Zombie 108 (Z-108 qi cheng) (2012)

Z-108 qi cheng, Zombie 108 (2012)
Directed by: Joe Chien
Written by: Joe Chien
Starring: Chien Jen Hao, Morris Rong, Tia Bo, Yvonne Yao

Zombie 108 (Z-108 qi cheng)

(18) Running time: 83 minutes

Director: Joe Chien

Writer: Joe Chien

Cast: Morris Rong, Yvonne Yao, Tia Bo, Chien Jen Hao

Reviewed by: Matt Wavish

So here we have a zombie flick from Taiwan with tons of vicious, horrible stuff from a young, first time director who clearly wants to make his mark on the horror genre. Problem is he may have tried too hard, and while the film goes all out with plenty of violence and some truly disgusting stuff, very little effort is made to make the film coherent, and there is a serious sense of an amateur director wanting big things. I have no issue with ambition, but when that ambition gets in the way of making something which actually could have been good, then I do have a problem.

See, Zombie 108 actually has some nice ideas and some cool twists on the zombie genre, and is actually a hell of a lot of sick and twisted fun. Sadly though, the acting, plot and direction is all over the place, and added to this a headache inducing soundtrack, and things become very painful to endure. If the director maybe took a step back and ‘calmed’ himself down, a little more control and this film may not have run away from him the way it sadly has.

We arrive in a district in Taipei, a city devastated after a zombie outbreak has killed most people off. This is the result of a tsunami and some nuclear shenanigans causing the victims of the tsunami coming back to life, and the quiet town is full of carnage and after effects of a land quite literally gone to shit. A woman wakes up in her car and has lost her daughter and goes looking for her. She eventually finds her daughter after being hunted by zombies, and they are saved by a strange man (more on him in a minute). Meanwhile, a SWAT team have moved in on some gangsters and are about to kill them off, and the gangsters are ready for them, lead by a massive man mountain who provides some of the films (unintentionally) funnier moments.

Seeing the zombies coming to get them, the two groups join forces to survive the onslaught, providing plenty of macho man talk and leader disputes. While these two groups who hate each other join together for the sake of survival, a more sinister creature is at work using his own methods to keep people alive. Listed on IMDB simply as The Pervert, this horrible man who wears dead girls flesh as a mask (haven’t seen that before!) saves beautiful women (and they ARE beautiful) and keeps them as his sex slaves. The creepy and disgusting monster chains up the girls and pretty much does what he wants: cue LOTS of naked girls and cruel sexual bullying and rape. Hell, there is even a twisted scene where he allows an octopus to crawl over a girls naked body, ordering the girl “not to move or the octopus will fall off!!”.

Zombie 108 is part zombie horror, parts cops and robbers (so to speak) and part serial killer/rapist viciousness. The three genres are an interesting mix, and in the hands of a more talented director could have provided something quite special. Sadly, there is too much going on for this new (and to be fair creative) director to handle, and he falls apart. There are moments where you can really see his passion and vision shine through (when the rapist goes for a girl a creepy dog barking noise is heard), while at others the script is appalling and the direction is a complete mess. Fight scenes are put together by the camera wobbling and shaking all over the place to you never actually see any combat, just the before and after and this angered me a lot. The pacing is frantic, but there is zero tension and the whole film just felt like one staged moment after another with little in the way of plot development. There are characters to remember, but the focus is badly handled on the main cast, and people whizz in and out of the plot like you were on a rollercoaster.

Zombie 108 has ideas and ambition to die for, and there are times where it really does work and it impressed me a lot. Clearly the director wanted to disgust, excite and upset his audience, and he does achieve that. It is just a shame the whole thing is such a complete mess, and all the good stuff is lost in translation as there is just too much going on, too much silliness and far too many genre ideas to be held tightly together by a director who needs a little more practice to get it right. I will be looking out for his next film though, that is for sure!

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