REVIEW: Bio Zombie
Bio Zombie (Sun faa sau si) was directed by Wilson Yip as well as written by Wilson, Matt Chow, and Siu Man Sing. While all but Siu have a pretty impressive line up of films acredited to them I’ll be honest – I haven’t seen a single one of them. I don’t know if they were all equivalent of B films or not so please excuse my ignorance but I’m limited on the foreign horror that they delve in. That being said after having watched Bio Zombie I kind of want to see everything else they’ve done (as Wilson and Matt at the very list collaborated on a few others of these as well.) While there are zombies and gore galore this movie is a comedy through and through.
The film starts out showing two wanna be thugs named Woody Invincible (Jordan Chan) and his best friend Crazy Bee (Sam Lee.) While they act like complete thugs they are really glamorized sales clerks at a video store selling bootleg videos and the driver for someone who sounds to be an actual Yakuza member. As we follow them to picking up their bosses car they hit someone on the side of the road who we had seen was carrying a biological weapon of some sort that kills off those infected and reanimates their bodies. With the easy explanation of how zombies are being made they feed the substance to the man they hit thinking he may be thirsty and our first of the undead will eventually be born.
The movie is so over the top at parts you would think it could go bad but they keep the humor strictly in the dialogue and do so in a way that fits perfectly within the realm of the film. You can’t help but love how Woody and Bee react to every situation they enter (even though it does follow a very predctive formula of trying to be tough guys and backing down when anyone challenges them.)
The zombies themselves? Slow, flesh eaters, and bites that infect the living to turn them into the undead. It’s a perfect mix of the classic zombie formula imported over from a writer and directory who clearly wanted to follow part of Romero’s vision of how a zombie SHOULD be. While there is of course extra humor mixed in and a reason on why there is an infection there are too many queues taken from Romero to not place it in the category of a classic zombie film.
Aside from avoiding the zombies that are slowly piling up there is a romantic angle thrown in, a fight with the owner of another vendor in the mall, and some very ineffective cops that are called in. There is a LOT going on but as it all revolves around Woody and Crazy Bee it flows together quite easily. It’s a fun watch if you are looking for humor and gore. While a lot of imports have to be viewed with subtitles as the voice acting is too atrocious to watch you can get away with the dubbed version on this one as long as you are expecting the film to have a lot of dry humor as it is. This one is easy to recommend watching if you haven’t had a chance to yet.
