The Dead

Apart from being set in Africa, there's little that's distinctive about this threadbare zombie movie that features a set-up similar to 28 Days Later: namely, some sort of plague has affected the vast majority of the population, sending the few unaffected people scurrying for safety. But while Danny Boyle's film was energetic and scary, The Dead, from siblings Howard and Jon Ford is a dull, tepid affair. Rob Freeman stars as American Air Force engineer Brian Murphy, who's left alone on the ground in northwestern Africa after the transport plane carrying him and his colleagues crashes, leaving him as the sole survivor. Murphy treks aimlessly across the rugged terrain, eventually joining forces with an army deserter named Daniel (Prince David Osei), who's searching for his son. Although the pair occasionally encounter groups of the walking dead (whose lumbering gait makes them relatively easy to outrun), neither character displays much more personality or vitality than their threatening pursuers, so the film generates neither sympathy nor tension. Perhaps The Dead is intended as an allegory of the real-life catastrophes facing Africa—the AIDS epidemic, or the internecine warfare that's claimed so many innocent victims—but if so, it's not very successful in getting the point across, although the locations themselves (filming was done in Ghana and Burkina Faso) are of minor interest. Not recommended. (F. Swietek)