurrected dead: when a good film comes along – such as The Dead did in 2010 – it’s a rare pleasure, and it reminds us why we like these films in the first place.
The directorial team of brothers Howard and Jon Ford went through a great deal to make The Dead (as explained in Howard’s book, Surviving the Dead) and so I was curious – well, firstly why they’d put themselves through the trials and tribulations of making another zombie film in foreign climes which may throw up some of the same issues they faced the time before, and also to see what they were going to do differently with their second zombie movie.
Moving the action to India, The Dead 2 actually picks up broadly from the same start point as the first film, with a mysterious outbreak in Africa making its way to India (bloody international travel, eh?) where it impacts upon the life of American wind turbine engineer Nicholas (Joseph Millson). Rather inexplicably, Nicholas has been having a relationship with a girl called Ishani (Meenu Mishra) who comes from a poor corner of Mumbai, and whose first words uttered are to inform him by telephone that she’s pregnant: as she imparts this info, helicopters are clustering in the sky above her head and word of a strange outbreak is on the streets. Nicholas has to make his way to her: we learn that this isn’t the first unplanned pregnancy he’s had in his life, and as he bottled it last time, he owes it to Ishani to look after her (which by and large means stopping her getting killed, in the short term anyway).
As he fights to make his way to the city from the sticks where he’s been working, Nicholas picks up with a little orphan boy called Javed (who’s annoyingly chipper given the circumstances), and the kid offers to help him on his journey in return for Nicholas’s protection. The two progress, then stop, then stave off the undead, then continue on their way to Mumbai. Meanwhile, we are also kept up to speed with Ishani in her family home, where she alternates between squabbling with her authoritarian father and inexplicably unbolting the front door to gaze at the zombies in the streets, before closing it again. Still, it allows her to see the chaos that is still happening out there. Will Nicholas reach her safely, and where will they go if he does?
The Dead 2 has a great deal in common with the first film, and as such, can boast a lot of the same strong qualities. Many of these relate to the film’s impressive aesthetics. The Dead 2, like the first, looks rather wonderful, with the same high production values and gorgeous colour palette; if you were ever in any doubt as to whether a zombie film can look beautiful, then both of these films make a strong case for showing that yes, they certainly can. Both in Africa and in Asia, the setting is shown as rich, vibrant and engaging, as well as being shot (and here’s a dreadful word) authentically, not dressed up or prettified for the cameras. The Dead 2 also employs the same sort of slow burn approach for the most part, with its very slow walking dead more about dread than shocks. Clearly again employing a veritable army of locals to portray the zombies, there are many striking, well-realised scenes in the film, with a host of people far from used to our horror traditions really giving their all as the undead.
Unfortunately, because the sequel has so much in common with the first film, it feels in many ways like a straightforward retread of it. The plots are eerily familiar: an American guy abroad pairs up with a local and they both fend off the undead as they make their way to a destination, whilst the theme of family stays at the fore. And then, where The Dead 2 does elect to include new plot elements, these don’t work very well in all honesty, because the writing feels somewhat out of its comfort zone. I’ve mentioned only recently that I find the whole pregnancy motif, the way it’s so commonly used in indie cinema, hackneyed and off-putting: Ishani seems to serve no purpose in the plot except as a rationale for the road trip which serves as the bulk of the film’s action, a means for a guy who’s already bailed out on one pregnancy to get it right this time. Clearly unused to acting (this is Meenu Mishra’s first role) and uncomfortably picking her way through a script in slightly stilted English, little comes of these Mumbai scenes: indeed, having so many of the characters conversing in English for the camera’s sake reduces the believability of the human drama it’s meant to convey: if people aren’t fully sure of their lines, then they won’t deliver them with much gusto. Asides about the reason for the outbreak – be it ‘fate’ or ‘karma’ – are not developed, which is a shame, as these ideas just hover over the film’s finale, but don’t really move our understanding forward.
The Dead was – positively, I feel – more of a mood piece than a plot-driven movie, and I understand that the Ford brothers wanted to do something else plot-wise this time around; although they seem torn, re-framing a lot of the great work they did in The Dead in their second film. However, you can see that atmosphere is what they do best and what they like best, and sadly they’ve lessened the amount of atmosphere generated in the new film by fudging some of the other going concerns. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Ford team are excellent directors. Can’t deny that. But perhaps, and this is just my own feeling here, they’ve fallen foul of the fact they do everything – directing, producing, writing. I’d love to see these guys working with a seriously challenging script to see what they achieve. I’d say they’d be capable of absolute dynamite. The Dead 2 shows us again that they have high production values and masses of ambition, qualities which are lacking in so many filmmakers, but to date, I’d still say The Dead is the film that best showcases their skills.
The Dead 2: India is released by Altitude Film on 13th July 2015.