The Dead 2: India, 2015.
Directed by The Ford Brothers.
Starring Joseph Millson, Meenu Mishra, Anand Krishna Goyal, Sandip Datta Gupta and Poonam Mathur.
SYNOPSIS:
During a zombie virus outbreak in India, an American engineer travels across the dangerous desert to rescue his pregnant lover.
The Ford Brothers’ 2011 zombie movie The Dead proved to be something of a hit amongst genre fans and critics alike, using the setting of the African desert to great effect whilst creating a grim, arid atmosphere and some creepy looking zombies. Although not a perfect zombie movie – it ran way too long and was very flabby in the middle – it did at least make zombies threatening again, and not just zombies but slow-moving zombies, harking back to George A. Romero’s original Night of the Living Dead and the threat of the shambling hordes.
The Dead 2: India applies the same aesthetic but in – surprise! – India, so straight away we are treated to some stunning photography and a sense of place, and it isn’t long before the beautiful scenery and busy streets of Mumbai are home to a zombie outbreak. Nicholas Burton (Joseph Millson – Casino Royale) is an American engineer working in India who takes a phone call from his Indian girlfriend Ishani (Meenu Mishra) saying that she is pregnant. Burton promises to try and square things up with her disapproving father before returning to the US in a few weeks but before the call is finished panic breaks out on the city streets as people are being bitten in seemingly random attacks. Ishani returns home to face her father and discovers that her mother has been bitten, meanwhile Burton sees what is happening in the part of the country where he is so he decides to travel the 300 miles across the desert to Mumbai to rescue his love and their unborn child.
What made Romero’s first zombie trilogy so enthralling was that the zombies were secondary to the human characters and their hostility towards each other, the shuffling undead merely looming in the background as an alternative to taking a bullet from a deranged military leader or an adrenaline-fuelled SWAT soldier. The Dead 2: India, sadly, does not have that particular quality running through it. Instead we are given a ‘hero’ who has a reason to survive and cross the harsh Indian landscapes but thanks to some very thin writing and a lacklustre performance from Joseph Millson we never really root for him in the same way we rooted for Ben in Night of the Living Dead or Peter in Dawn of the Dead. Other problems lie in the almost parodic performances of Meenu Mishra as Ishani and Sandip Datta Gupta as her domineering father, who, to be fair, don’t have a great deal to work with other than soap opera levels of characterisation, but they come across as very amateurish and it is difficult not to snigger at their reactions to what is happening rather than sympathise with them. And whoever decided that the gag of having Ishani’s father pick up her phone while Nicholas is talking on the other end was worth repeating needs to have their screenwriting card revoked.
But there are things that the film does do right and that will endear it to fans of more grounded, cerebral zombie movies. As already mentioned the visuals are quite breathtaking and the sense of unease that The Ford Brothers create during the opening scenes is akin to the opening Iraq scenes in The Exorcist, where you know something isn’t right but there’s nothing you can quite put your finger on. The zombies don’t look quite as creepy as they did before and when they attack the editing is a bit jumpy here and there but you can still make out what is going on, and the practical gore effects are handled very well, again creating a grounded, non-exploitative feeling that separates this movie from the seemingly unending direct-to-DVD CGI-fests that crop up weekly. Like its predecessor the pacing takes a dip in the middle but it is shorter and there is a bit more going on, which makes it a bit more entertaining than the first film overall. The Dead 2: India does provide an alternative to the bland production line of PG-13-rated jump scares that pass for mainstream horror by going for mood and an uneasy sense of dread but The Ford Brothers haven’t made their definitive statement yet. No doubt part three will see an outbreak on another continent, and while the filmmaking brothers have their visual style and atmosphere locked down they may be best to let somebody else tackle the writing and casting side of things.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
https://youtu.be/rTcdL3-dh2c?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published July 15, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
