i did a search but couldn't find anything. I just watched the trailer to this australian released film. and whoa baby. This looks great. It looks like it's in the vein of romero's dead films and the zombies kind of remind me of evil dead II type stuff. This film looks oh so great. I heard that it was made on a 1 million dollar budget too and some of the make up looks great for being so cheap. I'm not sure when it's getting a stateside release but it was picked up by lions gate films, so check this trailer out!!! it looks very very cool! I'm excited to see all these zombie/horror films getting back into cinema! NICE!

Jason X.

Here's just a taste. Look on Ainticool.com, and search - you'll find a mess of info.


The Official site:http://www.undeadmovie.com/




AICN interview with the Spierigs, who made the film:

This interview came so close to not happening. On Saturday I was up at the snow when I got a call from the Spierig's representative, who was responding to my request for an interview. It turned out that the concept of the interview itself wasn't a problem, but the brothers were based in Queensland (I'm in Melbourne), and they were flying to Toronto early this week.

On my way back from the snow, my beloved car (Karla) broke down in as many ways as a car can break down, and it seemed like I'd be stuck in the middle of nowhere (I'll bitch about this in this week's Downunder column). This was last night. It was only by a chance of fate that I got home, got to work today, checked my email, and found that the interview was set up for 2pm today... two hours after I'd checked the mail.

So I frantically searched for a speaker phone, set up a recording device, and wrote a bunch of questions... and just getting it all done by the time the little hand hit the two and the big hand hit the twelve.

So, depending on when this goes up, there's a very good chance you'll be reading this within a few hours of the interview itself. Pretty cool, huh?

As for the subjects, if you read this site then you should know who they are, or at least what they're responsible for. UNDEAD is the best zombie film we've had in years, and it's a compliment to the film that I can write that without a hint of irony or sarcasm. The film is terrific (check out my review at: Click Here To Bask In My Brilliance You Miserable Swine!), and it was made by two brothers, Michael and Peter Spierig, who brought the meaning of "independent cinema" back to its grassroots.

LATAURO: Keeping in mind that it will undoubtedly serve as a template for other aspiring filmmakers, how did you get started in film?

PETER: We started making films when we were very young, maybe ten or eleven when my dad bought a video camera, and we started playing around with it, shooting things in the backyard. Burning things, blowing things up, all that kind of stuff. I got interested in film and TV at high school and it just built from there, to the point where we were making dramas and productions that weren't just burning things down. Then we went to University and we made a bunch of short films. And it grew from there to the point where we decided we'd work together and try to get a career making feature films. Luckily, straight out of Uni, a commercial director here in Queensland saw a whole bunch of short films we had done and offered us a job directing TV commercials which we did for three or four years. Then along came the feature.
LATAURO: What were your inspirations for UNDEAD? Which films did you draw upon?

PETER: Well, we're big fans of Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi. BAD TASTE, BRAINDEAD, EVIL DEAD... obviously the Romero stuff. Just big fans of indie horror. TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, all those types of films. And films that are done on no budget, limited resources, and start careers. The sort of stuff we were interested in for UNDEAD, trying to figure out how do we make our mark, how do we start our careers, what is the type of film that we need to do. And also, what types of films do we love that work on an independent level.
LATAURO: So it is a zombie film or an alien film?

MICHAEL: That's a good question. It's both... It's a zombie film, it's definitely a zombie film. It's a comedy, I would say, above all things. I don't know... it's both. More zombie than alien, though.
LATAURO: Where did Marion come from? He struck me as being the distant cousin of Ash from EVIL DEAD.

PETER: You know, that wasn't really ever the intention. We just wanted to come up with a character that was, yeah, he's kind of the loner, Clint Eastwood-style but at the same time, it's trying to come up with a character that's got a certain amount of mystery to him. And trying to do something that has an Australian quality about it, but at the same time is not so *specifically* Australian that people wouldn't relate to it internationally.
MICHAEL: Obviously, I understand why people would say he's the distant cousin of Ash, but I also don't quite understand that because Ash is kind-of an idiot. I love those movies, but Ash is kind-of a bumbling fool that just makes his way through it, while the Marion character, he's certainly not a bumbling fool. He may be insane, but....
PETER: ...he's got a plan, he knows what's going on.
MICHAEL: Ash is just kind-of a goofball.
LATAURO: That spaghetti western definition nailed it. It's been bothering me, I've been trying to pick what achetype he is. He really struck me as a send-up of those loner characters. It's the ridiculousness of always being prepared...

MICHAEL: That's the intention, absolutely. The whole film is really tongue-in-cheek. That's the point. It's saying that we know we're in a situation that's really out there, and we should play with it. We should have fun with it.
LATAURO: Rounding down to the nearest 100, how many people told you it would never happen, that you were being overly ambitious.

MICHAEL: I don't think we really associated ourselves with people who told us it couldn't happen. We'd been down that road before when we'd tried to get short films financed, and certainly another script that we'd written a few years ago, we tried to get some development money for that, and that never happened. There was a certain group of people who told us it would never happen, but we just don't associated with those people. We associate with people who believe in the project and who wanted it all to work.
PETER: You just gotta find those people. The trick is, when you're making an Australian horror film you're really up against so many things. The fact that Australian horror isn't all that highly regarded...
LATAURO: CUT had a lot to do with that, I think.

PETER: Well, yeah, absolutely. That's a film I know didn't receive any positive reviews, as far as I know. And it definitely hurt us. And it hurt genre pictures in Australia. I don't know if Australian audiences are ready for genre pictures -- I hope they are. I know I'd like to see some more Australian genre pictures, because we just don't have that. And genre picture can be made, and have been made, some of the best ones were made with no money. So it doesn't make sense to me why we're not making them; they can sell internationally, they translate well across the world.
LATAURO: Did you have an idea about the special effects beforehand? Did you know for certain they'd work, or were you acting on faith?

MICHAEL: We'd done a number of short films where we'd used visual effects before, certainly not to the level that we wanted to do in UNDEAD. Peter and I did have a bit of a background in visual effects, Peter's been into 3D animation since the mid-90s when it was just becoming domesticated. So we had a good idea of how things should be done. There were certain effects shots in the film where we'd shoot the plates we needed, then when it came to doing the effect on the computer we'd read the tutorial that day and end up doing the shot that night. It was a bit hit-and-miss, but pretty much all of the effects we set out to do we managed to achieve. That's just the way the technology is nowdays, you can do that level of effects work at home.
LATAURO: I was amazed when I read you'd rendered them all on your home computer.

MICHAEL: It was a nightmare! All up, with all the previsualisation and testing, it was nearly a year working on the effects. And that's going back over a year ago now. Nowdays it would be twice as fast. We've really got to the stage now where visual effects are accessible to anyone who has time to learn the technology.
LATAURO: I was particularly impressed with the cinematography. Most government-funded films seem to look like they were shot on Hi-8, whereas UNDEAD is very crisp, very clear. What did you do differently?

PETER: We shot on Super 16, so we were already in a far more difficult position as opposed to someone shooting on 35mm. We had to try and make it look cinematic and hold up on a 35mm blow-up. We spent a lot of time talking to the cinematographer, Andrew Strahorn, about the look and the style, and we wanted a look that had a very definite look and feel and atmosphere about it. That's why we shot just about all our interiors in sets, so we could control the lighting and the art direction and maintain a look. I don't know what it is, I don't know why Australian films look so ordinary. And it's strange when you think that we produce some of the best cinematographers in the world. I don't know, maybe there's not enough time spent talking about it and planning.
LATAURO: What was the next stage once you'd completed the film? How did you get it out there?

PETER: We managed to secure a sales agent in LA, and he took it round to a whole bunch of film markets and sold it. I'm talking specifically about Australia, that is. He sold it to Imagine, and they saw it at the American film market. A lot of our sales has happened because of our website, when we put up the trailer and started placing images on the site we had a lot of interest. And Harry's responsible for quite a bit of that, too, with his review...
LATAURO: That was certainly the first place I heard about it...

PETER: Yeah, it's a scary thing. And I know that, especially if you've done an independent film and you submit it to somebody like Harry or Garth at Dark Horizons or whoever it may be, if they say something like "It's an absolute flaming pile of ****", you're in big, big trouble. So we took that risk, and thankfully they both liked it. But certainly Harry has been quite vocal about it, and that's great. We didn't know that it would have that kind of reaction. We thought we'll just try and make a zombie film that we would want to see, and hopefully people would want to see. And it's just extraordinary, the power of the internet and the power of something like Ain't It Cool News, and what that means to an independent film.
LATAURO: So, Peter Jackson went from BRAINDEAD to LORD OF THE RINGS, Sam Raimi went from EVIL DEAD to SPIDER-MAN... Which tentpole blockbuster can we expect from you this holiday season?

PETER: That's a very good question... I have absolutely no idea. I know that Michael and I have had a plan for a very long time. We start with this type of film, we do a couple of these types of film, and eventually we get to this type of movie. And, like you mentioned, LORD OF THE RINGS or SPIDER-MAN, somewhere down that path would be just fine. That would be extraordinary. But there is a plan, and UNDEAD was the first step. Hopefully the next step will lead to the next step, to the next step, to the next step that will eventually lead to us doing a SPIDER-MAN or a LORD OF THE RINGS. I think we still have a lot to learn, we're not in any hurry. I think we'd be absolute fools to jump into a film like, say, SPIDER-MAN. I get the feeling that we wouldn't have the kind of control or the knowledge to work within the system. Every project you do is a big learning experience, so we're not going to jump in and do a $100 million movie coming off a $1 million movie. I don't know whether any studio would be eagre to do that. I know that there are plenty of studios that are very interested in Michael and I, but to what degree of budget, we're still trying to figure out.
LATAURO: So have they come calling with offers of money and concubines? Is there a next project?

PETER: There is definitely a next project that's going to happen. What that will be, we're still working through. There's a whole bunch of things that we're interested in. There's a script we've been working on for quite a while, we're going into a second draft, and that's definitely at the top of our list of things that interest us. But there are also a couple of projects set up at studios that we're definitely interested in... It's really just a matter of what happens first. There's a book we're chasing at the moment as well, so we'll just wait and see. There's no big hurry. UNDEAD took three years to make, and it was a very difficult film to make, but we're incredibly proud of it, and it was the right film to make. So we just want to make sure that the next one is the right film as well.
LATAURO: Congratulations, and good luck in Toronto.

Peace out,

Latauro

AICN review:

UNDEAD
It's a good thing I'm not a professional newspaper-type film critic, because I've been trying to think of the polite, academic, politically correct term for 'mother****ing arse-kicker of a movie'. (I think it's 'destined to be a cult classic', but I'm not sure.)

I caught this last night after a long day of work followed by a long day of Uni (that's two days in one, folks), both of which were following a bad flu and a lack of sleep. But this was the only time I was going to have to see a film before next Wednesday, so I let my friends talk me into it (I don't take much convincing).

I can almost pinpoint the exact moment in the film where I relaxed. I don't mean there was no tension - it came in bucket loads - I'm talking about that relaxation that comes when you know a film isn't going to let you down. When you know that no matter what happens from that point on, it's going to be good.

This is the strangest of creatures; an Australian genre flick that gets (almost) everything right. I can't remember the last real cult film we had (probably MAD MAX), but this is more than that. There's more going on here. There's a plot, and there are surprises, and there are production values that do justice to them.

The characters are what makes it stand out. Each character is interesting and ridiculous and watchable enough so that you fully expect each to end up in that eponymous 'group' - the one that must survive until the end. In having every character so interesting and funny, you can never be sure who's going to die next.

The only real let down is the music. 80% of the time, it's intrusive and inappropriate, and undercuts not only the tension but the humour as well. But it's a minor quibble, and the only one I have. The shotgun dude (undoubtedly a distant cousin of Ash) is so over-the-top, he's perfect. A send-up of the mysterious iconic stranger character, they manage to imbue him with something of an arc; one of the many surprises this film has.

The effect of James Cameron not making a non-documentary film since 1997 has thrown the blue light gel industry into turmoil, but the Speirigs have managed to save them. Andrew Strahorn's cinematography is superb, and a vast step up from the video he worked with in 2001's almost-not-seen SPUDMONKEY (a fairly awful film I hosted a test screening of).

But still I wonder what I'd say if I were a real journalist. What would be the easily-definable poster quote I'd bait the distributor with? Okay: "In the 80s, America had Sam Raimi's EVIL DEAD. In the 90s, New Zealand had Peter Jackson's BRAINDEAD. Now, in the 00s, Australia has UNDEAD - a film that will join the pantheon of essential cult zombie flicks!" Because that's what this country has been missing for so long: cool.

Here's another AICN look. I think they're the only ones championing the film at the moment.

Hi Harry. Just happened to see the Australian zombie movie that's being mentioned more and more of late, Undead, at a screening last Friday and thought I'd send my thoughts about to you (I thought there'd be a few more reviews posted actually, but what ya gonna do?).

The story starts up in the fictional Aussie town of Berkeley, where local girl Renee (Felicity Mason) is about to lose everything to the bank and makes the decision to leave for the big city. As if it was going to be that easy, 'cos sooner than you can say "**** me sideways!", a meteor shower (cool cgi here) hits the townsfolk carrying with it a nasty infection, turning all those in it's path into a flesh craving zombie. As has to happen in these films, a mis-matched group of survivors must band together to whether the onslaught and make it to the credits in one piece. Into this maelstrom are the local pilot and his pregnant girlfriend, the town copper and his rookie constable, and the local nutjob (Mungo McKay) whose been preparing for this day for some time (the entrance with that triple barrel shotgun went down a treat at this screening, surely there's a toy manufacturer on to this one???). Now, to go on would be to let the cat out of the bag. There's a bigger story going on here than you'd expect and to say more means you'll lose out when you see it.

Now, I don't particularly like films that are derivitive. I think if you haven't got anything new to say, then just shut the **** up. What I liked about Undead was that it took a tired genre and toyed with it, mixing sci-fi and action with horror but still playing for laughs (and actually being funny...dig that naked alien!). Characters that are usually cannon fodder in these kinds of movies are given opportunity to make an impression (the cop is flat out hilarious) and the when the story could potentially take the easy option and be like every other movie it opts instead for the direction that you mightn't be expecting.

It's all good blood drenched fun. Kinda goofy. It's the movie you watch on DVD late at night with your mates where you slow mo and re watch the best gory moments over and over for a laugh (like the head explosion bit in Scanners). As a horror fan myself it's been a really, really long drought but with this (and 28 Days Later...still not out in Australia!) there's finally some rain on the horizon...

If you use this, call me Warren Perso....

Been looking forward to this one for a looong time. It's everything I want in a movie.

Wow. That looks pretty intense. The poster is great.

That does sound good. Poster is indeed badass.

sweet, this is the first I heard of this. Looks sweet.

WHOA! Thanks for bringing this one to my attention.
I just made a zombie movie myself... doesn't look quite as great as UNDEAD, but at least I'm inspired to tap into the genre some more!

Yeah I heard about this one some time ago. I also heard it's a great flick.

Damn, never heard of this one before now. Sure looks pretty awesome though!

yeah, i was surprised no one on this board had brought this up yet. The poster indeed rocks. The trailer looks more or less like it is going to be a creepy zombie film, but I'm happy to hear it will be very campy and be comedic like the evil dead films!

Hope I’m wrong, but just based on the stills and the AICN review this looks lame.

I saw this film a couple of months ago. Its pretty good until the last 20 minutes or so, when it gets kind of weird and random. The gore effects are cool and there is good use of CGI.

Thanks for posting all that DonnachaOne and xDareDevilx. It does look like a fun movie. I really hope I get a chance to see it.
At the same time, I am a little disappointed checking this out after hearing a few things about the movie. I really wish that someone would make a serious zombie film. One that looked at the tone and intensity of something like The Exorcist instead of Bad Taste or Evil Dead.

i think 28 days later was a serious zombie film (ok, so maybe they aren't technically zombies), but I think that was a great film and had a serious story and pulled it off nicely!