War of the Dead

 (2011)

War of the Dead Blu-ray offers decent video and superb audio, but overall it's a disappointing Blu-ray release
A platoon of American and Finnish soldiers is driven deep into a Russian forest where its Captain discovers a terrifying secret.

For more about War of the Dead and the War of the Dead Blu-ray release, see the War of the Dead Blu-ray Review

Starring: Andrew Tiernan

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War of the Dead Blu-ray Review

Undead and probably unnecessary.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, January 2, 2013

There's a lot of talk about things like pink being the new black, or 50 being the new 40, but has anyone ever claimed that the end of the year holidays (whether those be Christmas or Hanukkah or even Fesitvus) are the new Hallowe'en? I'm not sure if there's something in the creative waters that should be investigated, or some secret conspiracy on the part of several home video labels, but there have been a lot of zombie movies coming out over the past few weeks, a genre that would seem to be more at home in late October, surrounded by Jack-O-Lanterns, witches and various other ghouls and goblins. Even weirder, at least a few of them have placed zombies in a sort of historical context, often with supposedly real life characters as part of the undead (as with the recent Osombie, which featured none other than Osama bin Laden). Perhaps just as incredible as the glut of zombie movies is the fact that War of the Dead is only the latest film to feature zombies who are Nazis. A cursory search of the not always reliable internet reveals a surprisingly large amount of films that contain this very same premise, so perhaps Finnish writer-director Marko Makilaakso might have had a certain hubris in even attempting War of the Dead. If so, he was evidently brought down a peg or two over what was apparently one of the more tortuous production paths imaginable, a multi-year saga that saw stars come and go, production companies follow suit in alarmingly large numbers, and other trials and tribulations crop up which according to some sources accounted for an almost decade long travail between principal shooting starting and the film finally being released.



So was all the trouble worth it? Well, that of course depends on your tolerance for a basic zombie movie, Nazi element notwithstanding. There's nothing remotely innovative or even overly interesting about War of the Dead, as Makilaakso seems consigned to eking out his scares with pretty rote things like jump cuts, zombies bursting through the side of the frame (when humans have their backs turned, of course), and the like. There are some fitful attempts to develop characters, or at least character—that being the putative focal soldier, Captain Stone (Andrew Tiernan), an American working side by side with a bunch of Finnish grunts to take a German bunker. At one point the film was titled Stone's War, but that was evidently too generic for some bean counter. That bean counter may have been better served by having turned his abhorrence of the generic and cliché ridden to the actual film, rather than just its name. We get some passing information about Stone's past in America, including his deceased wife, but it's all so devoid of any real emotion that it's frankly pointless in the long run.

War of the Dead suffers not just from a somewhat confusing narrative, but from some directorial decisions as well. The narrative issues may actually not be all that problematic, because at its core the film is nothing more or less than a basic "kill the zombie" fest, no matter what its World War II back story. But Makilaakso never properly differentiates between any of the nationalities in the film. I personally had to go back more than a couple of times to watch various scenes again to figure out if the characters on screen were supposed to be Americans, Finns, Russians or Germans. Since so much of the film takes place in really dark environments, trying to tune in to various uniforms is often a pointless exercise. What this ultimately boils down to is the fact that in a very real way Makilaakso has shot himself in his directorial foot, for if the viewers can't even properly see the characters or identify them very easily, why should they work up the effort to actually care about them?

This is not to say that War of the Dead is without craft, for it hints at a greater potential a time or two, never more so than in the really well done and quite disturbing prologue, where we're introduced to a young Finnish soldier who has been taken prisoner by the Germans and briefly (and unsuccessfully) attempts to escape. He's quickly subdued and taken into a laboratory where he's subjected to some kind of weird experiment, set to some operatic music the mad doctor plays on an old Victrola. It's a suitably spooky introduction to the film, but unfortunately it's one of the last really scary moments that War of the Dead offers, perhaps because in this case the soldier is so obviously helpless to prevent his zombiefication, while later in the film Stone is so gung ho there's little doubt about who is going to end up victorious.

The film does also offer a somewhat ambiguous ending that I'm not sure I even totally understood (without spoiling anything, it seems that either Stone's efforts were for naught or at least only got him to an even larger conflict). But the vast middle section of this film is a kind of ham handed approach that is neither frightening enough nor compelling enough to ever whip up much excitement.

War of the Dead Blu-ray, Video Quality

 

War of the Dead is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Entertainment One with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Director Makilaakso and cinematographer Hannu-Pekka Vitikainen evidently shot this feature in both 16mm and 35mm, and that results in a somewhat inconsistent appearance to various segments within the film. A lot of this feature takes place in very dark environs, and crush is quite rampant throughout a large swaths of the film, as is some digital noise. In the relatively few sequences where things are at least adequately lit, fine detail rises to at acceptable levels, but nothing in War of the Dead ever really pops with excellent clarity or sharpness. Because so much of the film is so dark, even the color scheme seems pretty drab almost all of the time, and a lot of the film has been color graded to that ice cold blue side of things that seems to be de rigeur in horror movies.

War of the Dead Blu-ray, Audio Quality

 

War of the Dead features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix that is actually pretty masterful, at least when compared to the less than exciting video quality. As might be expected from a film set in wartime, a lot of the sound field is awash in gun fire, and there's an excellent sense of depth accorded several key battle scenes, especially the opening gunfight where Stone and his cohorts figure out they're fighting the undead. The zombies also have an almost ninja like tendency to swoop down from trees, and those moments are accompanied by some very effective foley effects. Dialogue is generally clean, though many of the actors speak in various accents (which in and of themselves are fairly inconsistent throughout the movie). Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is quite wide throughout the film.

War of the Dead Blu-ray, Special Features and Extras

 

• Trailer (HD; 2:05)

War of the Dead Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation

 

War of the Dead kind of throws away its World War II setting after the exciting opening sequence, and one has to wonder after a while what really was the point of making this thing a World War II film to begin with. Everything about War of the Dead is pretty generic, so if mindless zombie fare is your cup of tea, there's no need to look much further. But, as mentioned above, with so many zombie films suddenly descending upon the viewing masses like, well, armies of the undead, you'd be hard pressed to single this one out as being anything even slightly out of the ordinary.