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Click here to return to the main site. DVD Review
He hasn’t got a name. It isn’t important. Some call him the Hunter. What started as an illicit street drug, has turned the majority of the population into mindless flesh eaters. They took his wife and his young daughter from him, and now the Hunter will not rest until every one of them is destroyed. A near fatal mishap brings him into contact with a small group of survivors, led and protected by a very capable fighting priest. But they have been in one place for too long and the Eaters are moving in – along with a new breed of mutant beast. Their only course of action is to break through, and attempt to make it to a useable aircraft. However, that is easier said than done... Anyone who has followed my horror reviews in the past (is there anybody out there?) will already know I’m not a great lover of the zombie sub-genre. Aside from the classic The Night of the Living Dead, and a handful of others which have attempted to mix things up a little, there is essentially very little mileage in the notion of the brain-eating undead. So much so, in fact, that the best zombie films in recent years are the comedies which send-up the ridiculousness of the idea. So, how does Zombie Hunter fit in with all this? Well, it would seem to be a regular over-the-top example of muscle-men and lumbering decomposing bodies, but there is a real and successful attempt to structure it like a comic – or I should say, a graphic novel. And... I sort of like it. Blood appears to splatter the camera, and the movie freezes momentarily to introduce each character, splashing the name up on the screen. The Hunter is the main character, and even narrates his own tale. He is a sort of Mad Max, with a quiet brooding but menacing voice, like that of Clint Eastwood’s Stranger in the spaghetti westerns. There is the most violent priest you’re ever likely to see (played by Danny Trejo); a good man who sees this as a war against evil. The other characters work well, whilst being somewhat stereotypical. There’s the wayward stripper, who tries to seduce everything in sight, but inwardly craves a normal relationship; the ‘nice’ girl; the naïve teenage boy; and the fat man who picks on the boy, because he has been bullied himself in the past. However, I’m glad to say there is no time to rehash hackneyed dialogue from third-rate films from the past. Everything happens in relatively quick succession. The zombies, many though there are, are quickly dispatched before the viewer has time to become bored with them. There are even some mutant monsters, which move more quickly and are significantly stronger. Played straight, it incorporates the fun and vividness of a superhero comic, tinged with post-apocalyptic western. 7 Ty Power Buy this item online
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