This place is rotten through. Once upon a time, there were crabs, oysters and various fish that you could eat during a quiet family dinner. Now the jungle is empty and silent. This does not mean that there is no one here at all! Sometimes you can see houses with small harmless people who live far from civilization. However, this does not mean that they are some kind of savages: they only chose a quiet place of residence, which now smells of corpse stench. And little people have aspirations, feelings, thoughts. But something is missing from this lonely world. We need something that will shake the tired foundations that will make people act more actively and expediently. Something could be expected, so definitely not hungry zombies, ugly and stinking lovers of all kinds of human delicacies.
It is not necessary to talk about the main character and other characters. They are uninteresting, monotonous and to some extent ugly in terms of their impulses. Their names will not remain in the history of the stinking jungle. They have neither the ability to fight against the powerful dead, nor the weapons that could catch the corpse-faced by surprise. What does that say? All the characters are living meat, the purpose of which throughout the film will be explained in one word: run away. That’s why the first hour of the tape looks terribly fascinating and whole. The invasion of the dead is shown realistically in terms of its surprise and fatality: zombies, like a tornado, sweep away small houses in minutes, if not in seconds. In comparison, humans act as ants, not defenders of their territories. And, smiling slyly, Rodrigo Aragan, the director of the film, throws “meat” another problem: enemies are almost impossible to kill. As a result, everything turns out, in general, not in favor of people.
However, occasionally falling into the hands of heroes boards and axes sometimes help to crumble the brains of bastards into small pieces. Although the emphasis is not on bloody sourdough (most likely strawberry), but this thing takes time on the screen enough. As the ants slowly begin to understand the essence of the game, the murders become more sophisticated. But still, the ratio of killed people / killed zombies is in no hurry to change in favor of our representatives. And the great work of makeup artists makes it clear who is a stranger and who is your own. What’s more, installation and shooting at a good level find a place in most of the timekeeping (except for the final). Although, as we know, low-budget tapes are often characterized by squalid scenery, effects and makeup. But “Dirty zombies” this disease is not picked up and boldly show the viewer that, they say, we and in Brazil are well fed. And the food is really good, especially if you compare the tape with the famous thrash creations that have gained popularity in the West.
But the second half cleanly demolishes the almost frozen foundation of the beginning. Did you like action scenes, audience? Get boring dialogue! Did you like zombies because of your makeup? Get an old healer grandmother with sagging cheeks. Did you like the full daylight picture? Please try a boring night! Unfortunately, it just drowns the movie and all the good things. And rapid, which occurs every third minute, is already pretty boring. But still, the Brazilian director wakes up and remembers that we still have a thrash, not a social drama, and again serves mince on a plate. But it is too late to correct anything: boring dialogues and frames left too strong an imprint on perception.
Proudly raising his head, Aragan leads his offspring to the final, but at what cost? The film could have been much better, more complete and more exciting. But complaining about what is available is probably too silly, because Dirty Zombies was not a complete failure. In the creation there is a basket of magnificent moments, and there is a terrible part, there is an interesting concept of zombies, and there are people who without the walking dead do not cause any interest and only look in the kit. Although “Mangue Negro” is unlikely to leave a great impression, connoisseurs of this picture are likely to pat on the shoulder for their efforts. In the end, it is still a decent thrash, in which everything is mixed together under the denouement: dirty now not only the walking dead, but also people who have bathed in the blood of decaying corpses. There is no final, but it is not necessary, because all the horrors are far away. Although, perhaps, the zombie oyster, so unexpectedly appeared as the main boss, still get the heroes, but we will not see it.
6 out of 10
Rodrigo Aragan's horror trilogy: Lepers among lepers
Somewhere in the wild, humid and dangerous mangrove thickets of the stereotypical Brazilian jungle, among the swamps, mud and feces, under the endless howling of millions of mosquitoes and the satanic rattling of monkeys, somewhere where the foot of a healthy, beautiful, intelligent and sexy man did not set foot is a colony of people whose mind and body were irrevocably struck by leprosy. Abandoned to their fate, useless to anyone, except probably to themselves, the inhabitants of the colony try as much as possible not to be discouraged, taking for granted both their illness and the new rules of existence. Doomed among the doomed, here they met and fell in love with each other Louis and Raquel. And they would be happy under the unhappy leper whitish moon, if at one not the most beautiful moment from the jungle did not climb something zombie-like, wanting to taste flesh in pieces. In the regiment doomed significantly arrived.
Brazilian exploitative cinema, the so-called pornochanchada, formed, like almost the entire world grindhouse, in the 60-70s, the last century, in the era of the inglorious bloody military dictatorship, as the name implies, was nothing more than 100.1% on the churometer of software and hard eroticism, a weighted belt of fidelity from plots resembling the notorious soap operas, which, meanwhile, are the main export product of the entire Brazilian pop culture. However, any grindhouse, even temperamental Latin American in general and ardently passionate Brazilian in particular, is simply impossible without the dialectic of horrors, for you will not be fed with one eroticism, although in the creation of your own variety of horrors, Brazil is pretty far behind, for example, from nearby Mexico, where the quixxotic wrestler Santo, until he appeared in the sky of Brazilian cinema José Mogique Marinche - the ancestral creator of all Brazilian chorrilla, as this choralist of all the world - Roger. It was Marinche who made Brazilian horror authentic, closely related to the roots of Brazilian myths, legends and literature.
The new age of postmodernism, for Brazil marked by the collapse of the dictatorship, and the abolition of censorship, and a significant increase in the popularity of soap opera stories, did not bring anything good for Brazilian horror, Marine went on a long vacation, and only in 2008, in fact, there was a long-awaited reincarnation of the classic grindhouse mangroves in three films released in that memorable year: the actual “Reincarnation of the demon” of the great and terrible Marinche, the Romero-like “Capitale of the Dead” Tigolothman, who can rightly be considered as an ambitious heironer of Marinstein, and a young artist.
“Dirty zombies” is a picture taken literally “from the disgusting”, while being one of the most disgusting zombie horrors in general in its overblown and prohibitive redundancy of various dismemberments. Rodrigo Aragan, armed with a remarkable black humor and the naturalistic, sinful-nauseous visual drive of the cinematic language, bordering in most cases with wild, unbridled absurdity and grotesque, in Dirty Zombies does not follow the beaten path of numerous genre patterns, stereotypical Americanisms and the all-destructive spirit of nihilism of Hollywoodism. The plot skeleton of the picture is the story of people whom God, the Devil or Nature herself punished with leprosy. Rejected by society, the heroes do not live among thick mangroves, but rather exist, waiting for their finale, which will be sad and terrible. Aragan somehow reverses the motifs of creativity and Jorge Amadou, weaving into the skillful home-woven fabric of the tape the history of such Romeo and Juliet, full of a kind of author's lyricism and melodramatism, and Joan Guimaraens Rosa, notable for his sharp literary postmodern look at the village. For a rather short time of action, Aragan manages to give drama where it is needed, and to outline clear features in the characters of the central characters, despite the strikingly artisanal staging. The director forces the audience, overcoming gastric cramps, if not to love, then at least to sympathize with the unfortunate lepers who have yet to learn what Hell is.
Aragan on this skeleton progressively builds up the flesh of zombie horror, pitting the dead spiritually and the dead physically, physically crippled, that is, our ugly lepers, including lovers Louis and Raquel, and physically dangerous, that is, bloodthirsty zombies who do not care who to eat, but most importantly – to eat. And since the emergence of zombies, literally out of nowhere, Aragan's tape turns into a spectacular homage to all existing zombie aesthetics, becoming an absurdistic bloody nightmare in which Aragan unleashes his violent sadistic fantasy. Heads, arms, legs, intestines with brains, lungs with eyes fly in all directions, coloring black dirt in the colors of mucous scarlet. Those who just didn’t want to live are fighting for their lives, full of pain and humiliation, with rage and passion. The original fringe drama, nurtured with care and meticulousness, drowns in a merciless and bubbling ocean of blood. Thrash wins everything.
Rodrigo Aragan's Horror Trilogy: Zombies in the Mangrove Woods, or Lepers Among Lepers
Somewhere in the wild, humid and dangerous mangrove thickets of the stereotypical Brazilian jungle, among the swamps, mud and feces, under the endless howling of millions of mosquitoes and the satanic rattling of monkeys, somewhere where the foot of a healthy, beautiful, intelligent and sexy man did not set foot is a colony of people whose mind and body were irrevocably struck by leprosy. Abandoned to their fate, useless to anyone, except probably to themselves, the inhabitants of the colony try as much as possible not to be discouraged, taking for granted both their illness and the new rules of existence. Doomed among the doomed, here they met and fell in love with each other Louis and Raquel. And they would be happy under the unhappy leper whitish moon, if at one not the most beautiful moment from the jungle did not climb something zombie-like, wanting to taste flesh in pieces. In the regiment doomed significantly arrived.
Brazilian exploitative cinema, the so-called pornochanchada, formed, like almost the entire world grindhouse, in the 60-70s, the last century, in the era of the inglorious bloody military dictatorship, as the name implies, was nothing more than 100.1% on the churometer of software and hard eroticism, a weighted belt of fidelity from plots resembling the notorious soap operas, which, meanwhile, are the main export product of the entire Brazilian pop culture. However, any grindhouse, even temperamental Latin American in general and ardently passionate Brazilian in particular, is simply impossible without the dialectic of horrors, for you will not be fed with one eroticism, although in the creation of your own variety of horrors, Brazil is pretty far behind, for example, from nearby Mexico, where the quixxotic wrestler Santo, until he appeared in the sky of Brazilian cinema José Mogique Marinche - the ancestral creator of all Brazilian chorrilla, as this choralist of all the world - Roger. It was Marinche who made Brazilian horror authentic, closely related to the roots of Brazilian myths, legends and literature.
The new age of postmodernism, for Brazil marked by the collapse of the dictatorship, and the abolition of censorship, and a significant increase in the popularity of soap opera stories, for Brazilian horror did not bring anything good, Marine went on a long vacation, and only in 2008, in fact, there was a long-awaited reincarnation of the classic grindhouse mangroves in three films released in that memorable year: the actual “Reincarnation of the demon” of the great and terrible Marinche, the Romero-like “Capitale of the Dead”, and only in 2008 there was a long-awed reincarnation of Bogolothian, according to the example of Marinstein, and Marinstein, who can be considered as an ambitious as a young artist.
“Dirty zombies” is a picture taken literally “from the disgusting”, while being one of the most disgusting zombie horrors in general in its over-the-top redundancy of various dismemberments. Rodrigo Aragan, armed with a remarkable black humor and the naturalistic, sinful-nauseous visual drive of a cinematic language that borders in most cases on wild, unbridled absurdity and grotesque, in Dirty Zombies does not follow the beaten path of numerous genre patterns, stereotypical Americanisms and the all-destructive spirit of nihilism of the Hollywoodish. The plot skeleton of the picture is the story of people whom God, the Devil or Nature herself punished with leprosy. Rejected by society, the heroes do not live among thick mangroves, but rather exist, waiting for their finale, which will be sad and terrible. Aragan somehow reverses the motifs of creativity and Jorge Amadou, weaving into the skillful home-woven fabric of the tape the history of such Romeo and Juliet, full of a kind of author's lyricism and melodramatism, and Joan Guimaraens Rosa, notable for his sharp literary postmodern look at the village. For a rather short time of action, Aragan manages to give drama where it is needed, and to outline clear features in the characters of the central characters, despite the strikingly artisanal staging. The director forces the audience, overcoming gastric cramps, if not to love, then at least to sympathize with the unfortunate lepers who have yet to learn what Hell is.
Aragan on this skeleton progressively builds up the flesh of zombie horror, pitting the dead spiritually and the dead physically, physically crippled, that is, our ugly lepers, including lovers Louis and Raquel, and physically dangerous, that is, bloodthirsty zombies who do not care who to eat, but most importantly - to eat. And since the emergence of zombies, literally out of nowhere, Aragan's tape turns into a spectacular homage to all existing zombie aesthetics, becoming an absurdistic bloody nightmare in which Aragan unleashes his violent sadistic fantasy. Heads, arms, legs, intestines with brains, lungs with eyes fly in all directions, coloring black dirt in the colors of mucous scarlet. Those who just didn’t want to live are fighting for their lives, full of pain and humiliation, with rage and passion. The original fringe drama, nurtured with care and meticulousness, drowns in a merciless and bubbling ocean of blood. Thrash wins everything.
Long live Brazilian thrash, meaningless and merciless!
Only here you can learn (attention, brain explosion) that in order to bite a zombie does not turn into a zombie, it must be turned into a zombie! And to do this, stoned in what a grandmother-sorcerer, with the help of pseudo-voodoo rituals, about which she heard from her grandmother or mother.
The film is a classic example of thrash culture, and it is nice that not only in Japan, Britain and the States shoot something similar, but the queue has reached Brazil.
Of the shortcomings, we can note perhaps only a certain slowness of the action, I think that if the picture was more dynamic, it would look more interesting.
But in general,
As a fan of the live-dead movie category, I wasn’t too surprised to see the Brazilian zombie movie Dirty Zombie. This popular in the genre of horror, theme, apparently, covered the whole world, and such films shoot everyone who is not lazy, however, not always successfully.
So, a certain Rodrigo Aragan-director, screenwriter and cameraman in one person, his debut and, so far, the only work, decided to show / prove that hot Brazilians are also not baldly sewn, and are able to shoot not only TV series, watching which, probably, half the world shed tears. Only here, in my opinion, and GZ, too, without tears, you will not look. And it is not at all in the hot Brazilian passions.
The first thing that catches your eye when watching a movie is not very professional. Rather, even amateur, with inherent cheapness. Secondly, the film would be perceived many times easier, if not for the unprecedented drag. 75-80 minutes, but not 105 minutes. What are the stretched scenes in the shack of a local witch, besides accompanied by empty chatter? By the way, a creepy-looking grandmother with a face like a rotten apple and a creaky voice, is no less creepy sight than the same zombies.
In general, I did not see anything new here - the usual illiterate thrash with inexpressive acting, the same empty dialogues, apparently invented on the go and uninteresting, banal for low-budget horror stories, the plot. The only thing that distinguishes this picture from many others is that the action takes place not in a noisy metropolis, but in a lost community of lepers, among mangrove forests and swamps, whose life is already not sugar, and then zombies climbed out of the swamp. And the living will tremble in terror; and rivers of blood, brain mass will flow, and do not yet understand what; and they will fall from machetes, chopped into pieces by preoccupied zombies. And... A lot of all sorts of “and” can be observed in the picture, because the director, obviously believing that his creation is unlikely to claim the title of “classic” or “masterpiece”, turned on his rich imagination and broke away completely, squeezing the maximum of what was in his pocket and in his head. It's been good at times. For example, a close-up shown in flight by a turntable from a knocked-out door is something unreal (the influence of Hollywood blockbusters is felt). I think even Michael Bay would have been moved to see this scene shot.
There are also positive aspects to the picture. The main plus-not bad, rather even perfectly executed makeup and hand-created special effects. Some moments are even fascinating, in particular, half-decomposed zombie characters, and scenes with dismemberment. Of course, some things, at first glance, may look somewhat unnatural, but in general, it looks cheerful, given the kind of film itself. Well, the second and last plus is that the director at least tried to do something of his own. Something went wrong.
Well, the ending in "GZ", also, roughly speaking, pumped up. This is like reading a book when you turn a page and see a blank piece of paper instead of the next. Apparently, beating the fountain, throughout the film, the director’s thoughts dried up and decided that thrash-he and in Brazil thrash, made, as it seemed to him, a very original finale.
Summing up, I will say that the film “GZ” can be characterized as a one-time, unremarkable thrash, in its component corresponding to its successful title.
2 out of 10 (for special effects).