Braindead review

 Number 683 on the top 1000 films of all time is Peter Jackson's zombie, comedy-horror Braindead.

Lionel (Timothy Balme) is a mild-mannered man living in South Wellington, New Zealand with his over bearing mother Vera (Elizabeth Moody) Lionel develops an attraction to the Spanish Paquita (Diana Penlaver) but then Vera is bitten by an infected rat-monkey and is turned into a flesh-eating zombie 

It's difficult to believe this was directed by the same Peter Jackson who directed the LOTR trilogy, the same Peter Jackson who won three Oscars for directing that trilogy. It was a marvellous effort on every level...the production, music, script, acting. It succeeded in every way Braindead failed.

I get that Braindead was supposed to be a comedy but you're supposed to laugh with comedies, not AT them. In fact I didn't laugh at this once. The endless, mindless gore became tiresome very quickly. The characters were all annoying and it was all just silly. It was like Peter Jackson put all his focus into the special effects rather than the film itself.

It seemed like an 80's B movie that you're not supposed to take that seriously but I couldn't take it seriously at all. Lionel was a wet blanket, Paquita was equally irritating and Vera was cliched as the over domineering mother

It all culminated into a very silly affair where rather than Lionel becoming an unlikely saviour of humanity, he has to stop the other zombies from A) eating with each other and B) copulating with each other. He fails on the second front meaning he then has to deal with a zombie baby. Even for a comedy, it's hardly Night of the Living Dead. 

I'm still in disbelief that Peter Jackson could direct a film as nonsensical as this. It's also incredible how Peter Jackson went onto direct some of the best films ever made.