When talk here turns to what would happen if the film\u2019s werewolf hero were bitten by a zombie, the term coined is \u201cwombie\u201d. Sadly, this inter-species thought-experiment never comes to pass in this otherwise lifeless and crushingly derivative Aussie post-apocalyptic slog, the only point of note in which is a very brief cameo from Mr Once Were Warriors and Jango Fett himself, Temuera Morrison. He drops off his niece and nephew, Megan (T\u00e9a Heathcote-Marks) and Billy (Riley Stiles), before succumbing to a zombie pile-on.<\/p>\n
The pair quickly encounter Carter (Armie Hammer lookalike Joel Jackson), a hulking former scientist turned one-man undead clean-up squad who still can\u2019t get his head around this bog-standard apocalypse: rampant virus, flesh-eating zombie hordes, overwhelming guilt over not saving his wife and child, etc. But this whiskey-slugging misanthrope is also a lycanthrope, thanks to a super-serum he developed while trying to counteract the plague. Able to metamorphose at a second\u2019s notice into a rabid canine, and seemingly equipped with an infinite supply of new black T-shirts for afterwards, he is the perfect protector for the teens as they attempt to reach a safe zone they insist exists inside Perth\u2019s city limits.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The brief flicker of interest on their journey is Carter\u2019s tough-love approach to survival: he forces Megan and Billy to make their first kills unprotected in a derelict school gymnasium. But the daft werewolf gambit (possibly something to do with this sharing a producer with British horror classic Dog Soldiers) kicks the legs out from under this attempt at flinty realism.<\/p>\n
Otherwise, Dead Howling is saddled with dreary pity-party discussions when it isn\u2019t shambling into every apocalypse-film cliche trap going, from the emotionally shut-down journeyman, to agonised euthanising of soon-to-be-zombie colleagues, to a closing message of hope somehow more dispiriting than the complete collapse of civilisation. The zombies are evolving, we are told \u2013 but it only highlights this moribund movie genre\u2019s urgent need to evolve itself.<\/p>\n
Dead Howling is on digital platforms from 2 November<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When talk here turns to what would happen if the film\u2019s werewolf hero were bitten by a zombie,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-821672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}