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HORROR POSSUM She speaks her mind, in five words or less. Her verdict on this movie: "It was good".

DEAD MEAT (2004) Director: Conor McMahon. Hacktors: Marian Araujo, Eoin Whelan, David Ryan. Rating/5: The lowdown: Too many zombies movies spoil the broth. Specifically, too many zombie comedies spoil the broth. So it was with a slight sense of trepidation that I sat down to watch this Irish-made, low-budget flick. Like its fellow indie gorefest Evil Breed: The Legend Of Samhain, it's set in Ireland. Unlike that movie, it was actually filmed there. The plot sees Helena (Araujo) and her boyfriend Martin (Ryan) enjoying a lovely drive in the countryside, when they hit a man, who dies. Thing is, though, he was already (un)dead. An outbreak of Mad Cow Disease has turned most people in the surrounding counties into flesh-munching stiffs. Cue mayhem! Good points: Thankfully, Dead Meat isn't another Shaun Of The Dead-inspired, ironic zombie laugh-a-thon. It's tongue may be planted in its maggot-riddled cheek, but for the most part writer/director McMahon is playing it straight. Which is good, as the gory special effects are brilliantly over-the-top, recalling the inventiveness of Peter Jackson circa Bad Taste. Eyes get poked, heads come off and in one creative highlight, an eyeball gets sucked out by a vacuum cleaner! Jesus, I can't believe McMahon went for the old time-honoured, cliched, eye-sucked-out-by-Hoover routine. It's so passe!     The acting is good, too. While realistic and/or complex characterisation is not one of Dead Meat's strengths - there's a distinct lack of reaction from people when their loved ones die, for instance - there are no embarrassments from the stars. Even the zombies (generally recruited, as McMahon has admitted, from pubs the night before!) do a pretty good job. The best thing about Dead Meat, though, is the superb pacing. I don't mean 'pacing' in the sense of building up to peaks and then taking a rest: this movie does not stop. It's never boring, which is more than you can say for 90 per cent of other flicks. Bad points: I'm not sure if this really qualifies as a bad point, as it's very brave and ballsy, but Whelan's hard-as-nails youth coach speaks in an Irish brogue so thick that American viewers will surely need subtitles. Shit, I did at times and half my family's Irish! Couple this with Araujo's occasionally awkward Spanish lilt and you have a potential actor/audience communication breakdown.     While the climax, involving a battle with a zombie horde, is great fun with some strong gore, it's a tad underlit, robbing the proceedings of some clarity. Neither is the very ending entirely satisfactory, seemingly going for ambiguity but not quite making the grade. Oh, and I think we could have done without an attack from a mad cow. It might be original, but it's ludicrous. DVD Details: The Region 1 disc has a short but endearing making-of doc called Mad Cows And Zombies, the trailer and a short McMahon film called The Braineater. The Region 2 disc has all of this, while adding an audio commentary. Overall: Despite a few niggles, Dead Meat is a corker of an indie horror flick. Actually, scratch that, seeing as Slasherama doesn't believe in differentiating between indie and mainstream horror's merits: it's a corker of a horror film, full-stop. Release Date: Out now in the States. In the UK, it's out on October 3, 2005. [Check it out at Amazon US] [Check it out at Amazon UK] [Reviews Menu] [Home] © Copyright Slasherama 2002-present