Osombie: The Axis of Evil Dead

Director:  John Lyde
Writer: Kurt Hale
Producers: Paul Green/Chien-Wey Wei/Jed Ivie/Adam F. Goldberg
Starring: Cory Sevier/Eve Mauro/Jasen Wade/Danielle Churchran/William Rubio
Year: 2012
Country: US
BBFC Certification: 15
Duration: 90 minutes

When you’re given an opportunity to review a movie about Osama Bin Laden turning into a zombie, you know that it’s one of those things you just have to watch to witness whether it’s actually real and, believe me, it’s very real. Admittedly, when I saw the title to this and read the description of the movie, I was expecting a comedy horror spoof, something along the lines of Shaun of the Dead or Doghouse but surprisingly, it’s a serious horror movie. So last year, we hear that Osama Bin Laden had been killed and his body is in the sea. However, this movie seems to think, before Bin Laden was shot, he injected himself with a needle containing biohazard material that turns the dead into the living dead. So, as you can imagine, when Bin Laden’s body went into the sea, he turned into a zombie and now commands an army of zombie terrorists and all that stands in their way are a group of soldiers that must stop Zombin Laden before he takes over the world. From that description alone, you just know that the movie should not be taken seriously at all so the question that you really need to ask yourself is whether the movie is entertaining?

The answer is that, while it does have that certain novelty, it wears off very quickly. In general, the movie is terrible as everything doesn’t make sense but this is void considering Osama Bin Laden is a freakin’ zombie! You have the cheesy moments where you see the tough, bad-ass bitch with a katana sword slay zombies to relieve stress due to her boyfriend’s death and also the smart-ass one-liners that happen every time a character kills a zombie. It’s almost like the one-liners were written by the writers in charge of the dialogue from Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. The acting is surprisingly decent as each give out a good enough performance and there’s action aplenty, although sometimes it felt like the movie dragged. The story is bad, which you’d most probably expect…I hope…and the script could have been a lot better but considering what the movie is, I doubt you’d find some deep and meaningful conversations between the characters. Overall, Osombie is entertaining for a little while but it gets boring later on and although it’s low budget, the CGI wasn’t great when the scenes included headshots. It’s entertaining, it’s fun and overall decent.

The one thing I can’t fault about Osombie is that the make-up on the zombies looked great and truly brought the zombies to life…or death rather. Other than that, it’s not really worth a watch, even for the novelty factor. I wouldn’t say give it a miss purely because it’s a movie of Osama Bin Laden turning into a zombie, you’re bound to be curious, but what I will say is take no notice of the serious drama in it and just enjoy the cheesy action and even cheesier dialogue. It’s a bit of fun and an entertaining waste of ninety minutes and I’m pretty sure zombie fans may enjoy it if they enjoyed Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland but Osombie is WAY out of their league. If you’re looking for something along the lines of Dawn of the Dead or 28 Days Later, don’t bother.

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