Cows Say Moooo

When I started to watch today's movie I had high hopes for it. I avoided the reviews but I knew it was getting an average of 3 stars which is pretty good for an indy film. It has been a while since I have watched a zombie movie so that added to my hopes for this movie. Zombies aren't my favorite sub-genre in horror movie, that would probably have to go to the supernatural. However, when I think of zombie movies I usually expect a lot of gore.

Dead Meat (2004) starts with a farmer being killed by a mean cow. No kidding, it really does happen! From there we meet Helena (Marian Araujo) and Martin (David Ryan) who are out for a drive when they hit someone who is standing in the middle of the road because they weren't paying attention. They check for a pulse and find the man is dead. After spoting a near by house, they decide to take the man there and get some help so they load him into the back seat. Before they can get going though, the man comes back to life and bites into Martin's throat. Martin then bashes the head of said zombie with a stearing wheel lock bar. Helena then goes to the house on her own but doesn't find anyone, alive anyways. Martin then shows up at the house and starts to attack Helena but she manages to get away after killing Martin in a pretty clever way.

She then runs into Desmond (David Muyllaert) who is the local grave digger. His weapon of choice? Yeap you guessed it, a shovel. They make their way back to his place only to discover there are zombies all around so they take off again and this time they find a little girl (Kathryn Toolan) who has been bit but they don't know that. Soon after they find a couple working on their SUV. Cathal Cheunt (Eoin Whelan) likes to pick arugements with everyone he meets, this is how he can tell if he likes the person or not. Along with him is his wife Francie (Amy Redmond). Together they head off and fight the zombies. Oh, and the mad cow. You see this is why we have zombies, a new string of mad cow disease.

I enjoyed most of the effects for Dead Meat. Most of the killing were well done. There is a lot of gore but I didn't feel it went over board with it. Some zombies seemed to die a little to easy at times though. My main complaint about the effects would have to be with the zombies themselves. Some of the zombies you would never know they were zombies if it wasn't for the way they moved or maybe because they happened to be eating someone else. The other zombies were given the look of, I'm guessing, dead skin peeling off. It actually look like they just put a lot of mud on them and had it dry to give it a layered and flacky look though. I tried finding a picture of this but was unable to find one of a zombie that looked like this up close.

I also enjoyed the acting. This was filmed in Ireland and used actor's from there which is easy to figure out from their accents. The only one I had trouble understanding at times was Eoin Whelan because he would talk a little to fast. Marian Araujo is the main actress and does a wonderful job. David Muyllaert was the only one that I thought gave a blah performance.

So after all the good things I have said about it so far, you probably think I liked the over all movie. I did but I didn't. There are some things I learned from this movie: A vacuum cleaner and high heeled shoes make pretty effective weapons against zombies. If you wrap a sock, or a pair of socks, around a stick and set it on fire, it burns for a good long while and gives off lots of light. The best way to kill a cow is to hit a baseball at it. A shovel makes a much better weapon than I gave it credit for. Zombies know how to use a pick axe (that people just happen to leave in their house) but don't know how to open any kind of door. Zombies need to sleep too and they do it with their eyes open.



Dead Meat fliped from being a serious zombie to being a silly zombie movie. It could never really make up its mind which side it wanted to be on. Once our group took off driving I couldn't figure out where they were driving to. They drove what looked like a long time but never got anywhere. One of the last moments is a big showdown with our group and a very large group of zombies. It was night time when this happened and since it was dark it was a little hard to see things. What made it even worse was the directing. I could have lived with it being a little to dark to see things clearly but when bad camera angles add to this it makes it even more frustrating.

This is one of the few movies I have been tempted to give a half star to the rating because I can't really decide if I liked it or didn't like it. I'm not going to start doing that however so I've been thinking about this all day trying to weigh things out but in the end I'm going with my first impression. For an indy movie it is a very good movie, good effects and acting (for the most part) which is a lot more than some indy films has going for them. The things I didn't like out weighs the things I did like though. This one was close so I would say if you like zombie movies then you should check this one out. You might like it a tad more then I did.
2 out of 5 Death's by vacuum cleaner