Horror-tober 12: Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead

This one kind of slipped under my radar, until NOW! I really couldn't pass up a movie with the tagline, "Mad Max meets Dawn of the Dead."

Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead takes place in Australia. It starts off with some survivors telling their stories of how they got to the present. One story is kind of amusing. Benny was with his brothers on a camping trip and woke up to find them gone. When he found one of his brothers he was changed and start coming after him. He just turned around and started walking away and they walked like that for awhile. Him just walking, and his brother just slowly following behind. The second story though launches into the main outbreak, and is a little more serious and sad. But after that it is a funny and gory romp through the rest of the film.

Benny being followed by his undead brother

I particularly liked this one because it took the zombie genre and then reinvented some of the tropes that really worked for the movie. First off, the zombies are slow, but only during the day. It turns out that in their decomposed state they are producing a foul fuel that they burn off during the day, but use at night to be a lot more quick and deadly. Basically, nocturnal gas-producing zombies. It works in the survivors favors as for some reason all fuel has become useless, and they discover they can use the zombies during the day to fuel their vehicles. Also, people appear to be infected just by breathing the air, but some are and some are not. It doesn't really explain why this is until later and doesn't totally make sense, but again, it works for main story.

Suit up

Also, we have a couple of main characters but in a way, the two primary characters are Barry and Brooke, brother and sister. Barry is looking for his sister after the apocalypse starts, but he is unaware that she has been abducted by some military looking guys and a psychopathic doctor. He is apparently doing some weird experiment where he takes zombie blood from some specimens he keeps chained up and injects it into survivors, like Brooke, that he also has chained in his weird and bloody little laboratory. Aside from the description stating that the doctor is the one who turned people into zombies, it is not really apparent how he was responsible, except for maybe something to do with a chemical he released in the air.

The mad doctor is in 

Brooke continues to survive after she has zombie blood injected into her many times, but, something in her brain reacts with that blood and allows her to control the zombies. It is a pretty silly premise, but again, it really works for the film. Also, was pretty cool to have a bad ass female lead even if it isn't till half the film is over that she obtains her power. It had really good kill scenes and as I said before was pretty funny and fun. I like that it has its own telling of how the zombies came to be, even if it still was a little unclear. But also that it has its own take on the zombie. It also had some striking visuals and indeed had some aesthetics in the design of the costumes and vehicles that felt like watching Mad Max or The Road Warrior with a zombie twist. Joey gives it 3.5 skulls because he wished that it had been even more ridiculous than it was, because he is silly like that.

My rating:

Joey's rating: