One fine evening, I found myself in the mood for a nice low-budget zombie movie from the ol’ Emerald Isle. Dead Meat, (the DVD case reads “Fangoria’s Gorezone - Dead Meat”,) turned out to be exactly what I was looking for.
So, after an accident on a very lonely road in rural Leitrim, Ireland, a pair of visiting tourists, Helena and Martin, attempt to move the body of the man they hit with their car to a nearby cottage for help. Things go from bad to worse and soon, Helena is alone in a foreign land surrounded by the undead, and the even more foreign living.
What plays out is your standard outbreak scenario: Run, find a stronghold, make a stand. Nothing wildly different or original there. But it is the casts of locals that make this film stand out. Helena meets up with the local gravedigger, Desmond, who despite her lack of interest in the matter, attempts to tell the histories of places as the are chased through them. And then there is Coach Cathal Cheunt, a crotchety, and foul-mouthed hurling enthusiast and his equally untrusting missus, (and living dead look-alike,) Francie. They make their way across the Irish countryside as night falls, hoping to get out of the infected area fending off attacks by both undead humans and livestock.
Oh yes. That is how this particular outbreak began: A virulent strain of Mad Cow disease that had cattle attacking humans, thereby spreading the infection.
And zombie cows aren’t the only departure from your typical Romero-esque ghouls, either. Dead Meat also sees the deceased using weapons to kill, (but only if readily available, a pickaxe, assorted blunt objects, nothing too sophisticated.)
A sleeping state is seen, too, where the dead are in a type of dormant rest, though not for too long, standing and eyes rolled back. Creepy to navigate through in the darkness of night. And dispatching the infected is no longer limited to damaging the brain, (though that still seems the most effective way.) A variety of stabbings, hackings and sports-related injuries can put them at rest as well. This must have been born of the desire to showcase unique splattering exterminations.
Other hallmarks of traditional Zombism still apply: Attack and feast on the living, infection through bites, and slow, shambolic movements. These all combine to make the dead in Dead Meat a nice, slowly overwhelming menace, despite some bad make-up. I mean, some really terrible zombie make-up. The movie has some really decent effects in zombie kills and gore/wounds, so surely some better facial work could have been done!
After all is said and killed, however, I enjoyed this movie a lot. No, there is no cinematic history being made, not even a real departure from run-of-the-mill zombie movies, but the characters are interesting and likable, the story, minimal as it was, was a nice, linear arc with a straight ahead goal and no attempts at surprise twists. The zombies, despite the aforementioned crap make-up, were a creepy threat and conveyed that sense of danger.
If you are looking for a Living Dead movie, yet another story of how a zombie outbreak would play out and you’d like to see it with quirky Irish flavor to it, you should definitely check out Dead Meat.
On the ZMR scoring rubric, Dead Meat earned itself a 2.66 out of a possible 4.0 points, (buoyed on the strength of its characters and some nice smooth pacing,) but I personally enjoyed it more that that number reflects.
One serious caveat, though. Definitely watch this with the subtitles on. Although these folks are technically speaking the English language, the deep rural Irish accent makes many of the lightening-fast comments and assorted expletives barely recognizable. And a lot of the charm I found in this movie was due to these off-the-cuff comments and under the breath lines.
This YouTube trailer simply doesn’t do it justice.
