Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead, or my preferred title: Bogan of the Dead is an Australian Zombie flick that’s actually quite entertaining; if only the trailer hadn’t spoilt the whole film for you.
It’s Mad Max with zombie-brains on the windshield and a V8 engine of action-packed sequences that puts it heads and shoulders above all the other Australian Zombie Films. When Barry, Benny and Frankie find each other in the middle of a zombie apocalypse they begin a suicide mission thru the Australian bushland to rescue Barry’s sister Brooke using a zombie-fueled 4WD.
The film really has an Australian-flavour which infects every scene. There’s maybe one scene that’s a little cringe-worthy with regards to paying tribute to Australia, but even a blatant Ned Kelly reference can’t stop you from enjoying this film if you’re a true zombie-fan. The film is incredibly Ocker-Aussie and it’s great to see a good Aboriginal actor, Leon Burchill, playing a key supporting role. Now there are some cliche moments in Wyrmwood but it more than makes up for it by providing some really decent emotional moments in the middle of all the chaos, something that even the big budget zombie films of Hollywood fail to do (cough-cough World War Z cough-cough)
The film glosses over some important details in the narrative that might have helped the audience make sense of some of the weirder characters and their motivations; however there are some good twists, great sequences and violence that would make a young Peter Jackson proud.
I’m going to be honest, the only real problem I have with this film has nothing to do with the actual film itself: it’s the marketing. The people who promoted this film and edited the trailer should be f*cking shot! If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen the film. The trailer tells you all the key story points within it’s four minute and three second run time (which is too damn long for any trailer nowadays.) The trailer will show you an obstacle the characters face in the film and then seconds later shows you how said obstacle is solved. They do this multiple times, from using zombies as petrol, to using mind control to gather more zombies, to even spoiling the outcome of an attempted suicide of one of the main characters. This is just poor trailer-making in every sense of the word; if you want people to see your film, don’t show them the whole film in the trailer.
Despite poor marketing, Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead is definitely worth your time if you’re a zombie fan and it gets Four out of Five zombie-brains splattered all over your freshly cleaned windscreen.
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