Undead 2003

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: The film's genre-merging cleverness works against it, and releasing it in the wake of George Romero's zombie knockout Land of the Dead invites comparisons that may be unfair but inevitable. Read more

Robert K. Elder, Chicago Tribune: Away from the killing field, the Spierigs' actors prove themselves to be the most zombie-like, devolving into a din of screechy bickering that'll leave you running for the exits. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: The plot's standard-issue, owing much to zombie movies that have staggered before this one. Read more

Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle: There are about 2,000 hard-core Fangoria readers in the Bay Area who are going to absolutely love this film. But the 6,698,000 other residents will find it at best a little boring and at worst stomach-churningly offensive. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: I'm definitely zombied out. Read more

Bob Townsend, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Despite its clever low-budget visual style and campy sensibility, Undead is just too derivative to go on as long as it does. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Rigor mortis has set in. Read more

Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times: However visually striking, this Australian film is ultimately as tedious as it is derivative. Read more

Michael Booth, Denver Post: No amount of Zombie Rules can explain a movie like this, or the recent filmmaker fascination with a creaky old genre. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: It's about as much fun as watching blood dry. Read more

Tim Grierson, L.A. Weekly: Flesh-eating fish notwithstanding, Peter and Michael Spierig's low-budget schlock-horror parody brings precious little new to the undead genre. Read more

Jami Bernard, New York Daily News: It's downright boring for an hour, then picks up, at least visually, when the zombified are hauled into space and hung there as if in a cosmic closet. Read more

Laura Kern, New York Times: A stale, derivative mess that borrows heavily from every zombie and alien movie worthy of imitation, to only ho-hum effect. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The kind of movie that would be so bad it's good, except it's not bad enough to be good enough. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The film will frighten only those with phobias about boredom and amuse only viewers with expectations lower than the filmmaker's miniscule budget. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Time Out: Read more

David Stratton, Variety: A modestly budgeted but precociously inventive horror pic that combines brain-eating zombies with outer space aliens. Read more

Michael Atkinson, Village Voice: Watching it is a smidgen like listening to the same monkey-walks- into-a-bar joke for the 105th time, but for the Spierig brothers, it is clearly a demonstration of fast-cheap capabilities and a one-way ticket straight out of Queensland. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: The storyline becomes pretty tedious, thanks to an incredibly slow beginning and a scenario based entirely on running around in circles to get away from the undead. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: Seeing people die in funny ways loses interest after a bit. Read more