HorrorSpeak---Terror Awaits You in Every Forum!!!!: Asian Zombie film Review Series 6: Bio-Zombie

Bio-Zombie (1998)

Number six of this series takes us back to Hong Kong for arguably the best western style zombie film to come out of Hong Kong. There really are very few pure western style zombie films made in Hong Kong. Most HK horror draws upon Chinese mythology and superstition compared to somewhere like Japan which typically embraces Western cinematic ideas far more. So as a rule of thumb you can name about five Japanese zombie films for every one HK example. But again, here is one of the best.

Meet the films two main character, professional slackers who work in a pirate VCD shop in a mall. They are about as motivated in their slacking as the zombies are to their flesh eating.

Nearby a group of arms dealers are buying a new biological weapon from middle eastern scientists that has the properties of turning its victim into a crazed, flesh hungry killing machine who cannot feel pain, yeah that’s right another zombie virus. They test it out on a prisoner and basically what you would expect to happen, happens.

Our two slackers encounter the leftovers from this incident and inadvertently bring the zombie infection back to the mall. Strange things then begin to happen as the mall shuts down for the night.

Now they are trapped inside of the mall along with a small group of their friends, enemies and random people they just encountered. By this time hordes of zombies are everywhere and escape seems unlikely.

Then in a strange turn it happens that the only other thing the two do as well as slacking is fighting zombies. Now its war inside the mall and close in combat is the order of the day.

Will the dwindling group of survivors escape the mall and what will they do then, watch the film and find out.

Bio-Zombie was followed by a much less innovative sudo-sequel by the name of Bio-Cops, also part of this review series. But general consensus is clear, Bio-Zombie is the better film, perhaps even a classic in the zombie genre. It also has a kind of dark mood mixed with offbeat black comedy that makes it a little disconcerting at times in the same way something like Return of the Living Dead is more frightening then a purely serious horror film.

The big upside for this one is that its not only a greatly enjoyable film, but its easy to obtain. Tokyo Shock released it on region 1 DVD, so any one in North America should have no trouble finding it and its well worth doing so.

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