AWAKEN THE DEAD

Reformed hitman Chris (Gary Kohn), who's now a priest, wakes up in his apartment bedroom and opens a red letter that he's been ignoring for too long. Elsewhere, reclusive Mary (Lindsey Morris) awakes in her own pit and opens a similar envelope, the contents of which simply read "Stay in the house. I'll be there soon".

The two are eventually brought together when the message in Chris' envelope leads him to the safehouse where Mary's dwelling. Despite Mary's reservations, she allows Chris to stay with her, where he tells her they are both to wait until her father arrives to reveal the mysterious reason behind bringing them together.

In the meantime, it transpires that Mary's a hooker looking for a way out of her profession.

Her pimp, Grin (Will Harris), has other ideas though and turns up wanting to drag the young slut away. Luckily Chris is there to defend her honour. Even luckier, Mary has an enormous machete at her disposal and is quick to threaten the oversized pimp with it. Grin soon does a runner.

Meanwhile, two Asian schoolgirls are passing in the street nearby when they spy a low-flying aeroplane above them. It releases an unknown chemical that lands directly on them and before long they have transformed into slobbering zombies.

When Grin confronts the schoolgirls they make brisk and bloody mincemeat of him - and pretty soon the zombie infestation begins to spread.

It's not long before Mary and Chris are given a rude awakening when a small group of the undead begin battering at the safehouse's windows, wanting to get in and devour them. They manage to fend them off, but it seems that with zombies swarming the streets outside they are trapped. Even Chris' car is no use - some cunt slashed his tyres upon arrival at the safehouse.

Still, they get an ally of sorts when nervous wreck Stanley (Nate Witty) begs to be let in to the house. He's a Jehovah's Witness who was doing his door-to-door rounds in the neighbourhood with his mate, until the walking dead attacked ...

Can they escape from the house and survive on the streets outside long enough to find out why the dead are hungry, and what their part in all of this is? And how much bad heavy metal are the filmmakers going to subject us to in the meantime?

Jeff Brookshire's directorial debut (which he also wrote) shows ambition in scale and initially attempts a different angle on a very familiar premise - the small group of human survivors holed up and under attack from zombies outside.

But it doesn't succeed in offering anything of value in this already over-saturated sub-genre. The potentially interesting back-stories that are hinted early-on for Chris and Mary are never truly developed, the script instead giving way to a mix of equally naff philosophical ramblings and macho profanities. Also, when additional characters are added to the pot (Stanley; ex-Marine Nick [Paul Dion Monte]), the initial drama seems to dilute even more as their inclusion comes across as clumsy and unjustified.

A little of the social aspects gathered in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and particularly DAY OF THE DEAD are here, the fundamental inability for people to work together even in a crisis situation, but the dialogue is too dumb and the performances too unconvincing for any of it to be effective.

Which is a shame, because Brookshire stilts his film's pace irreparably with lengthy scenes of bickering and people hanging around doing precious little indoors. He's not Romero and he can't elicit tension or empathy from such moments, and so AWAKEN THE DEAD soon becomes tedious fare.

The zombie attacks are shot with some gusto and there's plenty of gore on offer when they come. But they don't come frequently, and the pace is unhappily plodding throughout the entire film's looong 101-minute running time.

Looking at times like a cheap music video, AWAKEN THE DEAD is stylised but never stylish, gory but never scary. It has wooden actors portraying cardboard characters and throws potentially engaging plot-strands out with the bathwater in the opening minutes, preferring instead to tread an all-too-familiar path for the remainder.

With the indistinctive metal score and lack of action further conspiring to erase this sharpish from the viewer's memory, this film is nigh on impossible to recommend.

One last point to make: the original production notes for this one suggest it's meant to have moments of black comedy. Hmm, those must've gone over my head ...

AWAKEN THE DEAD is presented in a non-enhanced 1.85:1 transfer and looks good during the slick, computer-generated opening titles. However, once the action shifts to live actors it's a different story. Images are frequently darker than is advisable and detail is compromised by an overall softness to the transfer. There is heavy grain prevalent throughout.

English 2.0 audio does a fair job throughout, offering an evenly balanced mix that's free from hiss or other interference.

The disc opens with a static menu that leads into an animated scene-selection menu allowing access to AWAKEN THE DEAD via 4 chapters.

The only extras on Brain Damage's DVD are trailers for DEAD and other titles HELLHOUSE, CURSE OF THE WOLF, BACHELOR PARTY IN THE BUNGALOW OF THE DAMNED, FIST OF THE VAMPIRE and TASTE OF FLESH.

A poor film on a basic disc. For those who are terminally curious, at least it's only £2.99.

Review by Stu Willis