Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead

Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead is fairly disjointed in terms of actual mechanics and plot, but there are some cool ideas, and I loved the outfits, the vehicles, and the look of a lot of the scenes in general.

Wyrmwood has been described as "Mad Max with zombies," and I guess you could kind of look at it that way. I did love the look of the movie; the outfits and the truck and everything. There was some cool editing and camerawork going on. I probably should've had the subtitles on; I had to struggle to hear what was being said, and I didn't always catch it.

The whole "wormwood" thing was kind of a half-assed explanation for the zombies. Really we don't know what happened, and that's fine, but I guess it just irks me that that's the only thing that's mentioned. The zombie in the ground out came out of nowhere and didn't fit at all. It turns out they originally intended to have lots of zombies in the ground, but they just didn't like digging the holes.

The behind-the-scenes stuff is more interesting than the movie itself, in some ways. It took them four years to shoot over weekends, and they didn't even pay the actors. Barry stops wearing his mask at the end because one of the actors decided to do a backflip while wearing it and destroyed it, and it was the only one they had.

The bearded guy was originally supposed to be the sidekick, but he wasn't able to finish shooting, so they wrote in Benny, and I'm glad they did. He was more interesting than a random white guy, and it was a great shock when the bearded guy got his head blown off. They could've dialed it back a *little* on Benny being so cheesy. A lot of the dialogue was just a bit too over the top, actually.

I got a little bored during Barry's story, although the whole "I killed my wife and daughter with a nail gun this morning, I don't know how to turn that into a story" line was great. But I was getting impatient waiting for the actual story to start. I did love the scene in the garage with the Day of the Dead zombie (and that was the actual garage of the filmmakers' mom, by the way).

I loved everything with the doctor in the truck. Just the visual of all those zombies on the wall, and the one on the gurney; and the music, and him dancing to it. It was a little too convenient that Barry just happened to be driving right behind the truck with his sister in it, but it was a cool reveal that she was in a truck. André lost all interest in the movie when Barry forgot to lock the sunroof, but I don't think that makes him a useless character. It was a crazy moment. Anybody could forget to do that.

The whole "zombies breathe methane and by the way flammable things aren't flammable anymore" angle was weird. The whole movie had a little bit too much of a "random stuff the filmmakers thought would be cool" feel. It didn't come across as a cohesive, logical world. The fight with Barry and the solider at the end was great, especially the soldier's line about grabbing somebody's nuts in a fight showing low character. But even though it was a cool line, it perfectly illustrates the lack of cohesion, because it kind of came out of nowhere and didn't fit with anything.

One recurring unrealistic event was how people were constantly falling asleep next to snarling zombies. They were making a lot of noise. I don't see how people would keep falling asleep with them being so close. The look actually reminded me of Repo! The Genetic Opera for some reason. It actually doesn't work on a lot of levels, but it was still cool.