Mental impotence. Now it's "special." That is, how we do: we shoot an arbitrary film with the participation of the “living dead”, we collect a group of someone and add the “dead” paintings to the title of this company. I will be honest, one way or another, starting with the devil knows how long such stories have one canvas and it will always hide a veil of struggle for life steadily exterminated humanity. In fact, most directors do not invest in their work of ultra-deep meaning, if they do not want to tell a kind of parable about the sore or irretrievably gone under the guise of a zombie movie. Most often, such pictures are reduced to the fact that the viewer projects a situation with those fleeing in the world, flying an abyss.
Of course, following such primitive logic, you can simply pick up the film for yourself, let’s say, and review it indefinitely, building in your head the devastated areas of your beloved (or vice versa) from childhood. True, the whole problem lies in the fact that very few directors who do not invest in their picture “supertask” are able to raise their creation above the unleavened syrup of the exploitation of the genre. Most of “Some Dead Men” was created precisely with the aim of not building in their heads peculiar schemes and systems, not complicating this very “primitive logic”. Here, directors are simply trying to make the visual part more original, based on their preferences.
And this is where we come across the typical escapism. Moreover, escapism is rather superficial and based on social cliches and superstructures. No, it is clear that such stories are necessary and important. All of us, in one way or another, perceive most paintings in a way that we try to embed ourselves in them, or to be complicit one way or another. It is due to the fact that the zombie cinema is full of such standard pictures and it becomes interesting to watch films where the viewing angle of the creator radically differs from the generally accepted stamps.
Here, we have another version of how the director sees the zombie apocalypse, adding to it the only difference - the composition of the escapees. After all, you can predict the plot yourself, even without reading the synopsis.
In principle, such a standard story can not pull to the highest score, I think. But there is a couple of moments (or rather, one personality) in this film that just drowns a little charm from “Special Dead” – this is Jason Brubaker.
If you put a statue (webbunks and whitch housers would be both hands for) instead of this talentless actor, the statue would play better. This Brubaker is a total lack of talent. Maybe this kitsch is so peculiar. But that’s not what I expected when I started looking at this picture. Seriously, playing the role of a mentally complete hero, and the main character, this Brubaker looked mentally disabled throughout the picture. Participation in the film of this man did not bring the picture any dividends. What do I mean? He's a producer, and the hell you can't do it! Sure. Of course, this is kitsch, and in its worst manifestation. This is not the intentional tastelessness of the films “Troma”, there with it somehow learned to manage. Here, Brubaker's involvement is an attempt to make an incredibly tough guy out of a soft-bodied "bottom," if I may use that terminology. The women in the film looked more brutal.
And in general, despite the idea of the struggle of the “alived dead” and “special” people, only a black actor turned out to be a truly “living” character of this picture. In general, a minimum of artificiality (I can only remember one moment of this guy’s bad game), complete entry into the image and a certain charisma. That's who dragged this painting. And without this damn Brubaker, the filmmaker could well have taken a worthy place in the host of outstanding zombie pictures.
But, as long as the bet is on the visual component at the expense of the mental component, and the foreground is not charisma and let’s say “survivability” and the notorious kitsch in its worst view, such films deserve strength.
4 out of 10