Braindead (1992)

Braindead (1992) a.k.a. Dead Alive (North American Title) This was the first film I ever saw that shocked me with the litres of blood it contained! It’s probably one of the pillars of the genre that made me realise that I didn’t like gore or blood spurts, especially over-the-top ones.

So… No, this film doesn’t make you appreciate either gore or zombies. Sorry to disappoint you!
On the contrary, it develops a fierce hatred for this kind of film.

Well, I suppose I’m attacking another cult film… but so what?
We’re not allowed to hate films that everyone else loved???
We’re not even allowed to give our opinion any more!!!

Well, I clearly missed out on this cult film.

Noooo!
But seriously ? Cult film?? It’s normal: people mostly talk about what’s rubbish!
I’ve always hated Peter Jackson… or almost! I think I moderately liked Bad Taste and quite liked Lovely Bones… but that’s about it.

I just don’t get the humour at all. But then again… people who hate this film don’t bother to see it in its entirety, or to comment on it. Someone’s got to get wet at some point!

Seriously: Braindead is a merry horror SyFy nanar (we’ll call it that) that doesn’t lack charm, in a way, but I personally didn’t manage to go the distance, probably because of a rather sluggish pace. But it’s clear that fans of the genre, of which I’m probably not one, appreciate it and consider it a masterpiece. It’s only for them, I’d say!

Can easily be considered completely stupid, dirty and meaningless. As I’ve already said, it’s gory. Far too much for my taste. I found it relatively unbearable. The story is lousy, but that’s certainly not the point of the film to have any story at all. If it’s not scary, it’s just sick! I didn’t like the disturbing visuals at all, which make the film very difficult to watch.

The film may be by Peter Jackson (and I’m not even a fan of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, so that’s saying something!), but I found it particularly distasteful. I can imagine that it borders on being a parody of a genre (zombie films) that often rhymes with bloodshed, but here the overt bad taste is quite unbearable, with sequences worthy of an eight-year-old, or at best a pre-teen (like the one of an emaciated anus farting). It’s far more disgusting than it is crazy (the exact opposite of films such as the Evil Dead saga) and it’s a shame, because there were a few comedic leads that could have been interesting (a baby zombie resulting from a cross between two undead, the zombie breakfast), if they weren’t spoiled by the abuse of gravelly gags.

The actors are overacting, but I imagine that’s also deliberate.
The only virtue I see in this film is that it allowed the future director of Lord of the Rings and King Kong to emerge, but otherwise for me it’s a turnip that’s no better than the genre it mocks. It’s long and it achieves nothing.

So of course you have to take this film to the 100,000th degree, at least. However, even climbing that high, I still can’t find any semblance of interest, originality or truly cult scenes. The shots are ugly, the situations uninteresting, the actors more than bad. Okay, no bet succeeded and, unfortunately, nothing manages to raise the level of this infamous crap.

Ugh! Yech!! Yuck!!!