Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

Osombie Blu-ray Movie Review

Night of the Living Al-Qaeda.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 8, 2012

We try to steer clear of overt commentary about religion and politics here at Blu-ray.com, understanding that we have a worldwide audience of many differing viewpoints. However, with a film like Osombie, which posits Osama bin Laden returned from the dead as a zombie, leading a horde of other Taliban-esque undead to continue his "mission" (however one may define that), it's simply impossible not to at least mention certain sociopolitical and religious elements within the context of what the movie both overtly states as well as its considerable subtext. While some might argue that the film is ridiculous on its face and shouldn't be examined under that "serious" of a microscope, there are some unavoidable tangential issues that Osombie creates by its very existence that require at least a little rumination.

Growing up in what was back in the day a rather unusual “mixed marriage” between one Jewish parent and one Christian one presented its own fair share of challenges, but it was at the very least an object lesson in tolerance. Adding in the kind of bizarre extra layers that I spent the first several years of my life in Salt Lake City, which was then most definitely resolutely Mormon (it’s since become at least a bit more ecumenical) and the fact that my parents put me in an Episcopalian parochial school to keep me away from undue Mormon influence which was then overrunning even public schools, and you have some idea of the rather eclectic influx of religious influences that colored my early childhood. I’ve joked for years to various people who have attempted (unsuccessfully, I might add) to proselytize me to this or that way of seeing things that I will happily believe whatever they want me to if they will just leave me alone. That may not seem like a very prudent way of going about things, at least in terms of establishing a firmly held faith system, but it has the one salient effect of getting people with very strong faith systems off my back, allowing me to go on about my business believing (or not believing) what I want to, while they can think they’ve won a new convert. Having been forced in a way to accept so many traditions at such an early age has made me more aware of those who are completely intolerant of other faith traditions, and one of the most interesting developments over the past decade or so has been the rise of what some term radical Islam, where any perceived denigration of the religion or the Prophet Mohammed has been met with threats and at times outright violence, as was seen quite recently with the outbreak of unrest in several Middle Eastern countries after that ridiculously offensive (ridiculous to many Westerners, offensive to many Muslims) YouTube video was posted. (Culture watchers may remember an earlier outrage over some cartoons that were supposedly derogatory toward the Prophet that some Muslims took great offense to, and of course there was the “officially” announced fatwa against Salman Rushdie when he published The Satanic Verses.) One has to wonder if the creative staff behind Osombie: The Axis of Evil Dead thought about the ramifications of their conceit before they launched into making this odd hybrid which follows in the footsteps of such other “history-horror” pairings as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. For as hated as Osama bin Laden undeniably is by the vast majority of humankind, he remains a hero and martyr to a certain element in Muslim society, and it's at least worth wondering how people like that might react to such a plot conceit as the one found in Osombie, as patently silly as most Westerners will most likely find it.

Those of us who have grown up in the United States, where religion is fair game for comedians (even if it’s regularly nixed from family gatherings over various holidays) may have a hard time understanding the inability of some other cultures to laugh at their own belief systems. But that’s a central issue with Osombie, at least if one thinks about the film long enough (which may in fact be contrary to what its creators intended). Is it funny to think of one of the world’s most decried terrorists turning into a zombie to finish whatever “work” he started years ago? Is it perhaps some kind of weird sign of healing on our part that we can even try to joke about a man who inflicted such carnage on our nation? And does it really matter what other cultures, perhaps even those who for their own reasons supported Osama, think about outings like this one? I don't claim to have any answers, easy or otherwise, about any of these quandaries, but I couldn't help but ask them as I watched the film and feel that in some way they are questions that are worth asking, if only to better understand where we are in terms of coming to terms with our differences, whatever those may be.

This is of course all tangential to the actual “merits” of Osombie, but I for one don't think questions like these can be easily ignored in the sociopolitical climate in which we find ourselves nowadays. It should be noted that many famous comedians haven't shied away from making fun of various elements of both Al-Qaeda and terrorism in general, not to mention bin Laden's ignominous end. So perhaps laughter is the best medicine. But there's something else at work in Osombie that may not be stated outright but is hovering just beneath the rotting flesh surface: the film is making a case in its own way for a resurgent Al-Qaeda or Taliban (or whatever group you want to place the zombies in). There's of course the vicarious thrill of seeing our good guy special forces kicking some zombie butt, and that may in fact be the real message of the film, namely that we're going to put down terrorists of any stripe, undead or not.

The basic set up of Osombie couldn’t be simpler, based as it is upon a high concept idea that can be summed up in a clever title. The film starts with a “recreation” of Seal Team Six’s now legendary assault on Abbottabad, but now instead of being met by bin Laden’s family and fighting forces, the marines are instead assaulted by a horde of zombies. We see bin Laden running from the approaching soldiers and injecting himself with something before he’s shot, supposedly dead. On the helicopter trip back to the aircraft carrier, his bagged body is obviously “not quite dead yet” (to paraphrase a certain Monty Python film) and after a mishap, it flies into the ocean. As quick as you can say George Romero, Osama is back to wreak vengeance, along with a band of drooling, oozing zombies.

The film attempts to maintain a certain cheeky humor, to various effect. The jokes are hit or miss, with some landing well (one of the soldiers channels his rage from a bad breakup as he shoots zombies, crying out, “You just had to keep the dog, didn’t you?”) while others just fall flat. There are a couple of admittedly funny little bits along the way as well, as in one brief but amusing Jaws parody where a young woman goes swimming in the Arabian Sea where Osama’s zombiefied body is coming to the surface. You can probably guess the rest, though it doesn’t include John William’s famous semitone music cue.

But a lot of Osombie is just plain stupid. One of the weirdest things about the film is its insistence on stripping star Corey Sevier of his shirt at virtually every turn. Sevier plays a character with the nickname of Chippendale, so that’s part of the package (so to speak), but it’s a really odd gimmick for a film like this. A lot of the dialogue is risible at best, and the film’s attempt to coax a little real human emotion out of various characters meeting their end is one of the most consistently laughable things about it (and not in a good way).

Perhaps if Osombie had been a more viscerally exciting experience to begin with all of these probably inconsequential musings that entered my mind while watching it would have proven to be irrelevant. When high concept meets low expectations, there’s an uneasy feeling that you’re settling for something that isn’t just rote and uninspired, but kind of tasteless as well.

Osombie Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Osombie is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Entertainment One with an AV encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. There's not a lot of technical information available on Osombie, but it appears that this feature was digitally shot, and as such it offers decent sharpness and clarity, though its color palette is strangely subdued for a zombie movie. There's both really good and really bad CGI at work in the film. Some of the splatter effects when the zombies get killed are fantastic, and pop quite convincingly in this high definition presentation. Other moments, like helicopters and planes, look like something ported over from a not very well done cartoon. The zombie makeup for the most part is very good, and looks pretty gruesome in high definition. Close-ups reveal decent fine detail, though some of the darker sequences in the film suffer from murky shadow detail.

Osombie Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Osombie's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is probably its most winning technical aspect. There is some fantastic low end throughout the film, with good use of kind of techno-esque synth motives anchoring the underscore. LFE explodes from the subwoofers with abandon and great regularity. The foley effects are really well done as well (the foley team on this film is rather large, at least if one goes by the closing credits). Everything from the swooping of swords (one of the chief characters, a female no less, likes that weaponry) to the gush of heads exploding is recreated with appealing (and maybe appalling) fidelity. Dynamic range is extremely wide.

Osombie Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

I freely admit I often think way too much about various corollaries to any given film, and there are probably a lot of you out there reading this review and saying, "Hey, it's only a zombie movie." But that's the whole point: it isn't just a zombie movie; had it been, none of this commentary would have even occurred to me. But positing Osama bin Laden and a resurgent bunch of terrorists as zombies brings up a whole bunch of "baggage", whether or not that was intentional. There's little doubt that the vicarious thrill of seeing bin Laden and his baddies get decimated is a large part of this film's appeal (the closing credits even offer a website to purchase Osama targets, one of the most illuminating merchandising gambits in recent memory), but Osombie is neither funny nor clever enough to really warrant even that level of involvement. Viewers who tend not to ruminate quite as much as I do may well enjoy this weird little outing as "just" a zombie film, and on that level I guess there is enough head exploding action to satisfy most lovers of this peculiar genre.