User Reviews

I just watched Virus Undead and I have to admit I'm disappointed.

First off, I was stunned that somebody on this production had the really stupid idea to have German actors speak English. While the guys certainly aren't bad with the language, some of them still have a pretty strong German accent, making the whole ordeal somewhat of a joke to me.

On top of that, the movie tries way too hard to have your typical US hillbilly scenery and character clichés, which are already a vast exaggeration when set in the middle of nowhere in the US, but just don't work at all in a town in the middle of Germany. You have the default unfriendly "town sheriff", complete with sunglasses and donuts, the commonly known town ruffian, including tons of tattoos, a goatee, leather clothing and a pea-sized brain and they even have a "restaurant" in the middle of the woods making sausage out of any dead animal they can find. Those two things made me wonder why the writers were too afraid to actually try something fresh and simply go with the "set in Germany" thing and pull through with it. Instead, they chose to take the generic "hillbilly town" cliché and move it over here. Kind of idiotic. Just like the hillbilly town in horror flicks is a big exaggeration of clichés about American towns in the middle of nowhere, an exaggeration of clichés about small German towns would have been far more entertaining and would have worked a lot better. Basically, this movie tries very hard to be an American B-movie set in Germany played by German actors, which was what I found very disappointing.

The story covers the basics of "virus causing zombies", but doesn't go any further than a rough outline and the characters are walking clichés with some odd moments here and there. I agree with NeilCassidy, though, that the movie at least looks professional.

Overall it has some mildly entertaining moments and is well done on the technical side of things, but to me the story and setting were pretty much atrocious. I've seen a lot worse films, but this one stands out for almost intentionally ruining any potential it might have had.

where to start, i actually liked several aspects of this film. the effects weren't half bad and the nudity, although brief, was very sweet on the eyes...

the story didn't really hang together in my eyes, it was an attempt to involve a lot of different aspects and i sort of missed the whole point of the film. the story was quite lacking in imagination, the acting was quite bad - a bunch of Germans trying to sound extremely American by simply using the f**k word in almost every sentence does NOT take away the heavy German accent, OK guys? - and several scenes really called for a LOT more reaction from these stone faced actors.

Sure it's a horror film and I'm not expecting DeNiro to step in, but come on, at least PRETEND to be actors, OK? 4/10, that's all.. Nice cinematography though...

Germany is rightly credited with making outstanding cars and world wars but is not known for making good horror movies. Unfortunately this trend continues with Virus Undead.

The plot isn't too complicated, a mad scientist dies and his heir and two friends go to take care of the estate. It's not long before they meet an evil biker / hot dog salesman who has it in for the young scientist. The acting isn't just wooden, it's hewn from the Black Forest. Not one single character is in any way believable but the 'ich bin ein dude' character finally proves Germans can be funny.

The plot is stupid and badly executed but the real laughs come from the wobbling head effect when people become zombies. I noticed another reviewer praising the attention to detail and if you are also stunned by the sight of blood on a cockoo clock then knock yourself out with this movie.

There's some laughs to be had at the plain awful execution of this film but not a lot. If you're a zombie fan then it might be worth a watch, it has its moments but a three out of ten still feels a bit generous despite this being a low budget effort.

"Virus Undead" is a 200% retarded and incompetent horror flick, but then again, what else do you expect from a director who's named Wolf Wolff? If his cinematic skills are as inspirational as his choice in artist names, you just know we're in trouble. The film was cleverly released at the heights of the bird flu paranoia a few years ago. In Europe – and particularly in Germany, since there fell a handful of casualties if I remember correctly – this epidemic caused quite a lot of disturbance and chaos, so it's only logical that sly writers/directors would exploit it in gratuitous and low-budgeted horror movies. So actually, this could have been a cool movie, but sadly it's not. The one thing that immediately (and irreversibly) ruins the film straight from the beginning are the entire cast's atrocious German accents when they recite their lines in English. I don't blame native German speakers for having an accent, but why not simply allow them to talk in German? Were the producers really that worried that the film would lose potential viewers in case of subtitles? Of course, there are a lot more issues than that. The screenplay is as incoherent and derivative as can be and literally ALL the main characters are insupportable. Certain of them are even downright bizarre, like that guy named Eugene, for example … Why is he such a weirdo and how come he even has acquaintances to begin with? The story centers on Robert returning to his rural hometown, along with two of his college buddies, to arrange some formalities after the death of his grandfather. Supposedly he died of Alzheimer's disease, but granddaddy was really a retired scientist and still secretly experimented with possible cures for the bird flu epidemic. During one of these experiments, the birds carrying the virus attacked him and escaped into the countryside. Not long after Robert's arrival, more and more villagers become infected with a much harsher form of the virus; turning them into slowly rotting but nevertheless still hungry zombies. Robert and his friends are locked inside the isolated mansion, just when they're throwing a party with two sexy chicks they met in a gas station! Bummer!! "Virus Undead" is completely devoid of tension and atmosphere, and you literally don't care if any of the characters survives the ordeal not. The zombie make-up effects and splatter are definitely not the worst I've ever seen, but the film doesn't contain any truly memorable gory parts, neither. As said, the dialogs and acting performances are horrible. In fact, the only remotely acceptable reason to be interested in "Virus Undead" is the astounding rack of supportive actress Anna Breuer

What can I say...not much. Bad acting I mean very awful. I didn't know zombies can open doors, climb ladders, eat donuts & use cell phones. Not even scary, I don't recommend this. I would rather watch Dawn of the Dead or 28 Weeks Later 10 times in a row than to watch this again. Do yourself a favor and don't watch this. Everything in this movie is just plain stupid, the story, the actors everything! I only watched it cause I saw the comment " Worth Watching " so I gave it a shot, but from my experience this is so not worth watching, spend your time watching something thats gonna be fun and not disappointing. All I can say is wow, not even a 10 year old would find this scary.

Hope I saved everyone there time to not watch this movie. Find something better. If there was 0/10 I would rate it that.

I watched the movie at the FantasyFilmFestival in Berlin and I can't really recommend it. It was the only movie i've seen there, where people started booing after its showing.

I was hoping to see a good Zombie Splatter movie, because it was compared with 28 weeks later and Dawn of the Dead, but Virus Undead can't nearly compete with them.

I hoped all the time,that the action begins, but slow moving zombies who are dying such by body-shoots or punches are not really terrifying :)

Also the SpecialFX where'n really convincing and they tried to keep it cheap by not showing any bloody close ups...

Even the lighting and color grading was't the best at all and got a lack of continuity.

The both directors where really proud of it and called it "Dirty little Movie", but everything it was just little.

I don't hope to see movies like this again.

If you like a movie or not, will be determined by many things. Do you like the genre is one of them. How much do you like the genre, would be the next criterion ... but even if you are an avid fan, I can only advise you to stay away from this.

Another user said, that he thinks this is nicely shot for a low budget movie. I only agree on the fact, that this is indeed a low budget movie. And of course the fact, that this was shot in English for financial reasons. Even if you cut the movie some slack, for some nice shots (the DP should get praised for that and not the directors), the negative things are far worse than anything that might be called "good" in this movie ...

It's starts from the simple premise of the story (nothing original or remotely interesting to be found here), goes on with an uninspired script and finally explodes with acting, that shouldn't be called "acting". The actors are clearly feeling uncomfortable speaking in English, but they should've seen that coming and cast others! And then there are quite a few other small things that add up to the very bad picture of this flick ...

Considering the fact that most German horror movies of recent years came from amateurs with their video cameras and varying degrees of talent and that there hasn't been any real tradition of this kind of genre films for decades in this country, VIRUS UNDEAD certainly seems like a welcome breath of fresh air.

Not only was it actually filmed on 35mm, the whole workmanship on display here is miles above what you'd expect from a little low budget horror movie from Germany: The credit-sequence is extremely stylish, the digital special effects of helicopters and birds are surprisingly well done, there's some rather spectacular stunt work to be seen - in short: VIRUS UNDEAD looks professional.

More important, the movie's not only very well made on a purely technical level, it displays a very good eye from its two directors as well. There are some quite impressive shots and sequences to be seen here, especially in the second half of the movie, when the main characters are besieged in an old mansion. This was actually the part of VIRUS UNDEAD I enjoyed the most, because the skilled use of that beautiful location made for some chilling moments that reminded me of the haunting atmosphere of European horror classics from decades past.

So is this a flawless movie? No, of course not. I was a bit annoyed by the use of the English language, which sounded quite unnatural to me most of the time and seemed in harsh contrast to the obviously German locations. I got used to it as the movie went on though, and I understand it had to be filmed in English to get the financing done. I wasn't very fond of the main characters either who just didn't seem likable to me. The guy who turns psycho in the end did a good job though and was pretty convincing.

So while VIRUS UNDEAD is certainly far from perfect I definitely can't agree with the comment from another user that this was "the baddest Movie ever". It may not be 'the gooddest Movie ever' (ahem), but there's much to enjoy here.

There are some very good things about VIRUS UNDEAD (Chiller is running it under the title THE BEAST WITHIN). The premise- virus spread by birds threatens to overrun the world- is sound enough in and of itself. The special effects and fight choreography are professionally done. And the film is very well photographed. In fact, if you put on a good CD and run this with the closed captioning on you might really enjoy it.

But no film can be better than the performances by the actors, and these actors couldn't do worse. I don't know that they're really inept or untalented actors. But they were born in Germany and as best I can tell are trying to perform in English, so you get some really off the wall line readings.

We've seen this story before. Young man goes to his grandfather's home after the old man passes away. On the way into town he and his friends meet a couple of cute girls and run afoul of some local louts. The sun sets, the zombies come out to play, mayhem ensues.

But because of the inept acting it's almost impossible to feel any connection to these characters and the screenplay doesn't really develop them as individuals.

The more I write, the more I think my concluding sentence in the first paragraph is right. In fact, there are so many clichés on parade here- wow, German cops live on donuts, too!- that you might not even want to run the closed captioning.

Footnote: Definite kudos to the director for being named Wolf Wolff. Please, Lord, let that be his real name. I don't see any major directing career for the man, but that is a totally righteous name.

I agree with most of the things "NeilCassidy" wrote above; compared to most other Horror Movies of German origin, this one seems like a fresh breeze. Obviously, its focus was more on the question "how do certain characters behave under siege", rather than on sheer gory splatter.

Compared to Uwe Boll's pathetic efforts (who obviously has a vastly bigger budget and seems to manage to hire very well-known actors on the cheap), I felt much better entertained. There's plenty of passion for detail (remember the cuckoo clock scene?) that I feel is completely missing in Boll's movies.

Now, if the writer would please do without those clichè villains in future scripts, I'd be quite thankful.

So many flicks coming from Germany never got a proper release due one thing, the language. German flicks are mostly spoken in German and aren't subtitled. Only blockbusters do get some subs, but some directors do see that problem and solve it by letting the actors speak English. By doing so the film is much more in demand and do get a proper release. this is what they've done here but you can easily hear that the actors aren't speaking in their own language.

Nevertheless, this one is available and do has a low budget. it shows on some effects, the birds for example at the belfry are clearly CGI. On the other hand, the effects used for the mutants are well done but it never really get gory like we are used from German flicks. The acting was okay but as I said before, the English do block their performance but I enjoyed it although that some things were a bit exaggerated like the cop always eating a donut.

There's a bit of nudity by Anna Brauer but that you could see coming from her first shot because she had a lot to show, if you get me. Maybe you will recognise Birthe Wolter as she appeared in feardotcom as Nina Blank.

Mediocre flick with some nice pieces in it, if you are a zombie geek, watch it.

Gore 2/5 Nudity 0,5/5 Effects 3/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5

A group of friends travel to one's grandfather's house to clean up the estate and get it ready to sell, and while throwing a party to celebrate, end up encountering the mutated zombies created from a genetic experiment he was working on and must get away from the bloodthirsty ghouls.

This was quite a decent newcomer from Germany in the zombie sweepstakes. What works for this one is the incredibly fun attacks here as the zombies come out frequently in the last half of this. There's plenty of fun here in the main attacks on the house that are featured with the first big sequence of the creatures appearing in the bushes to drag away the first victim, a fantastic attack on the gang during their party when the other criminal arrives to attack the group and the resulting chaos lights off plenty of explosions setting the zombies on fire and continuing to attack them inside the house and the second big attack here where the gunfire brought to bear on the zombies gives it a lot of action, blood and gore. The final half is even better with a series of big encounters against the zombies attempting to break in from outside against the big barricades put there resulting in great action holding them off, the great brawls against the zombified friends and finally up into the big tower for the great bird attacks up there which give this one a lot of fun for the finale. Along with the great zombie make-up and gore, the plot is also a bit topical in that the bird flu is the cause for their contagion, in that the released virus is supposedly a cure for the disease only it makes the inhabitants a lot more feral than expected, all make this one decent enough to hold off the flaws within this. The main factor against this here is the off-beat pace, as its pretty much dead from the beginning. There's not a whole lot of stuff going on that's all that interesting due to the rather lame series of subplots that don't really do anything to move it along in those sections. From spending all the time here in the convenience store, the policeman harassing the group all the way or getting lost out on the highways, there's little here that could've been kept as a lot of this could've been skipped over for getting closer to the action. Even still, the house is no better with it consisting of nothing but the group drinking, ripping on each other and generally acting like complete jerks to each other that it really seems to question why their friends with each other here building up all this supposedly suspenseful scenes of the group being watched. Likewise, it tends to follow-up on getting the zombie attacks so late in the film that all of these really drag the film out and it rarely feels like a horror film in those parts, so it leaves a lot to be desired. There's also some unanswered questions here in this one featuring a kung-fu expert zombie in the attacks for no reason. Overall, it needs work but it's still a lot more watchable than expected.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Violence and Brief Nudity.