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Reminiscent of early (very early) Peter Jackson but devoid of style, this debut from Michael and Peter Spierig promises shambling zombies, but it’s their film that shambles. After meteorites rain down on an Australian fishing village, leaving many dead inhabitants in their wake, the few survivors flee the soon-to-be reanimated corpses, finding sanctuary in a secluded farmhouse. George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead injected subtle social commentary into the horror milieu; Undead offers social stereotypes: the reluctant beauty queen (Felicity Mason), her dethroned predecessor, (Lisa Cunningham), a yokel cop (Dirk Hunter) who’s so annoying you hope he’ll be first on the zombies’ menu. No such luck. Only the farm’s gun-toting owner (Mungo McKay) seems fresh — for a while. In the end, the story becomes more of a ’50s-era alien-invasion throwback, and with both Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds and Romero’s Land of the Dead currently in theaters, that’s an invitation to leave Undead unseen.
BY BRETT MICHEL
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