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DEAD MEAT
Rating: 
Ireland. 2004.
Director/Screenplay – Conor McMahon, Producers – Michael Griffin & Edward King, Photography – Andrew Legge, Music – John Gillooley, Digital Effects – Noel O’Donnell, Makeup – Liz Byrne, Production Design – Cornelius Browne. Production Company – Bord Scannán na héireann (The Irish Film Board)/Horrorthon Productions.
Cast:
Marian Araujo (Helena), David Muyllaert (Desmond), Eoin Whelan (Cathal Cheunt), Kathryn Toolan (Lisa), David Ryan (Martin), Amy Redmond (Francie)
Plot: Helena and her boyfriend Martin are driving through Leitrim county in rural Ireland when they hit a man on the road. They place the body in the car to take him with them, only for the body to come back to life and bite Martin in the neck. Helena runs to a farmhouse to get help but is attacked by zombies, including the now dead Martin, that close in all around. The local gravedigger Desmond comes to her aid. They flee through the countryside, joined by various others, trying to avoid zombies that are everywhere. It appears that the outbreak has been caused by humans eating meat infected with Mad Cow Disease.
In recent years we have seen a whole host of films reviving, paying homage to or parodying the zombie film as patented by George Romero in films like Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1979) and Day of the Dead (1985). This mini-fad of Romero zombie revival/homages has so far included the likes of Resident Evil (2002), 28 Days Later (2002), House of the Dead (2003), Undead (2003), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Shaun of the Dead (2004), Day of the Dead 2: Contagium (2005), Romero’s own Land of the Dead (2005), Night of the Dead “Leben Tod” (2006) and Night of the Living Dead 3D (2006). The zombie movie is back in in a big way by the looks of it.
Dead Meat is fashioned after the George Romero-styled zombie film circa Dawn of the Dead. Maybe you could also draw some analogies also to 28 Days Later – both Dead Meat and 28 Days Later are British zombie films, both come shot on digital video and both feature people caught in tough survivalist situations. Dead Meat is made with a general competence. The film has a welcomely unstinting goriness, an area that 28 Days Later proved rather tame in. Though Dead Meat sometimes gives evidence of being an amateur production, the actors all give professional performances. The show is stolen in large part here by Eoin Whelan who has the audience in laughter with his motormouth dialogue delivery, even if his accent is so thick (it’s hard to tell whether this is deliberate or not) that one can’t understand a single word that he is saying.
Unfortunately, what does Dead Meat in is the relative amateurishness of the direction by Conor McMahon. McMahon is professional in most aspects but seems to never quite know when his set-ups are cliché shots or when his dialogue comes out as corny. The first third of the film with Marian Araujo in the farmhouse and then joining David Muyllaert in a trek across the countryside while avoiding zombies is rather banal. In these sections Dead Meat certainly comes across like a more professionally and competently made Italian zombie film, but we have seen most of this before and there is nothing exceptional to any of it. McMahon succeeds far better during the night journey by car through zombie-infected land, which attains some atmosphere. Alas the last third of the film with the cast being pursued through a castle by zombies again falls into cliché simply because McMahon’s shots and splatter effects fall into much of a muchness and offer up nothing we have not seen before. There is a downbeat ending, although again this is a cliché of the genre, borrowed from George Romero’s The Crazies (1973).
Surprisingly, unlike many Romero homages, Conor McMahon plays the whole show completely seriously and chooses not to plant his tongue in cheek, although one cannot help but think that such may have actually benefited the film somewhat. Disappointingly Dead Meat feels like a competently made zombie film that is made entirely by the numbers. Perhaps Conor McMahon’s failing is that Dead Meat emerges as simply a fannish zombie/splatter film, made in enthusiastic homage to Romero. But the crucial failing is that, unlike Romero’s zombie films, it is not a film that works on any deeper level and is no more than that.
Screening Courtesy of The 24 Hour Movie Marathon (Wellington, NZ)
Copyright Richard Scheib 2005
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