Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead (2015) [Blu-ray]
Horror

In the aftermath of a comet breaking up over Earth, most of the planet's population quickly succumbs to a strange disease which turns them into "zombies." Few survive, and those who do, quickly discover all existing fuel sources have been rendered useless by the plague. Trapped in a wilderness teeming with living dead, one of the survivors, Barry, has lost everything except his sister, Brooke. But even as the disaster unfolds, Brooke is kidnapped and dragged to a terrifying medical lab run by a psychotic "doctor", who is performing a series of deranged experiments on plague survivors. As Brooke struggles to devise an escape plan, she realizes that the doctor's experiments have given her strange powers over his zombie captives. Unaware of his sister's new powers, Barry teams up with fellow survivors to rescue her and protect what family he has left. With a healthy dose of Mad Max-inspired vehicular mayhem and an enormous serving of pure, raw talent, this raucous post-apocalyptic epic is one of the most original and wildly entertaining genre films in years!

Storyline: Barry is a talented mechanic and family man whose life is torn apart on the eve of a zombie apocalypse. His sister, Brooke, is kidnapped by a sinister team of gas-mask wearing soldiers & experimented on by a psychotic doctor. While Brooke plans her escape Barry goes out on the road to find her & teams up with Benny, a fellow survivor - together they must arm themselves and prepare to battle their way through hordes of flesh-eating monsters in a harsh Australian bushland. Written by Kiah Roache-Turner & Tristan Roache-Turner

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, August 2, 2015 -- Some regular readers of Blu-ray.com may have noticed that there are certain templates we use from time to time, as in our giveaway verbiage or (with me, anyway) the codec and aspect ratio data that I mention in the video section of the review. It's become obvious to me with the release of Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead that I simply need to make a new template offering up the litany of Australian shot and/or based Apocalyptic and/or post-Apocalyptic dramas. The short list in this weird subgenre includes On the Beach,

The Mad Max Trilogy (and of course its recent reboot Mad Max: Fury Road 3D), Tank Girl, The Rover and These Final Hours. Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead plies much the same territory as that aforementioned Mad Max franchise (as even one of the pull quotes emblazoned across its cover art alludes to), but it works in a cheeky (rotting or otherwise) element by making this particular post-Apocalypse one of the zombie variety. An almost paradigmatic low budget offering, in much the same way as George O. Romero's original Night of the Living Dead was in fact, Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead displays a blacker than black sense of humor while also offering up several exciting set pieces which, if minimal by action blockbuster standards, should still deliver the goods for those who prefer their threats to shamble rather than run. (Romero's Dawn of the Dead is another film mentioned in the cover art's pull quote.)

Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead engages in some clunky plot structuring, plopping the viewer down in media res, with some human survivors relaying memories of the still developing zombie incursion, but then veering off into a sidebar that has no connection to these reminiscences, and then finally winding the story back to where it began at about the halfway point through the film. The two main male characters are an Aborigine named Benny (Leon Burchill) and a mechanic named Barry (Jay Gallagher). Benny had been out camping with his brothers when a weird meteor shower passed overhead in the clear star filled night in the outback, evidently the cause of the ensuing troubles. The next morning Benny discovers one of his brothers already dead and the second brother transformed into a zombie. Meanwhile, Barry is awakened by his daughter, who informs her dad and Barry's wife Annie (Catherine Terracini) that there's someone in their kitchen. When Barry investigates, he comes face to mottled face with a zombie who is marauding through the family refrigerator. A scuffle ensues, and Barry, Annie and their little girl manage to get to the family car to try to hightail it out of there.

The sidebar, which repeatedly detours the film into a kind of bizarre analog to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (replete with a mad scientist singing and dancing), involves Barry's sister Brooke (Bianca Bradey), who is involved in some perhaps illicit photography in a garage, only to have her subject and another participant become zombiefied. While the evidently martial arts skilled Brooke is able to deal with the situation, she can't get out of the garage due to a horde of zombies waiting outside. She does manage to get a phone call off to Barry, urging him to get to Bulla Bulla to rescue her. A bit later a military team arrives, evidently scouring the countryside to take out any offending zombies, but also to take Brooke hostage for some initially unclear reason.

Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead attempts to give Barry enough of a putative backstory to develop empathy for him as an actual character, but really the film is just a hyperbolic series of set pieces and frankly any of the characters could have been utilized for the various scenarios without much narrative disruption. There's much less attention paid to either Benny or (especially) Brooke, and the Brooke - Mad Scientist (Berryn Schwerdt) plot angle almost seem like they've been shoehorned from another film.

This is the first feature film from Australian brothers Kiah Roache-Turner, who directed, and Tristan Roache-Turner, who produced. Both of the siblings share the screenwriting credits. Whatever the narrative issues Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead encounters, there's little doubt that the Roache-Turners are extremely facile filmmakers. Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead has a very arresting visual style, one that cartwheels from extreme color grading to almost total desaturation and back again, while also offering a glut of inventive if slightly vertigo inducing framings. While the film is a little too self-consciously "stylized," the overall premise and pitch black humor prove that you can't keep a good Australian zombie apocalpyse movie down (under or otherwise).

Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead would have been better without the overly convoluted story structure, one which was obviously geared to start the film out with a bang (as the brothers address in their commentary), but which tends to bifurcate the story in an unhelpful way. It's even weirder that the film is cast initially as a reminiscence when the Brooke storyline just wanders in from a nearby screenplay. But these qualms aside, the film is a ton of fun and provides more than enough head exploding action to satisfy most zombie fans. Visually arresting though probably a bit overstuffed stylistically, Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead boasts excellent technical merits and a good supplementary package and comes Recommended.

[CSW] -2.7- It has a low budget, the CGI isn't always entirely convincing and the plot occasionally veers towards downright silliness, but horror fans will probably have a heckuva good time watching this energetic Australian zombie movie. It's almost as if zombies were introduced into the Mad Max universe. Despite a climax that perhaps should have been rethought, the movie has several pluses that make it an above average entry in the zombie subgenre. Among them: a fast pace, a dark sense of humor, a strong, resourceful female character and some fresh ideas concerning the undead. Recommended especially for disheartened zombiephiles.
[V4.0-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.


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