Osombie Blu-ray Review
Night of the Living Al-Qaeda.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, December 8, 2012
We try to steer clear of overt commentary about religion and politics here at Blu-ray.com, understanding that we have a
worldwide audience of many differing viewpoints. However, with a film like
Osombie, which posits Osama bin
Laden returned from the dead as a zombie, leading a horde of other Taliban-esque undead to continue his "mission"
(however one may define that), it's simply impossible
not to at least mention certain sociopolitical and religious
elements within the
context of what the movie both overtly states as well as its considerable subtext. While some might argue that the film
is ridiculous on its face and shouldn't be examined under that "serious" of a microscope, there are some unavoidable
tangential issues that
Osombie creates by its very existence that require at least a little rumination.
Growing up in what was back in the day a rather unusual "mixed marriage" between one Jewish parent and one
Christian one presented its own fair share of challenges, but it was at the very least an object lesson in tolerance.
Adding in the kind of bizarre extra layers that I spent the first several years of my life in Salt Lake City, which was then
most definitely resolutely Mormon (it's since become at least a bit more ecumenical) and the fact that my parents put me
in an Episcopalian parochial school to keep me away from undue Mormon influence which was then overrunning even
public schools, and you have some idea of the rather eclectic influx of religious influences that colored my early
childhood. I've joked for years to various people who have attempted (unsuccessfully, I might add) to proselytize me to
this or that way of seeing things that I will happily believe whatever they want me to if they will just leave me alone.
That may not
seem like a very prudent way of going about things, at least in terms of establishing a firmly held
faith system, but it has the one salient effect of getting people with
very strong faith systems off my back,
allowing me to go on about my business believing (or
not believing) what I want to, while they can
think
they've won a new convert. Having been forced in a way to accept so many traditions at such an early age has made
me more aware of those who are completely
intolerant of other faith traditions, and one of the most interesting
developments over the past decade or so has been the rise of what some term radical Islam, where any perceived
denigration of the religion or the Prophet Mohammed has been met with threats and at times outright violence, as was
seen quite recently with the outbreak of unrest in several Middle Eastern countries after that ridiculously offensive
(ridiculous to many Westerners, offensive to many Muslims)
YouTube video was posted. (Culture watchers may remember an earlier outrage over some cartoons that were
supposedly derogatory toward the Prophet that some Muslims took great offense to, and of course there was the
"officially" announced
fatwa against Salman Rushdie when he published
The Satanic Verses.) One has
to wonder if the creative staff behind
Osombie: The Axis of Evil Dead thought about the ramifications of their
conceit before they launched into making this odd hybrid which follows in the footsteps of such other "history-horror"
pairings as
Abraham
Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. For as hated as Osama bin Laden undeniably is by the vast majority of humankind,
he remains a hero and martyr to a certain element in Muslim society, and it's at least worth wondering how people like
that might react to such a plot conceit as the one found in
Osombie, as patently silly as most Westerners will
most likely find it.
Those of us who have grown up in the United States, where religion is fair game for comedians (even if it's regularly
nixed
from family gatherings over various holidays) may have a hard time understanding the inability of some other cultures
to
laugh at their own belief systems. But that's a central issue with
Osombie, at least if one thinks about the film
long enough (which may in fact be contrary to what its creators intended). Is it
funny to think of one of the
world's
most decried terrorists turning into a zombie to finish whatever "work" he started years ago? Is it perhaps some kind
of
weird sign of healing on our part that we can even
try to joke about a man who inflicted such carnage on our
nation? And does it really matter what other cultures, perhaps even those who for their own reasons supported
Osama,
think about outings like this one? I don't claim to have any answers, easy or otherwise, about any of these
quandaries, but I couldn't help but ask them as I watched the film and feel that in some way they are questions that
are
worth asking, if only to better understand where we are in terms of coming to terms with our differences,
whatever those may be.
This is of course all tangential to the actual "merits" of
Osombie, but I for one don't think questions like these
can be easily ignored in the sociopolitical climate in which we find ourselves nowadays. It should be noted that many
famous
comedians haven't shied away from making fun of various elements of both Al-Qaeda and terrorism in general, not to
mention bin Laden's ignominous end. So perhaps laughter
is the best medicine. But there's something else at
work in
Osombie that may not be stated outright but is hovering just beneath the rotting flesh surface: the film
is making a case in its own way for a resurgent Al-Qaeda or Taliban (or whatever group you want to place the zombies
in). There's of course the vicarious thrill of seeing our good guy special forces kicking some zombie butt, and that may
in fact be the
real message of the film, namely that we're going to put down terrorists of
any stripe,
undead or not.
The basic set up of
Osombie couldn't be simpler, based as it is upon a high concept idea that can be summed up
in a clever title. The film starts with a "recreation" of Seal Team Six's now legendary assault on Abbottabad, but now
instead of being met by bin Laden's family and fighting forces, the marines are instead assaulted by a horde of
zombies. We see bin Laden running from the approaching soldiers and injecting himself with something before he's
shot, supposedly dead. On the helicopter trip back to the aircraft carrier, his bagged body is obviously "not quite dead
yet" (to paraphrase a certain
Monty Python film) and after a mishap, it flies into the ocean. As quick as you can
say George Romero, Osama is back to wreak vengeance, along with a band of drooling, oozing zombies.
The film attempts to maintain a certain cheeky humor, to various effect. The jokes are hit or miss, with some landing
well (one of the soldiers channels his rage from a bad breakup as he shoots zombies, crying out, "You just
had
to keep the dog, didn't you?") while others just fall flat. There are a couple of admittedly funny little bits along the way
as well, as in one brief but amusing
Jaws parody where a young woman goes swimming in the Arabian Sea
where Osama's zombiefied body is coming to the surface. You can probably guess the rest, though it
doesn't
include John William's famous semitone music cue.
But a lot of
Osombie is just plain stupid. One of the weirdest things about the film is its insistence on stripping
star Corey Sevier of his shirt at virtually every turn. Sevier plays a character with the nickname of Chippendale, so
that's part of the package (so to speak), but it's a
really odd gimmick for a film like this. A lot of the dialogue is
risible at best, and the film's attempt to coax a little real human emotion out of various characters meeting their end is
one of the most consistently laughable things about it (and not in a good way).
Perhaps if
Osombie had been a more viscerally exciting experience to begin with all of these probably
inconsequential musings that entered
my mind while watching it would have proven to be irrelevant. When
high concept meets low expectations, there's an uneasy feeling that you're settling for something that isn't just rote
and uninspired, but kind of tasteless as well.
