Braindead - Lisa's Review

Hmmmm a difficult one for me to review this week.  Why you may ask?  Well, I know this movie is a favourite amongst many horror fans, proper horror fans.   By proper horror fans, I mean those fans who know their movies, the history, those who have watched more than the series of 'Scream', 'I know what you did last summer' and 'Final Destination'.

I hadn't seen the movie until tonight.  Again, why you may ask?  Well, oddly I didn't like the cover (much the same reason as to why I have yet to view Bad Taste), ridiculous, you may say.  Fair enough, that's just one of my little wierdisms.  More acceptable possibly - I generally don't enjoy comedy horrors.  I make an exception for 'Shaun of the Dead',  but other than that, not for me.

So back to the matter in hand... Braindead.  Firstly what an odd film for Peter Jackson to be responsible for! You would never imagine it.    

To try to keep the premise as simple as possible.  A Sumatran Rat Monkey is captured on an expedition and ends up in a zoo.  It seems that everyone who gets bitten by this beast and everyone in turn bitten by anyone who has been bitten, turn into wierd, fucked up zombies.  Zombies who seem impossible to kill and walk about with various injuries and traumas. To say the alternative title for this movie is Dead Alive, should give you an idea of what we're talking about here.

So, did I like it?  In a word, No.  I can hear the shouting from here.  "She didn't get it", "How could she not like Braindead?, Its awesome!"... Sorry, it's just not my thing at all.  I did titter a couple of times, but mostly sat with my mouth agog at the ridiculousness of it all.  It is very, very gorey (apparently the bloodiest horror ever made), but not in any kind of realistic way.  I have to give kudos to the various gross deaths and injuries doled out and yea, ok, it was kind of funny.  That seems to be the problem though.  I like my horror to be horrific, realistic.  I like to be repulsed, horrified, frightened, creeped out at least impressed, but this movie didn't fulfill any of these requirements for me.

I can appreciate a lot of people will like this movie and I appreciate my viewpoints are most probably because I just tend to dislike this style of movie.  To me, it looks like something a couple of teenage boys (think Beavis and Butthead) would dream up and want to film, only to be laughed out of every studio they approached.   

So there you have it.  I finally watched Braindead and I didn't like it, much like I thought would be the case.  I won't stick an avoid on it as I know my opinions are purely down to personal taste and a lot of people will enjoy this movie, but sadly, I wasn't one of them.