5.8 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
The story follows Dusty, a yoga instructor from Colorado, who is on a desperate rescue mission to save her crazy brother Derek, a conspiracy theorist who is convinced Osama bin Laden is still alive, despite having been buried at sea. In Afghanistan, Dusty falls in with a team of NATO special forces on a secret assignment. Turns out Derek is not so crazy after all, and that Osama has returned from his watery grave and is making an army of zombie terrorists. When the group crashes headlong into the growing zombie apocalypse, Dusty and the troops must find and destroy the root of the zombie insurgency before it infests the rest of the world.
Starring: Corey Sevier, Eve Mauro, Jasen Wade, Danielle C. Ryan, Paul D. HuntHorror | 100% |
Action | 34% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 5.1
English
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 1.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
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.
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'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.
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.
2012
2011
2006
2013
2005
2014
World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries / Dimension Extreme
2011
2013
2003
2007
2011
2016
Uncut and Unrated
2011
2014
2001
2018
2019
屍城 / Shi cheng
2014
Movie Only Edition
2012
2009