Film No.10
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Next up we are off to the land of my father and my father's father and my father's father's father and my father's fa...... you get the pictures we are off to the dangerous countryside of County Leitrim here in lovely Ireland
Martin and his girlfriend Helena are driving through the countryside when they knock a man down standing in the middle of the road. In a panic they pack the body in the back of his car but a few minutes down the road the passenger is less than grateful for the lift and bites into Martins neck. After disposing of the disgruntled passenger Martin sends Helena for help in a nearby farm house. Moments later Helena is attacked by the man she loves but she is left with no choice but to suck his eye out with a vacuum cleaner and escape into the wilderness alone and confused. Outside she meets Desmond the village gravedigger who explains that a local farmer was caught feeding dead animals to cows and since then the locals have gone crazy and started attacking anyone they see.
Dead Meat looks like it was made with a budget of a couple of hundred euro which makes what it accomplishes even more impressive. The people here are obviously not actors it's like they went out into town and pick the first few people that showed an interest in making a few bob and put them into the film and even that works in favour of the finished product. Im not saying the acting was bad and of course im not saying it was good but there is no stuttering through the lines it's just like listening to farmers talking anywhere in Ireland and thats where the humour works with some of the conversations. This is not a horror comedy by any means its totally done straight but there is humour to be found maybe its just because i have encountered characters like these in the real world.
Another impressive aspect of Dead Meat is the gore and kills for a small film with a tiny budget it's all practical gore from killing a cow with a hurley and sliotar ( what would an Irish horror film be without death by hurley ) or decapitating a zombie with a shovel it all looks great. The makeup effects on the zombies is nothing amazing but it does work really well. To be honest i was expecting this to be total shit but i was wrong it's great fun and the characters are very lickable because like i said they just seem like real everyday people no macho posers or pointless freaking out or falling for no reason when getting chased these are people dealing with the task at hand in a realistic way like you would envision it actually playing out if a zombie apocalypse actually happened. At times the score has a real Italian horror sound which was a nice surprise it's a pity they didn't use it throughout the film but when its there it adds a nice creepiness to it.
I loved this film you can tell that it was a labour of love with some great attention to detail not just thrown together to make a zombie film they set out to make a serious film and achieved that goal i would love to see them make something else with a proper budget and see how they could handle that. The influence for the film are plain to see from Romero's the Crazies to Fulci's love of eye horror but nothing felt like a rip off just a nod to the films that influenced the film makers. Dead Meat will definitely get repeat viewings.
8/10