This is another movie from Movie Mania that I found after looking around for a while (it's not even in the Blockbuster system). As far as I know it's Peter Jackson's first film and boy, does it show.
In the beginning I saw a lot of crazy camera moves and towards the end I saw a few things that reminded me of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and Evil Dead 2 (anybody notice a trend as far as horror and comedy go?) but inbetween I saw a lot of bad acting and poor cutting.
It's a shame that Jackson was the best actor in his film. You would think that he was too busy directing, producing, and editing to out-shine the other actors but he did and that's not a good thing.
The gore was pretty cool but a little too sophomoric. I liked the story and the structure — the viewer is thrust into the middle of the narrative and forced to sort things out for themselves a little — wow, a movie that doesn't lay it all out for you — it could never happen in America!
American movies have to hand everything to the audience on a silver platter and re-explain everything that has occurred every few minutes for those who can't keep up. They state, restate, and overstate the obvious. The worst example of this last year was the Beat It Over Your Head Hit — Quiz Show with sentimentality and Spielbergish-dolly shots that made me choke.
So, hats off to Jackson for making a small budget gore show with a script that beats out a shoe-in for the Oscars but I'd recommend Dead Alive over this any day of the week (which still tries too hard to be as cool as Michigan's favorite son, Sam Raimi's Evil Dead 1 & 2).
I had a few problems with Raimi's Army of Darkness (the medieval dead) in its over-wrought Three Stoogishness and the necessity to change the beginning of the movie to contradict the end of Evil Dead 2.