Eaters - Luca Boni, Marco Ristori - 2010

[MartinG]

 

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The world - devastated by the Great Epidemic - is governed by hordes of living dead. Three men - Igor and Alen, two hunters of dead and a scientist, Gyno - try to give an answer to what has happened to the human race. Alen and Igor leave for two days of hunting to find new "guinea-pigs" for Gyno and meet the most varied characters: a crazy painter, neo-Nazis and a mysterious girl, daughter of the feared Plague-Spreader, supposed craftsman of the epidemic...

 

Une prod Uwe Boll. Kikavu ?

 

Uwe Boll's name proudly shining on the poster of a brand new and seemingly engrossing zombie movie… U-oh, that certainly brings back the (not so) fond memories of "House of the Dead". Don't worry just yet, because Mr. Boll apparently just produced the movie and counseled the two young but ambitious directors Luca Boni and Marco Ristori. When they came to the Belgian Fantastic Film Festival to introduce their movie, they told the audience that they literally sent out millions of emails and letters to acclaimed directors in the business, but Uwe Boll was the only one kind enough to reply. Say what you want about Uwe Boll but he's definitely not pretentious.

 

"Eaters" certainly isn't a total waste of film, but the problem with zombie movies simply is that there have been far too many of them since the new millennium. Stories about world-devastating viruses and unstoppable plagues are all so damn derivative and uninspired, while the gore and make-up effects haven't been shocking anyone anymore since several years. "Eaters" unfortunately isn't an exception to this. The story simply revolves on a duo of embittered men, survivors of the great epidemic that wiped out all of humanity, who fill their days with nagging to each other and rounding up corpses – dead or alive ones - for research. Another survivor, a scientist named Gyno, hopes to diagnose the origin of the epidemic, which was supposedly spread intentionally by someone called the Plague Spreader. Apart from hunting for zombies, Igor and Alan also have to find food and evade a crazy bunch of next generation Nazis. There are undeniably a couple of nifty ideas and imaginative gimmicks in "Eaters", like the idea of a religious fanatic spreading the plague like a punishment from God or lunatic Nazi officers using the living dead for target practice, but these are underdeveloped whereas the main story lines revert to clichés. The dialogs between the two lead actors are mundane and stereotypical. Igor is a trigger-happy macho and Alan is introvert and depressed over the loss of his beloved fiancée. Uwe Boll's money was well spent on make- effects, however. The rotting corpses look suitably nasty and Gyno's medical experiments are quite engrossing. Good soundtrack, too.