Bio Zombie (1998) |
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Directed
by: Wilson Yip Buy
the DVD at: |
| I
think it was with this movie that the director Wilson Yip got
a bit of a breakthrough in the industry. It also marked the
first of, to date, three collaborations between him, screenwriter
Matt Chow and producer Joe Ma. The trio also worked together
on the Wilson Yip directed movies Bullets Over Summer & Juliet In Love. Unfortunately Bio Zombie is
a film with many weaknesses and some minor brilliant touches. Woddy (Jordan Chan from Big Bullet) and Bee (Sam Lee from Skyline Cruisers) plays two pirate vcd-sellers that late one night accidentally hits a man with their boss's car. With him, the man has a mystic bio chemical liquid that he, in pain, asks to have a zip of. Shortly after the man passes away and Woddy & Bee leave him in the trunk and drives back to the mall where they work. In the trunk however the man is rapidly turning into a flesheasting zombie and soon a night of terror begins...
The first
half can almost be described as extremely boring. The actors
almost scream out their dialogue (sorry I can't describe it
any other way) but maybe they did that to compensate for the,
I'm sorry to say, bad and flat dialogue. The attempts to comedy
doesn't work at all and actors Jordan Chan and Sam Lee does
not have very much chemistry between them. Their scenes during
this part of the film are plain bad but maybe these scenes
work better if you're a Cantonese speaker, but I somehow doubt
that.
This
was 1998 and Yip was probably still experimenting (and learning
to make movies) with lightning and camera movement. He decides
to have a lot more steady and shaky cam that is really necessary
and the green colour scheme the movie employs doesn't really
work. In later movies Yip has learned a whole lot more when
it comes to combining his kind of direction and his choice
of cinematography to better effect.
Out of the actors I can really only say some good things about Jordan Chan. His acting is really off in the comedic parts. Jordan has the kind of face and charisma that seems more suited for action and drama roles and we do get glimpses of that during the actionbits. They're far and between though and all in all he's average in this movie. Sam Lee on the other hand is as annoying as ever. Maybe the Hong Kong movie audience likes him when he's shouting and doing funny faces, but for this Swede it just feels like bad acting. Sam has proven that if he calms down he can be a good actor and he showed restraint in 2002, something I hope to see more of in his future roles.
In
the end, what we have is a movie I really wanted to love but
it's only worth one viewing really. Fans of Wilson Yip should
check it out to see glimpses of what would be seen in his
later movies. I think he's at his best when he does small
character dramas but it's VERY evident that he likes to try
out different genres. It does seem that a lot of people do
like Bio Zombie but I can't see that anyone would enjoy
anything but the second half.
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