Zombie Film Review:

Bio-Zombie

Director: Wilson Yip

Year: 1998

Aka: Sun Faa Sau Si

Review 1: By 'Zombie Ed' Thurlow

Woody invincible, crazy bee and the suspicious bottle of lucazade… dead bodies, video game zombies and dodgy VCD copies all make this a worthy start to a crazy film, this film maintains it's heart, brains and lungs and focuses a hell of a lot more than many of it's Hollywood contemporise

 

Zombie Quality: **

Blood, latex and plenty of peeling skin, not brilliantly done but still on a par with any other J-zombie film with the exception of ‘Versus'

 

Zombie Behaviour: ***

A little bit of stunted talking, but strangling, flesh eating, maiming and generally being undead. Not too bad, but the zombie sushi boy in love plot line is bit far fetched, but killing, biting and infecting go along way in my eyes!

 

Zombie Threat: ***

Don't drink bio-hazardous lucozade in an Asian shopping mall and be dead at the same time… it will end in tears; it all gets more serious towards the end…

 

Gore Content: ***

Bites, head shots, ice buckets, knives and pipes, not too sure about the rubber spanner, but the battery and drill seems to work pretty well, none of the effects are amazing but done in a good spirit

 

Overall: ***

These losers are rubbish, but show more common sense than any of the previous 100 outings… ‘shoot them in the head!' and ‘he's been bitten by a zombie – avoid him!' This spooky good sense and the idea of placating zombies with human sushi, means this is a genre film you can really warm to…

Review 2: By Steven Uden

Otherwise known as "Sun faa sau si" this is a Japanese Zombie movie. The two interestingly named main characters "Woody Invincible" and "Killer Bee" who run a dodgy VCD store in a Pedestrian Mall, are told by their boss to go and pick up his Car, when doing so they accidentally knock down a government agent who is carrying a soft drink that turns people into zombies. Not knowing this they give him the drink as his dying wish, and then stuff his body in the boot of the car not wanting to be sent down for having just killed someone. However the government agent zombie escapes in the mall car park, and then from there various people start to die and become infected, resulting in standard zombie evasion tactics –run, hide, try to escape, kill the odd zombie. Surprisingly for a zombie flick, it's a very character driven story focusing on the two protagonists - who aren't exactly hero material. After all they do try to mug people- and their various friends who work at the mall.

For some, this might detract from the appeal of the story because it's not constant action, taking time to flesh out the characters so that you care about what happens to them. Or in some cases, not. To use one of those “like *** on crack” comparisons, think “A darker version of Mall Rats mixed with Dawn Of The Dead”. There are even some “House of the Dead” movie shots to it. – Spinning character with profile and in game graphics pasted into the film as zombies get shot. Whilst not wanting to spoil it for you, the end of this film is perhaps not quite what you'd expect. And I think it's all the better for it. Of the things that will really test you if you want to see this film though is the subtitles, as there is no English language version available. So if you're not good with subtitles at the best of times then sadly you're going to miss out here. The subtitles go from sometimes amusingly inaccurate to points where you are really left struggling to understand what it was that someone just said.

 

Zombie Quality: ***

Slightly better than the original Dawn of the Dead standards.

 

Zombie Behaviour: ****

Slow, flesh eating, but some retain "memories of life". So if you don't like that zombie trait, perhaps remove a star. (Though even Romero's used this concept, so you should be familiar with it.)

 

Zombie Threat: ****

Implication is given that the outbreak somehow spreads beyond the mall, so it has potential to spread at least across the whole country.

 

Gore Content: ***

Average, just enough to keep it interesting, but not excessive

 

Overall Rating: ****

You can pick this up for under £10 if you search around on the net, it's of a better than average quality with a few good twists and a different approach to zombie films. The subtitles do suck in places though.