Zombie Fight Club (2014) Review

imgresZombie Fight Club premiered at this year’s FrightFest playing in the late night slot a perfect time for this insane movie that merges Gladiator with The Walking Dead, an amazing concept and spectacle, the only problem being that you have to wait an hour to see it!

That’s right a film titled Zombie Fight Club doesn’t actually get to the Zombie Fight Club until it has run through a very clichéd if still pretty fun opening set 30 minutes before the zombie outbreak begins.

As a menagerie of characters eek out their daily existence in a tower block in the center of Taipei including mothers, a teacher and his daughter, a geriatric retired solider, party goers, drug dealers and the corrupt police about to raid them little do they know a zombie virus is about to take hold turning the population into mutated flesh hungry horrors.

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As the living transform into the living dead the random assortment of characters trapped in the high rise each experience their own nightmare some ultimately escaping and some joining the growing zombie army.images

Flash forward 1 year latter and the world is a very different place with the survivors forced to live underground where the rich and powerful force the weak and wounded to do battle in an undead arena as warped entertainment for food and a chance at freedom.

A sequel to Zombie 108 director Joe Chien is highly aware of the ridiculousness of his own film which makes Zombie Fight Club all the more entertaining due to its extreme excessiveness. The gore is higher than the doped up characters with an orgy turning into a naked three-way battle and one characters dick getting bitten off all in the first act.

As mentioned the actual Zombie Fight Club doesn’t appear till later the film but the film is still high on action with gun play and martial arts aplenty making half of it akin to La Horde except thankfully a lot better. The special effects in the guts and monsters is well done including a great scene featuring a chainsaw wielding old man in robot trousers that kick’s the shit out of Wallace and Gromit.

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With rape, brutality, mutilation, massacres and many, many nude nubile young women running, screaming and generally being abused in a multitude of ways it seems Joe Chien’s aim is overload all the audiences senses and sensibilities in showing the world fall into chaos.

Although at times unnecessarily misogynistic the entire air of the film is so stupid that it’s hard to take any of it seriously leading to a exciting and thrilling ride all be it at the sacrifice of any real character development save the over the top emotion on screen leaving the audience hard pushed to identify with anyone at the start or the end.

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Fun foul frolics a plenty it’s a shame that Zombie Fight Club didn’t seem to believe in its best idea enough to craft the whole film around its title instead of forcing us through the trite if enjoyable start that we have seen so many times before.

For once the movie left me hoping for a Hollywood remake that rights the wrongs it made and delivers the zombie beat-em up this film only briefly showed us.

Movie Rating: ★★½☆☆ 

Trailer:

YouTube video

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Alex Humphrey

Alex studied film at the University of Kent and went on to work for Universal Pictures in their Post Room gaining an inside look at the movie industry from the very bottom. Constantly writing reviews in everything from local magazines to Hip Hop sites Alex honed his critical skills even spending a brief period as a restaurant critic. Read more

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