Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead

Synopsis: Barry (Jay Gallagher) is a local mechanic and family man who finds himself in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. He gets a desperate call from his sister, Brooke (Bianca Bradey) who’s trapped by zombies but before Barry can reach her, she’s kidnapped by sinister gas-mask-wearing soldiers and taken to a lab where she’s experimented on by a psychotic doctor (Berynn Schwerdt). While Brooke tries her best to escape, Barry teams up with fellow survivor Benny (Leon Burchill) and together they battle their way through the hordes of flesh-eating undead and a band of mercenary soldiers in the hope that they will find Brooke alive.

Marketing this film as “Mad Max meets Dawn of the Dead” is a bit of a stretch. Yes, it has some of the ‘road warrior aesthetics of Mad Max (George Miller, 1979) and it probably has as many zombies as Dawn of the Dead (George A Romero, 1978) but the comparisons really end with the visual. Both Mad Max and Dawn of the Dead had something to say about their respective worlds beyond the high-octane antics up of tricked-up cars and the shooting off of undead heads. By comparison, Wyrmwood (written by the director with brother Tristan) is pretty much what-you-see-is-what-you-get and if what you want is a bunch of over-the-top characters on a gory, violent road movie who have a host of inventive ways to kill off the bad guys (see Barry and his nail gun) then this is probably your cup of tea.

Granted, there are some interesting ideas like the discovery that zombie blood is flammable and the ability of Brooke to telepathically communicate with the undead horde but these ideas are more magic-bullet story elements that aren’t fully underpinned by any narrative reasoning. The young cast rise to the occasion taking to the heightened reality style of performance with zeal. Gallagher’s performance is reminiscent of Bruce Campbell in Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead (1981), although perhaps not as intentionally funny. Burchill too is good as Barry’s new traveling companion who brings a likeable personality to the group. But it’s Bradey as the kick-ass heroine who shines and, ultimately, her performance leaves Gallagher and Burchill for dead (sorry, bad pun). The weak link, though, is Schwerdt’s evil doctor who, despite the funny idea of his performing acts of abomination to tunes by K C and the Sunshine Band, ends up as a little more than undisciplined hysteria and overacting and, for the life of me, I couldn’t quite work out what his evil plan was all about – only that it was hideous and gory.

As a schlocky horror gore-fest, Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead might prove an entertaining diversion for some, but for those who are swept up in the zombie phenomenon of The Walking Dead franchise where the gore is graphic but plays a deliberate second fiddle to the characters and their very human stories, it will likely come up feeling hollow. For my money, in the realm of low budget zombie flicks it’s still hard to go past Night of the Living Dead (George A Romero, 1968) which is still the yardstick by which most zombie apocalypses are measured.

 

 

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