By Keri O’Shea
When modern life comes crashing down on screen, you can depend on Australian genre cinema to represent this in gratuitous levels of detail, and let’s just say – we love them for it, don’t we? There have been so many examples of ingenious, batshit insane cinema coming out of the antipodes that it would make for a lengthy aside if I started going through them. However, all in all we can at least say it makes for an impressive pedigree, and you can always hope to add another film to the list, so if I was a little underwhelmed by the prospect of reviewing ‘yet another zombie movie’, then Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead soon won me over. Sod subtle and restrained – if you’re cramming your film with the walking dead then you may as well go for it: director Kiah Roache-Turner, in his first feature-length here, clearly knows this and the end results are impressively entertaining.
The plot starts out fairly reliably and familiarly, with an unspecified virus rapidly making its way through small town Australia, turning people into flesh-crazed maniacs and leaving only a small group of survivors thrown together by circumstance, licking their wounds whilst they try to figure out what the hell to do next. We piece together what’s gone on in retrospect, but to tell truth, at the early stages of the film we’re as perplexed as our characters are – one minute, one of the head characters, Barry (Jay Gallagher) is a happily married family man, the next he’s having to dispatch his young daughter with a nail-gun. Ditto, Benny (Leon Burchill) was just out on a hunting trip with his brother, but ended up having to blow his kneecaps out with his shotgun – and still he came after him. One of those days I guess (and there’s a pretty clear indication for you, if you like your zombie horror grisly, that you won’t be disappointed here). For whatever reason, though, these guys haven’t been affected by the initial virus – though they still need to avoid getting bitten – but Barry needs to get down the road to look for his sister, Brooke (Bianca Bradey) who is alive and has been ‘rescued’ by the military, which doesn’t turn out so great for her either…although before too long she has a novel way of turning things around.
If you feel like you could pitch that opening premise – virus, zombies, threat, corrupt establishment – into any number of zombie films, then you’d be right; thing is, once Wyrmwood really gets underway, it demonstrates that it actually has decent, innovative writing behind it. This is no cop-out first film where it’s just a retread of other genre films, even though you can see affectionate nods to several classics along the way. The start of Wyrmwood doesn’t dictate where it’s all going, happily, as there’s far more to it, and if you think you can predict everything that follows, well, then you’d be wrong. Promise. There are some really neat twists to the story which definitely feel in keeping with the genre, but also work really nicely in their own right. They’re daft as a brush but fun, and allow the film to keep things fresh and interesting.
One of the key ways it does this (and I don’t think I’m spoilering, considering the selected quote on the cover, let alone the film’s title itself) is how it marries zombie horror with road movie. Mad Max has been mentioned as a comparison; yeah, in several places, this rings very true. Barry is a bit of a dab hand when it comes to mechanics, see, and so are the fellas he winds up with. A lot of the film takes place through high pursuits and precarious travel scenarios, via kitted-up vehicles and embattled, armoured survivors. The presence in the plot of sister Brooke keeps the film from feeling like a boys’ club, but that said, Wyrmwood has a higher-than-average brawn factor – so look out for modded weapons and fist fights alongside the head-shots and splatter. So yes, Mad Max works as a reference, but to me, the film felt like it could have been adapted from a 2000 AD one-off, especially given its stylised, highly colourised shooting style, which came across looking like a cartoon strip in several places, intentionally or otherwise.
Sure – the whole ‘sprinter with white contact lenses and good cheekbones’ zombie archetype has taken over the genre these days, but the important thing in Wyrmwood that no one, living or (un)dead, phones in their performance. The film works so well as entertainment because quite simply, it has the courage of its convictions. It doesn’t spare anyone’s sensibilities, it takes a batch of good ideas and sees them through, and it never errs on the side of caution. The fact that Wyrmwood 2 is already in the works is good news, as the film has easily done enough to merit a follow-up – not least because it leaves us on a such a cliffhanger…
So is the zombie road movie a thing now? I really hope so. Wyrmwood deserves the steady fandom it’s been gaining, and I look forward to seeing where Brooke and Barry go next – two cult characters in waiting if ever I saw them. If you were feeling burned out on zombies, then this is a great, energised palate cleanser.
Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead will be released by Studiocanal on 11th May 2015.