Zombieworld   Starring: Tommy Woodard, Adam Myette O’Brien, Adrián Cardona, Cameron McCulloch, David Muñoz and Jared Marshall Distributor: Image Entertainment RRP: £12.99 IMAGE4018 Certificate: 18 Release Date: 08 June 2015

‘Prepare for the Zombieworld Takeover.’ The world is overrun with zombies. Normal humankind is the minority. As the virus spreads across the globe, a TV news reporter – bitten by a zombie – attempts to continue presenting happenings from around the world. These reports are interspersed with "How To Survive a Zombie Apocalypse" tips. In reality, the reports are a thinly veiled means of showing a number of separate vignettes: individual little stories of confrontations with flesh-eating living dead – most of them with the emphasis firmly on the humour.

So many dull and repetitive zombie films have emerged over the last two decades or so that the subject matter has become itself very much a victim of derision. The slow and lumbering eaters of brains have proved more of success as comedic pieces. They don’t always work, but two examples of worthy contenders include Shaun of the Dead, and Dance of the Dead. Nowadays, of course, it’s a sub-sub-genre of horror in itself. The tales include Jesus raising someone from the dead, only for the body to revive as a zombie. The disease quickly spreads before He and Judas stand alone against hordes of Jewish and Roman fiends. Fighting them with  fish seems to be the order of the day, until towards the end of the slaughter He pulls a wooden crucifix – sporting a skeletal corpse – from the ground and uses that as a weapon. I can see how this sequence may offend some people. Perhaps that is the intention.

Other pieces include a police officer coming to the aid of a woman in distress and himself being savaged by zombies; a guy being pulled through the TV into a zombie computer game, and being shot by another gamer; a woman in Australia who has her fiancé chained-up in the cellar, because he ‘turned’ before they could marry; a point of view sequence wherein a person holds-out against zombies with the help of two friends, only to be bitten and attack one of them… And then there’s the best saved until last: A man with a fixed grin is released from a psychiatric hospital with the doctor’s sole instruction to have a nice holiday and to stay calm. Switch to a small beach where people are sunbathing and swimming, when toxic zombies emerge from the sea and set to dismembering the holidaymakers. The man is happy to ignore everything going on around him, but when his music-playing tape machine packs up he quickly loses his cool. With fixed grin still in place, he inventively fights his way through the creatures until there is carnage everywhere you look. One bathing beauty remains unscathed, but all the man wants her to do is take his picture with a vanquished zombie.

In my opinion, the only amusing and genuinely entertaining short on offer is this last one. Other than that, I’m not a big fan of zombie films anyway. I can only advise that you wait for Zombieworld to hit the bargain big and then watch the above-mentioned piece.

4

Ty Power