Episode 384: The Dead 2: India

The Ford brothers are at it again, after The Dead (2010 and episode 36 of the pod), in which a white American must fight his way from one dry, desolate village in Africa to another during a zombie outbreak, we have The Dead 2: India (2013), in which a white American must fight his way from one dry, desolate village in India to another during a zombie outbreak.

And yes, despite knowing of this movie for the entire lifetime of the Undead Symphony, it took me 348 episodes and being stuck in a cottage in the middle of nowhere to finally get around to it.

In this movie English actor Joseph Milson (Moon Knight, Ashes to Ashes, Penny Dreadful) plays Nicholas Burton, an American wind turbine engineer who is fixing wind turbines 300 miles from Mumbai when the outbreak happens. The issue? His pregnant girlfriend, his second pregnant girlfriend, as he has issues with condoms, is in the city with her oppressive priest father and ominously bitten mother.

The movie suffers in many of the same ways as the first, with the mostly Indian cast struggling with the English dialog, continuity errors, and poor direction, seriously the scenes on the motorcycle in the desert and the mass grave could have been so much more, also an unsatisfying ending, but it was ok. It was better than the first, Milson does the best job with what he is given to work with, and so it is a 5/10 for me.  As gritty stories about trying to get from A to B in an apocalypse in a foreign country go, with a juxtaposition of the quiet countryside setting verses the hectic city setting, this one is ok.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

And I'm back again. You know that I'm a holiday, guys. I'm just watching so many movies every day. Uh and I've just discovered something. I'm about I'm eating my second one as we go along. Um lemon meringue. Croissant. A lemon meringue. Croissant. Okay. Think about that briefly. It is a croissant that you have cut down the middle and therefore butterfly by opening it. You've then spread some fluff, you know, marshmallow fluff, the spray, um, into it next. You then crunched up a piece of plain meringue, uh, the white meringue that you can make, and then put that in it as well. Uh, and then smeared some lemon curd, which is kind of like lemon jelly. Close it up, smear some fluff on the top of that, uh, and then sort of um shave some lemon zest on the top. Bosch done! And it is incredibly delicious. And so, when it comes to Rosh Hashanah, which is the 11th of September, first night, 15 people at the house. Guess what you're getting for dessert? You are getting lemon meringue croissants. But I am going off topic with my lemon meringue talk, aren't I? Yes, I am, Darren. Okay, so The Dead is a zombie movie. Imaginative title made in 2010 by the Ford brothers. Uh they made the 10 that uh the dead um in Africa. Uh it tells the story of an American mercenary played by Rob Freeman, who is the sole survivor of a plane crash, who has to run the gauntlet across Africa battling the living dead to get home. And I watched this movie way back. You have to remember that this is episode 384. I watched the dead in episode 36. I have recorded uh 348 episodes since I saw since I saw the dead. Uh back then I also gave it a 4 out of 10. It was profoundly average, and this was before I was, you know, even seeing everything from every other country. This was episode 36, you know. I didn't even have a theme tune. Didn't have Michael. Uh my final thought on The Dead, a terrible title, from 2010, uh, was awful continuity, bad overacting, bad eye overacting, and a very, very repetitive plot from a 12-week shoot that should have taken six. I have seen worse, but with the potential that this had, I can't score it very high at all. So that was the imaginatively titled The Dead from 2010. Well, forwards three more years, and the Ford brothers are at it again. They didn't learn their lesson the first time, and after making The Dead with a terrible and unimaginative title in Africa, because it's cheap, they made the sequel. The sequel in India, because it was equally as hot and cheap. And I'm gonna ask you the question, can you guess what the title is? Yes, the title of the 2013 sequel to the dead is the dead too. Uh the blurb, what there is of it. An infectious epidemic spreads through India as an American turbine engineer learns that his pregnant wife is trapped near the slums of Mumbai. Now he must battle his way across a 300-mile wasteland of the ravenous undead. So pretty much the same movie, except there is actually another person at the end of the line that uh the hero, in this case another American, uh, but an engineer rather than a soldier, has to get to. I think his surname's Burton. Have a cup of tea to accompany this preview. Okay, so uh grab three reviews. Um, it does have a score of 5.1 on IMDb. It doesn't have score very highly on Rotten Tomatoes, it only has four reviews, two negative and two positive, so split right down the middle. Um let's talk about these three reviews randomly picked from IMDB. 6 out of 10, a short review of the 2013 Dead to India. At times, The Dead to India seems like a carbon copy of its predecessor three years earlier. Both The Dead and The Dead 2 portray male American protagonists on a lengthy overland trek to reach a wife or girlfriend. Both are shot on location in an overseas setting. And both portray a second protagonist who is a native of the country. You may remember there was the uh African guy who needed help finding his son in the first one. Apparently, it's an Indian kid in the second. I liked the first movie a bit better. This one feels a little hastily put together in terms of its script and directing. It does manage to succeed somewhat with the things that made the first film decent viewing. Its desert locations are beautifully shot, and the filmmakers bring back some of the original slow burn horror elements. The zombies here are usually as slower snails, slower even than the zombies of George Romero's genre-defining early movies, but they're also quiet. And they converge en masse when our hero lets his guard down, and the occasional appearance of a rare feisty specimen leads you to some jump scares, genuine jump scares, in fact. The movie also effectively employs what appears to be a low budget special effect. The monster's eyes are opal white, are the worldly colour with contact lenses. The trick works, the zombies are scary, and the Dead 2 successfully provides a kind of creeping horror that is rare for today's horror films. This wasn't enough. That wasn't enough, however, to rescue this movie entirely from its from feeling like a retread of the original. Um I describe it as an average viewing experience for a horror fan 6 out of 10. Okay, another one. 6 out of 10. Equals the first installment. Brothers Howard and Jonathan Ford and an un a usually an usually unexplored religious angle with the obligatory social commentary subtext making the Indian 2, uh the Indian Dead 2 as relevant as its predecessor. While not as eerie as the first and briefly lacking some logic in both dialogue and decision making, the Nicholas uh with Nicholas Burton's uh Nicholas Burton's uh seemingly sixth sense knowledge of what's going on, uh there still is plenty to enjoy. The Indian setting and on location shoot gives part two a realistic, gritty, dusty, and atmospheric feel. The traditional shambling dead are creepy enough and retain an air of menace when they're biting and tearing of flesh, although their white eyes, now an overused effect, do slightly feel dated. That said, there's plenty to enjoy, more gunplay, more blood and more zombies, with gripping standout scenes, uh the car crash execution, convoy executions, parachute escape, and a car going over a cliff to name but a few. The directors also deliver some excellent visual moments, a motorcycle blazing across the Indian wastelands, Forgotten Temples, Grand Cities, hovering helicopters, jets, and burning slums, to name but a few. The Ford Brothers offering, this Ford Brothers offering is probably the most grounded undead film since their first outing, uh, and George A. Romero's original trilogy. The writer-directors again manage to give their zombie outing scope with a fantastic naturalistic visual style as the engineer and boy go from one village to the next, complemented by Imran Achmad's musical score. Overall, while not as tension-filled and ominous as the dead, the dead too doesn't try to reinvent the wheel, giving the viewer a much needed solid and serious piece of entertainment. Hmm. Okay, so going from village to village to village does kind of sound repetitive, which is how I described the first movie. Next, and finally, three out of ten sequel Gone Wrong. The Dead 2 starts with beautiful pictures and a good outbreak scenario, but it soon becomes clear that acting the acting range goes from medium to low, and the further the story develops, the more of this movie becomes a mess until the very, very bad ending. The first half was enjoyable and captured the mood of a very good its very good predecessor, but then it takes a downward spiral with forced, cheesy dialogue, a very stupid coincidence that should trigger emotions, but only makes you laugh after the soapish moments leading to it. Hmm. And the acting had its moments, but turned more and more to the level of very bad TV soap with amateurs trying to make their first steps into the business. Like this person's a pro. I liked the slow-moving zombies, and even there it turns out to be turns out to become really ridiculous with editing mistakes and scenes that you were thinking just outrun them. They are so slow. I loved the dead, well you're a fucking idiot to start with then. Um but the dead too you have to take with a lot of humour, unintended humour that is. It makes a good sequel and starts in the spirit of the first one, but goes wrong on every level as the movie progresses into a cheap acted soap opera with zombies. It does, as I said, get 5.1 out of 10 on IMDB. The reviews for the film were mixed on Rotten Tomatoes, with two positive and two negative. So let's see. This is Devin Smith for the Undead Symphony, and this is episode 384. And yes, I saw the dead in episode 36, but this is episode 384, and I am finally watching the sequel, Dead 2.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Yo yo, what is going on? It is Oliver Cooper reaching out to the fans of the pod. You may know me as Bruce from as we know it, or Travis from Bang the X. I know you guys love me and my work, at least I hope you do. So thank you for the good vibes to keep up the zombie podcasting. And yes, you are listening to the Under the Symphony with Michael and Emily. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Yes, yes, yes, I am back, and I'm watching The Dead 2 from 2013 by the Ford Brothers. Uh a sequel to the imaginatively titled The Dead. Um, but rather than a Westerner, an American, uh traveling across Africa to try to escape after his plane crashed, we have an American in India trying to escape with his pregnant local girlfriend and a scrappy little street child. Um, what I'm gonna say uh may shock you, but I kind of liked it in places. Um, I will also add the fact that this is the 399th TV show and movie that we have scored um for uh the Undead Symphony. So 399 movies and TV shows from 44 countries and counting. So I would hope by now I know what the fuck I'm talking about. And so to this this the 2013 uh The Dead, starring Joseph Milson, who is an English actor that I kind of like. We open on the bustle of India, Mumbai, to be precise, the grime of the slums. But this is not the colours of the Indian country that I see in the Darjeeling Limited, or born into brothels. This is more real, less bright oranges and all of those food dyes and fabric dyes. This is just more real and more gritty. Uh, we see sailors, uh, Indian sailors who are working on a ship that has come in from the docks. This is uh a freight carrying ship, it is carrying gypsum by the look of it, uh, has come from Africa. The ship is called the African Queen, Nudge Nudge, and uh one of the Indian one of the Indian sailors was bitten by a Somali woman before he left. So we're linking this to the first movie and having someone from the first from Africa uh being bitten on the way to India and uh and therefore spreading it from Africa to India. That way it's quite likely to happen that way. Uh, the man in question is uh sweating and bleeding from a wound that won't heal on his arm. That's an interesting thing that I think we also need to consider when we are talking about viruses, and in particular virus um bites uh in in in zombie movies, that it is unlikely that they would heal. They would start weeping, they would be infected, and they wouldn't just scab over and then be then new skin to grow because the virus is clearly wanting to spread one way or another. So, yes, his wound is not healing. Gotta say um that the acting is pretty poor from a lot of the local actors because they don't speak English, and it is unfair of them to speak English. I distinctly remember this happening in the first movie where they were asking African actors to to speak English and work to English direction when in fact they didn't speak a fucking word of English, and therefore their English sounds awful when they are mispronouncing uh phrases and words, their lines, and it's not fair on them to be fair. I wouldn't ask a non-English speaker to just speak English. Um, however, the zombies um uh basically the guy then you know collapses at some point on the ground. We actually have others, other zombies now, and these are very slow-moving Indian uh zombies that have got a distinguishable bite mark somewhere on their body, probably causing bloodstains on their normally white clothing. Um, uh they do have the overly cliched white contact lenses, which was mentioned in some of the reviews. These are white contact lenses, slow-moving zombies, and they attack and kill all the people in this particular part of the slum stroke village. Um people don't even put up a fight. These people, they're not super strong. These aren't super strong zombies, they're not super fast zombies, they're not the super strong zombies of Army of the Dead, the super fast zombies of I Am Legend, or 28 Days Later, these are just slow shufflers that basically overwhelm you with volume or boredom. Um we then meet our token westerner, who is halfway up a wind turbine. Uh he phones his girlfriend who is in Mumbai, uh, who turns out that she is and it turns out that she is pregnant. Um he thinks this is really exciting. She, however, is a little bit scared because uh there are other people around her in the hospital who have clearly been bitten. From his vantage point as well, he also sees a man in the fields because he's 300 miles away from Mumbai, working on these wind turbines, and sees someone in the fields, see someone slowly walking towards them. The other person who's working in the field doesn't notice them, and that's the thing about them, they do creep up on you because they are quiet and slow, and um they sort of creep up on you like a like a giant drink spill at the end of the night, and then um that person gets attacked. Okay, so um I'll quick sip for this tea and I will talk about Joseph Milson. Joseph Milson is a very recognizable English actor. He was in Moon Knight, I can't remember him being in Moon Knight, but apparently he was. Penny Dreadful. Again, I watched Penny Dreadful more than once, don't remember him being in that. He was in Ashes to Ashes, which I really liked. That's sort of like Life on Mars, that's the the 1970s version of Life on Mars, or 80s version of Life on Mars. And I'm sure that I saw all of them, and I would recognise would have recognised them if I'd watched them all recently, but I haven't seen any of those shows for a long time other than Moon Knight, and I only remember watching it once. Um we do have this quite good juxtaposition of um more and more people in the city bleeding from bite wounds, um being seen by um uh an also named Shawnee, as Shawnee the girl is. Um she's walking through the vill the streets and seeing more and more people in different, you know, all around her that have been bitten as CGI helicopters fly overhead, whilst halfway up this wind turbine um in the quiet countryside, because she's in the hustle and bust of the city, and in the quiet countryside he just watches this farmer get attacked. Um Shawney is pretty useless. Uh she called him to say that she can't leave with him because her dad, who is a priest, won't let her. Um he says that oh, it's okay, I will speak with your dad. Um she just then stares at a few infected shamblers until she is dragged back through her home front door by her dad, who accuses her of seeing in inverted commas her fancy man whilst her mother was being attacked by a madman. Um and she her response is nothing of the sort, um, which is uh strained dialogue as if there is any. Um again, you're forcing Indian actors to speak in English. It's a mistake. I would have them speaking whatever in whatever Indian language they speak, whether it's Urdu or Hindi or or whatever it is, let them speak it. Um I've seen lots of different Indian movies from all over India, uh, and those I've enjoyed most were in the native tongue, maybe with the smattering of of English, but mostly in the native tongue, and subtitles, you know, most of us can read. So the problem is that you're making third rate actors look fourth-rate by making them speak in another language, potentially just phonetically. I mean, if you gave me uh, I don't know, a movie and we're filming in, I don't know, a country where I don't speak the language. Um, China, for example, and you just give me a uh a phonetic script that I just have to read, it's not gonna sound good at all. And so that's why I feel for these people. Meanwhile, by the wind turbines, 300 miles away, despite despite loading up his truck, Burton walks away from it to get signals. As he does, he's being watched from the bushes. Ooh, although nothing happens. He then calls uh Ashani again, and the dad takes the phone off of her, telling Burton that he's never gonna see her again, um, and that he's got an arranged marriage already sorted out with a good boy who will look after not just her but also him and his wife, because that's the way things go. Um We they don't go into too much detail though, because suddenly the doors burst open and a woman is killed on the street asking for help, and dad just shuts up shop, no one is getting in, no one is getting out. He does this a few times just let watches people get killed on the street, but he's a priest. You know, and are priests truly good people? I can't comment, it's up to you. Anyway, uh Burton radios his office to see what is going on as he's driving his Jeep uh at quite high speed, and they say they've been told to because he's like, Can you go and find a shiny? Go and find a shiny for me, and they're like, We can't leave, sorry. We've been told to stay put, and then they're gonna get a plane and then fly us out. So you need to get your ass here now. He then runs what he thinks is someone over, and then when he looks under the car, under the Jeep, it's actually a zombie. He is then attacked by three other zombies, but he goes into the back of his Jeep for his tools and he gets a mallet and he beats three of them to death with a mallet. But then he leaves the Jeep behind, which didn't make any sense to me. Why are you leaving your Jeep behind? There's absolutely nothing wrong with your Jeep other than it's got a zombie squelched underneath it. So why are you leaving your Jeep? That makes absolutely no sense. Just go back. You've already killed three others. Go back, kill the one that's underneath the the jeep, pull them out, and then continue on your journey. So this is effectively at times a carbon copy of the first movie, except set in India rather than Africa, a westerner heading across an arid country to get the last flight out before the whole thing goes pop. He then makes it to a garage, you can call from the landline to um uh to Ashani again, and then uh he calls her and says, Hey Ashani, hey Ashani, you know, blah blah blah, my baby. And at that point the father has taken Ashani's phone off of her, hears him say that, and then smashes the phone and smacks her across the face. Because now he finds out that his daughter is pregnant with by a westerner out of wedlock. That's going well. Burton, who spends so so much time dicking around on the phone, he's then rummaging around in the drawers of this local garage, the loner, the owner, excuse me, hiccups, the owner of which has already turned Zeke. Uh, he finds a pistol, he loads it, it's a small six-shooter, um, you know, like a 38, 35, 38. It's a small, small pistol. And uh the owner starts starts shuffling towards him. He does two body shots that do nothing before the third headshot puts him down. Whilst he's doing this, he doesn't even look out the window because if he did, he would have seen there are literally fucking dozens of zombies outside. Um he then runs out, uh leaving his useful hammer behind, your melee weapon, and only taking his gun, which you know, sure you've killed four zombies with your mallet and one with your gun so far. Um so what happens when you run out of bullets? Use your fucking mallet. Oh, you can't, you left it behind. Again, there was nothing wrong with his Jeep, he left it behind. Nothing wrong with the mallet, he left it behind. Annoying, quite annoying. But what he does, rather than go back and use the Jeep, uh, which could you could just fuel anywhere you find a gas station or siphon fuel from other vehicles on the way, or his mallet, which just requires you to be able to hold it and then swing it. Uh, you don't need bullets or anything for a mallet. He decides to escape using a paraglider from the roof of the garage, carrying the uh the motor, the the tur the motor up, rotor, whatever it is, uh that goes on his back up first before running back down again and grabbing the um the parachute. So he carries that back up with dozens upon dozens of slow-moving infected heading towards him as he does. Uh he then gets onto the roof, and it's again it's very stressful because he's got to put together this whole fucking parachute that he has to put on, and he's got the motor on his back with the with the propeller as the zombies are shuffling slowly towards him, and then he's sort of trying to like scoop all of the um the silk of the parachute together, and then he runs to the edge of the building and jumps off, and then he flies about 50 feet before crashing into farmland, completely surrounded by zombies before again being pulled backwards by the wind, then finally getting up and then flying off. And fuck me, that was stressful and annoying. Prize-winning cup of tea, by the way. I mean, it's a unique way of avoiding the dead on the ground, um, but I'm not sure you're gonna be able to cover the 300 miles needed to get you back to um Mumbai if you are indeed uh just gonna be using a paraglider uh as a mode of transport. But he only makes it till dusk before he runs out of fuel anyway, and crashes to the ground. We then get this really annoying um well, kind of it's a repeat of the first movie. Lots of poor acting, slow shufflers, but um pretty good practical effects of them ripping uh flesh off of the living who is just screaming, villagers on fire. Um and it you could have just cut lifted this these from the first movie, other than the Indian rather than African. Uh a young boy, Javid, uh, is chased maybe ten is chased uh by the infected uh and screams as he's running through the woods. At this point, Burton, who crashed in a tree, wakes up hanging in the tree as zombies are moving towards him. Uh he then wakes up, uh shoots the zombies in the head that are attacking young Javid, uh, but now annoyingly has a shouty and cannot fucking lower his voice at all. Dependent. Back in the city, the army are fighting the zombies on the street. Machine guns, armoured personnel carriers, uh lots of gunshots going on. However, when we whenever we go back there, the bodies aren't there. So I would say we probably need piles of bodies. You know, in a computer game where you can actually either retain the dead or not, sometimes you retain the dead and you go back and it's oh look, there's loads of dead bodies out here. Oh yeah, I killed them. Versus uh, oh, and they they respawn and therefore where they died they just disappear. Anyway, the zomp the army are fighting the zombies on the streets. Uh we get another jump scare as Dad looks out the window, only for a zombie to appear right in his face. Um, and at this time it was half an hour in, uh, and I decided to take a pause. Um, and I had to say though, half hour in, it was actually okay. I've seen a lot of zombie movies. This is the 399th movie and show that I have seen, and it's okay. I mean, it makes me kind of want to contact the Ford brothers and say, hey, if you want to do the dead three, I will write it for you. Okay. Um, because the first one, okay, I I see what you're doing. The second one, it's slightly improved. Uh, but now, I mean, 13 years later, if you are either if you're both still alive, then maybe we should think about doing the dead three. Um, so this is from my from my opinion, a little bit better than the original. People think it's worse, uh, because it doesn't really add anything. I think the acting is slightly better, I think the cinematography is slightly better. Um, but I think things like the it has the same issues the bad shot choices, the poor writing, the awful continuity, and the bad acting from um everyone else other than the lead. But I took a pause and I'm taking a pause now to drink this cup of tea. What a good cup of tea that is. Anyway, so I took a five-hour pause. Um, I went to the walled gardens of Morton and then to Lulworth Cove. But I am back again now. So the kid, Javid, is very fucking shouty. He doesn't have any s any low tones or volume in his voice at all. Constantly shouting, uh, wanting to be Burton's guide to Mumbai. The kids kid doesn't stop shouting. They go to this place where he goes, Oh, I know where there's a car, I know where there's a car, it's over here, and then he's running through this village ahead of Burton, who's like who's whispering for him to come back and come back. I need to protect you. There could be zombies here. And the kid's like, I'm looking for the keys, I wonder if they're in here. And it's just like fucking hell, just anyway. The annoying little shit then noisily opens a door, and basically this door had like a uh a metal bolt on it, and he makes a meal of this. This is so loud. Uh, and then a zombie comes bursting out and scratches him on the hand uh before Burton basically puts the six sh puts the gun to the zombie's head and kills it. At this point, I noticed that the small six shooter, you know, the one where you basically pull it to one side and then slowly individually put the six bullets into the drum, has been replaced with a pistol with a magazine, a small pistol with a magazine. I'm gonna say it resembles like a Walter PPK kind of pistol. I remember this happening in the first movie too, where they the continuity person just went to lunch, and every so often uh we just get a completely different gun. So the car was sort of like a Fiat Uno kind of thing, one of those little box cars, um, which doesn't have any windows. Of course, that's the one thing you'd like in a zombie apocalypse, is windows. You don't need them in India because it's so fucking hot. But you need it in a zombie apocalypse to keep the zombies out. Anyway, so they get in the car and it's it's one of those they can't start it, it's unnecessarily tense, unnecessarily noisy, with the kids shouting and him trying to start the engine, as zombies are trying to grab them through the non-existent windows, he slaps a few of them away, shoots a few in the head, but finally they drive off in this car. But because it's got no windows, every time they sort of slow down, a zombie can kind of reach for them through the windows. Um, if I remember there was that whole uh zombies of mass destruction. Do you remember that one? ZMDs, um, where the boyfriend is talking to the girlfriend and then a zombie rips basically puts a hand in through the window and then rips the boyfriend's face off. Uh, just that that made me chuckle. Uh anyway, we get a lot of this travel footage um of them driving through India. But the thing is, because you know they clearly didn't get permission to do this, they're driving through India and like they drive past like a bus full of people, or you know, one of the local um uh like a people carrier that's got like 80 people hanging out the windows kind of thing, or people on motorcycles, or people doing you know, on carts or anything. Um we then come to a military roadblock, and at this military roadblock, there um they are stopping everyone and checking them for bites. It includes uh there's a bus in the queue, and the bus includes people from the village from the opening shot who were attacked. Um a woman and a man, and the man has actually been bitten, so the soldiers uh walk past, and then they sort of spot that he's hiding something underneath his turban, and they sort of pull it to one side and he's been bitten. So they take him outside, kneel him down, and shoot him in the head. Which was kind of shocking and incredibly well done. So again, I think this has upped its up the level from the first movie that some of the shocking stuff that's been doing done by government is actually better. Um they've also found another woman in a second vehicle that gets pulled out because she's also been bitten, again, shot in the head. A Burton realizes that Kid has been scratched on the hand when they were getting their car keys, and there's their soldiers are gonna think that he's infected, so they're gonna kill him. So instead, they run the blockade, and the car gets shot up from behind. I mean, you didn't need a rear windshield, did you, anyway? Because you haven't got any windows. Anyway, and so basically they end up driving away and into the mountains. So they're driving through the mountains, and it's a very narrow mountain pass, and there are zombies behind them, zombies ahead of them, and then a fucking idiot in a pickup truck, or tow truck, actually, a tow truck, uh, what is coming the other side of them, won't get out of the way, and physically nudges their car off the road and down the mountainside, forcing them to climb out of the window and to continue on foot. So far, I mean not even halfway through, um, to get the 300 miles from the wind turbines to Bombay, Burton, uh Nicholas Burton, as it is, has abandoned his Jeep that had absolutely nothing wrong with it and could have made the entire journey. Uh, replaced it with a power glider, um, which he then crashed, uh, and then he replaced it with a stolen vehicle with no windows uh that has now been run off the road. And at this point, they had to take a big detour to find weapons, apparently, because they're gonna go to a hunting lodge. Uh, but mostly they are now as far away as they could be from Mumbai, and they've already wasted three vehicles. But where they are now is this classic Ford Brothers scene. Ford brothers like to do this, they like to find an abandoned temple or a castle or a colonial fort, ideally with wildlife, in this case monkeys. Um, and then they just filmed a regular chatting scene. In this scene, the boy tells this legend of these three people who ended up you know being buried alive, but when they went in later to go and get uh to to find the bodies that they weren't there anymore. Um that will become relevant later, I think. So Javid and Burton make it to this hunting lodge, lots more shouting from Javid, lots of him running ahead, even though he hasn't learnt his fucking lesson yet. But they don't find any guns. They you know it surely if the hunters had guns, they would protect themselves with said guns. But instead they can just these guys just push the doors open of the hunting lodge and just go shuffling around it, noisily looking for what they fucking need. Of course, as I said, the noisy shit Javid runs on ahead shouting whilst wit whilst Burton is whispering, Javid, Javid, get back here. I'm looking for the bullets! Yes, I know, just get back here. It's dangerous. I'm looking for zombies! Uh Javid, get back. But of course, the zombies get in, creeping slowly and silently. They've got no bullets and no guns, but what they do find is a crowbar and a set of motorcycle keys, and there is a motorcycle of oil Enfield motorcycle that is parked outside. So a couple of tonks with the crowbar to the nearest zombies, and they're on a motorbike riding a riding across the desert, which they should have made more of, but it is just this one short clip. I would have used the shit out of that because it actually looks really good. Um it looked exciting, exotic, it looks like they are genuinely travelling at some sort of pace towards their target. It was a good shot that they didn't make the most of because immediately we've cut back to dad, who's just letting more people die on the street. They're banging on the door, let me in, let me in. Oh no, I'm being bitten. Why are you not letting me in? Um, and his wife has also been bitten, she's laying sweating and talking to Ashani. Um, I'm gonna put money on um him getting his comeuppance by having his wife bite him. And the only question being is if Burton's pregnant girlfriend Ashani also is killed and turned into a zombie by the time he gets home. It's an option. You know, I've seen that in movies before. Uh the kid then shouts for them to stop, stop the motorbike, stop! But rather than actually explaining why, he jumps off the motorbike and runs off because he spotted a fruit tree. What I would have done, and this is what normal human beings would have done, Ford Brothers, if you're listening, this is what people would do. They would go, Oh, that's a fruit tree, pull up over there. Not scream, stop, stop, stop, and then jump off and run off. As they get these, and it is a fruit tree, and as they eat the fruit from the fruit tree, whatever fruit it is, um, Burton explains that you know, I need to look after this baby, a shinies baby, because I got a woman pregnant in the US and I ran away, she couldn't handle it, she had an abortion, she got sick, she died. So obviously he's got that on his conscience. What he should also have on his conscience is being so fucking stupid that he left the keys in the motorbike when he parked it on the street. So some man runs up to it, jumps on, says, I'm really sorry, but I've got to get back to my kids, and then drives off on the motorbike, leaving Bert. Burt doesn't even shoot at him, he picks up a stone and throws it. I would have just shot the guy square in the back. He ain't fucking stealing it from me again. And then they have another scene, and this is another scene that I would have made a lot more out of, but the Ford brothers didn't, which is there's this whole field of evenly spaced, freshly dug graves, hundreds of them, some filled, some not. Obviously, to deal with the mass uh burials of victims, and they slowly walk through the graves, um, and you see sort of one of them sort of like the soil moving, and then we cut to another fucking building where they're gonna go in there and try to lock the go lock the doors on windows and have a sleep. And I'm like, come on now. The two best shots in this movie you've cut so short and done nothing with. I I could literally make an entire movie about them having to cross this you know huge far piece of farmland that's got hundreds of graves, some open, some some not, on it. Because you just don't know where which where there's which one's got zombies in, which one's got people who've been shot in the head, which ones have which ones are gonna come alive again, which ones aren't. And it's gotta be tense. I mean, there's nothing wrong with Joseph Milton's acting at all. He's actually a particularly good actor, I like him. Whenever I'm now watching things, I'm thinking, I wonder if I could use them for the next project. Um, I've got uh an Israeli actor as well that I want to poke. I'm gonna poke him when I'm working on the next project as well. So there's nothing really wrong with Joseph Milson's acting, he's doing the best with what he can. With the material that he's been given. And I appreciate that. So the zombies are getting close to their windows and doors, sighing and looking through cracks in the windows, but somehow he can slowly drift off to sleep with a kid already a sound o on the bed in the room. So they head out in the next morning, and of course the fucking kid Javid runs off. Oh no! Oh no, there's zombies! Runs this way, oh no, there's zombies, and then runs off and climbs in a window, causing unnecessary tension, attention, and tension. As Burton then has to run after him, grab him, pick him up, and drag him away to safety. So Burton and uh Javid then make the rail tracks, and you can see just down the just down the tracks that the train has gone over, there are zombies everywhere, but they run into a horde. It's not really much of a horde, but it's a horde, and then he's fighting or pushing all these this horde away as a CGI military helicopter is waiting and letting survivors on. He tells the kid to run for the helicopter, the kid does, but then as Burton is shooting these zombies in the head and fighting them off, he runs as fast as he can to get to the helicopter, but the helicopter is taking off because it is already overladen. Alright, I'm sorry, but this is a fucking huge Chinook helicopter that is designed to lift huge weights. You know, you've seen them carry trucks and missile launchers and all these other things underneath them. Operation Dumbo Drop. All these different things, a fucking elephant uh underneath one of these giant uh helicopters, Chinook helicopters, and they can't fit another man on. It's fucking bullshit, man. Anyway, annoyingly more that the helicopter is heading to Mumbai, which is where he needs to go. But fortunately now, Burton has to go in alone and without Javid shouting and running off, which for me ups his chances of survival, but not for very long because after losing the shouty kid, we can now hear screaming, the screaming of a woman and the screaming of the woman's daughter. They are in the front of a crashed car next to the dead husband who is at the wheel, and they are trapped as the zombies slowly moving. He tries his hardest to try to um you know break the seat and get them out, but he can't. Both of them are have been pinned, their legs have been trapped. Second movie uh out of the last three that's happened in Ben Kingsley dies because of that in deep water, which I saw the movie before last. Uh last movie I watched actually was The Running Man, the new version of The Running Man, the Edgar Wright version uh of Running Man. Um, probably my least favourite. Uh Lepri de Danger and uh and then the Arnie one, both better, uh in my opinion, than Glenn Powell's version. And I don't have a problem with Glenn Powell, really. Um anyway, so the woman is screaming and he's like, I can't get you out at the moment. I'm gonna use my gun to shoot the lever of the seat. Okay, so look down and cover your ears. And when the when the girl looks down and covers her ears, he shoots her in the back of the head, and then the the mother looks up completely shocked, and he shoots her in the head too. Com that is some cold ass shit right there. He then spends far too much time crying and not scavenging their stuff because the zombies in you know, again, they're slow shufflers with white eye conta white contact lenses, just head closer and closer until you have to run away. Both movies are like that. It's like you can you can outrun them all the time, but if you just dick around standing still, getting over emotional about something, they all just come off, they'll get to you eventually. We then have some desert road walking in slow motion, looking up at the sun, dying of thirst, um, going down walking along a trench with zombies either side, it's very reminiscent of the first movie. Before he then discovers his motorbike. Oh, this is my Royal Enfield motorbike here. Fantastic. Oh, but the keys aren't in it. Walks around the corner, and the guy who said, I want to take my sorry for stealing your motorbike, but I have to go get back to my kids. His kids are now zombies and eating him. So he shoots the three zombie kids and takes the keys off the guy as he's turning to jump back on his motorcycle and get back on the road again. Oh on the road again. Um until he reaches the edges of Mumbai. We see the city finally, and it is burning with bad CGI flames. Um the girl's mum then dies, and Dad hugs her. Um, her eyes then open and they are white. Burton then joins the craziness of fighting in the streets of the slums, the shanty towns, the zombies fighting the army. Uh, he tries to save a soldier, he ends up with an AK-47. Uh, dad is bitten by zombie mum comes out and hugs his daughter. Um Burton is trapped in this building after picking up this AK-47, but then he opens the doors burst in, and again, it was just purely by volume of zombie. He shoots them all with this AK-47, but then takes out his pistol, and now it's gone from being that six-shooter to like a Walter PPK, and now it's sort of like a service sidearm, you know, one that everyone had in like World War II. Um, when I and again I remember this happened in the first movie. The continuity is nowhere to be seen when it comes to the handguns of the central character. Um, he is fighting and killing zombies uh all the way to the front door of the house before he gets in and closes the door behind him. He then hugs Ashani, kisses her on the forehead, Dad realizes that he was wrong all this time. They shake hands, and then rather than you know, barak throwing dad out for the zombies, killing throwing mum out, uh, and then barricading their that place and basically turning into a lovely love den, a love nest, full of all the food and drink that you can uh scavenge, they decide to run out into the very busy streets to try to get to you know where the planes and helicopters are supposed to pick people up. Ah so it's morning now, and they're climbing to the top of the city where there is a giant, I don't know, is it a fortress? Is it a temple? It's one of those, but it's got all the survivors are there, and then they go, Well, we're just waiting for the helicopters or planes to arrive and rescue people, and they can hear jets, and they go, and he's like, they don't sound like rescue planes, and they aren't because they start bombing the fucking city, and they start bombing this place. They are they are wiping out the survivors, and so we end up in this very contrived situation where um the boy and who they find the boy there, by the way, Javid. So you got a Shani and Burton and Javid are running through the uh corridors together, they end up get it going down this corridor, stone corridor, and then bombs hit, and they kind of get like trapped. Uh, with mean to be fair, you could probably dig your way out. But both ends of the corridor are rock now. And then we have this very annoying ending where the boy retells his story, or we hear the vo the voice of the boy telling his story about that empty tomb, whilst Burton relives his own story about aborting his earlier child, and flashbacks to killing the trapped mother and child in the car, and then he looks at the camera, and that's the end. And it was a very depressing and depressingly contrived ending, um, from my perspective. So that was the end too from 2013 by the Ford Brothers, the Indian sometimes called the the end too, the dead too, um by the Ford Brothers, um sometimes called The Dead colon India, uh or The Dead 2 Colon India, it's all the same movie, it's basically the same movie as The Dead from 2010, I want to say, um, which was all about a an American go fighting from village to village as he goes across Africa to try to escape, and then in this movie it was the same thing, but India. But I would say that the acting was actually better. Um, well, actually, no, that's not true. Both the acting of the American in the first movie and the brilliant British guy in the second movie playing the American, nothing wrong with it, actually. I'd say the performances of the leads in both movies have been absolutely fine. Literally, the all the money must have been on the lead being the lead, you know. Um everyone else you've got to feel sorry for, all of the rest of the supporting cast who don't speak English, uh, or speak English, but not as their native tongue, including the noisy kids, the noisy people, you know, the uh Shanny and her family. You know, it's like it does and you know, the mechanic and all these other people that he interacts with, Burton interacts with, it's just like not fair because they don't speak English. Or if they do speak English, it's not their strongest uh suit, and therefore um their acting seems worse than it maybe it would be if they spoke their own native tongue. Uh the noisy kid really annoyed the fucking shit out of me. Noisy people should be quiet in movies and they should learn pretty quickly. If you are noisy now, shh don't speak and make them quiet. Don't have them consistently noisy. It is the same as the first movie as well, in lots of moving from desolate village to desolate village, lots of inconsistencies and continuity issues, and in particular with the guns. All of that is the same as the first movie. Um, however, I think that this one was done better, despite some of the critics saying that it wasn't. I think that uh Joseph Milson did a particularly good job. Um I kind of wanted them to survive, uh, which we don't know their their actual fate because they're now uh trapped in this uh fort that has been bombed by the army. So we don't actually know what's what their actual fate was. I didn't like the ending though, and the whole we're going back to that legend of the empty tomb uh and the other flashback nonsense. That aside, I don't think there was anything wrong with this movie. I'm gonna score it five out of ten because I thought there was absolutely nothing wrong with this movie to stop you from watching it. I've seen far, far worse movies than this. Trust me, out of the 399 movies and shows that I have seen, I have seen plenty that were worse than this. And so, The Dead 2, India, uh, from twenty thirteen by the Ford Brothers. I'm scoring five out of ten.