Cannes Review 2: The Dead

Stacey Graves

Review 2

The Dead

The Dead Review

Before screening The Dead the director entered the theater to briefly describe the experience of creating this film. He told us how the entire movie is shot in Africa with many of the locations being captured on film for the first time. He also described the true horrors of crime, disease, poverty, voodoo, and death that surrounded them everywhere they shot. The main character, Brian Freeman, contracted malaria and was hospitalized for several days. Howard Ford himself (the director) was held at gunpoint and had all of his money taken on the first day of the shoot. In synopsis, Ford was stressing the toll that had been endured by the entire crew in order to bring this feature to fruition. While I do have an immense respect for the labor put into The Dead and am certainly no supporter of muggings, I must give Ford's mugger credit for having a great sense of time. I guarantee Ford had more money before making this film than he will ever gain from its completion.

This preceding anecdote from the director is sadly miles more entertaining than any clip from his actual film. Perhaps had they made a movie about making this movie something of value could be salvaged from all the effort put forth. This not being the case, however, we are left only with the unfortunate product that is The Dead.

Taking place in Africa, an unexplained sickness has broken out causing people to become zombie-like monsters that feed off of the few remaining healthy humans. How the outbreak begins is left unexplained, all we know for sure is that each time a healthy person is bitten by one of "the dead" they are then transformed into a monster as well.

The Dead specifically focuses on the separate struggles of Brian Murphy, a caucasian flight engineer, and the native African American Sargeant Daniel Dembele. The two men cross paths early on in the film and join each other for a rather repetitive journey through the growing numbers of hostile dead to find Daniel's son. They encounter hundreds of the zombie-like creatures as they head North towards a military base where Daniel believes his son has been taken. Brian and Daniel exchange minimal dialogue during the journey, chatting unconvincingly as they stop to pillage an abandoned house for fuel or search for food and water. Without convincing dialogue the characters are left limited with no real appeal to the viewer. The film succeeds only in presenting the surface actions of the two men without formulating any deeper connections; resulting in the complete lack of an attachment to the characters. When Daniel is unable to evade the monsters and suffers multiple graphic bites I found myself apathetic to his misfortune. The character development is so weak and the dialogue so ineffective I was actually hoping both main characters would be killed so the film would be over and no sequel could ever be produced.

The entire 100 minutes of The Dead is a repetitive mixture of meaningless climaxes alternating between short sprints through tall wheat fields, the breaking down and mending of an old truck, and the slinging of gruesome body parts all about the desert. Supporting each of these repetitive events is the same horrible score of music consisting of frantic beats increasing in tempo as the next jolting action approaches. Following the first two identical musical sequences I knew exactly when to close my eyes throughout the rest of the film if I desired to miss the forthcoming zombie face as it jumped out of the nearest shadow.

Not everything within The Dead is unbearable, the backdrop (when not obscured by blood and mutilated monsters) is breath-taking. Ford is eternally indebted to Mother Nature for providing the one upside to his film. There is a sequence of shots following Brian as he travels alone through a place called the Devil's Claw that is remarkable. The natural landscape is unbelievably beautiful and secluded, it is the one section of story that benefits from the lack in dialogue. The silence allows you to truly look at the scenery and appreciate all its magnificence.

Aside from the rare glimpses of African landscapes the rest of The Dead is more or less poor in quality. The story-line, cinematography, even the editing, all emit a notion of confusion and underdevelopment. The director has some underlying ideas he attempts to coagulate within the men's journey through this world of hostile beings but fails in the execution. Ford immediately toys with the issue of race and inequality but never completes the concept. In the beginning of the film it is clear that the only people with any chance of leaving this infested land is a plane full of white people on the last evacuation. However, no additional support for this divide between whites and blacks emerges again until the final scene when Brian is able to contact his superiors in America only to learn that the disease has spread all over the world with no safe havens left. Death and disease happen to be nondiscriminatory. This concept of inequality could have been expertly expressed within a film such as this but instead is left half-lingering as a backdrop to two men walking through the desert for an hour and a half.

Not having a clear motive is what destroys The Dead. No clear meaning is expressed and the haphazard linking of ideas and actions fails to deliver any clear take-home message. The old pick-up truck that breaks down on at least five different occasions is the only contender to rival having as many problems as this film. The characters are not at all believable within their roles and nothing is developed into a mature concept. With nothing being fully formulated my attention was not held nor any thoughts evoked during even a moment of the screening. Having chosen a seat directly beneath the projector I found myself more enthralled by the dust particles floating in the stream of light than the actual film. The Dead leaves much to be desired and regardless of the effort put into its production the final result is a film not worth viewing.

Credits:

Director: Howard J. Ford, Jon Ford

Writer: Howard J. Ford, Jon Ford

Executive Producers: Amir S. Moallemi

Producers: Howard J. Ford, Nader Taghan

Cast: Brian Freeman, Prince David Oseia, Dan Morgan, Ben James Elliot, David Dontoh

Running Time: 100 minutes