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Wilson Yip’s Bio Zombie answers the question, “What would it be like if Kevin Smith wrote Zach Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake?” Yip answered this question 5 years before Snyder’s flick and eight years before Shaun of the Dead. This movie rocks and I am so glad Vinegar Syndrome was able to bring this one back from the dead on a new and fully-loaded Blu-ray.
Do you remember that DVD copy of House of 1000 Corpses? The shaky one your weird friend in college gave you? It only played on some players, and the picture was all washed out—you might occasionally hear someone coughing who wasn’t even in the fucking movie?
If you’re old and still interested enough in horror movies to read some idiot’s review of a 25-year-old zombie movie from Hong Kong, you probably had that friend. Or you were that friend. Either way, you knew a guy who could get the “good” shit.
Well, imagine that guy sells those discs at a legit store in the mall and believes he’s in a gang. This is your protagonist for Winston Yip’s Fantastic 1998 Zombie flick Bio Zombie.
Actually, two such idiots are running this show: Woody Invincible (Jordan Chan) and Crazy Bee, AKA Zom-Bee(Sam Lee). Woody and Bee are small-time hustlers—video bootleggers at the local mall. They spend their time mostly dicking around, hitting on girls, and bullying their customers…
And the guy at the Sushi place…
And random people in the mall who are just minding their own business…
And basically, everyone they come in contact with—even when the odds are not in their favor.
These guys are dicks, and soon they’ll have to survive the zombie apocalypse…
Which they started…
While being the idiot dicks they are…
They’ll fight for survival, but along the way, they’ll also hit a man with a car and drive off with the body. They’ll get drunk, and they’ll rob a woman before trying to seduce her. They’ll smoke weed and get arrested by mail security. They’ll behave horribly—sometimes hilariously, sometimes awkwardly and of-its-time-edly, and somehow, they’ll make you like them a lot.
Woody and Bee shouldn’t work as heroes. They are criminals who are worse at crime than they are at their day job—which is also crime. They’re offensive and full of bravado, seemingly one-dimensional losers out to make a buck. They shouldn’t work, but if you can play along and just… hang out with them for a bit, they absolutely do.
And much like the guy who introduced you to your weird DVD friend, that’s what Wilson Yip asks you to do for about the first ⅔ of Bio Zombie.
“Just get to know them, dude; they’re not so bad. They’re weird, and they do some dumb shit sometimes, but at least it’s funny.”
This probably won’t work for everyone. A common complaint is that the movie is heavier on the slacker comedy vibes than horror. This is true, but if you get to know them, you’ll realize that, for one, all of that bravado—or at least most of it—is a front, and for another, you probably grew up with someone just like them. This is, of course, the exaggerated, uniquely Hong Kong version of them.
Because of Chan and Lee’s performances, you believe that they believe they are hardass gangsters. What initially feels like weird pacing starts to work as Woody and Bee start to feel like real people—they’re exaggerated but have layers. When the shit hits the fan in the 3rd act, and you feel like you really know them… and, weirdly, really like them.
It’s just… a lot of fun.
Unlike many 90s zombie flicks, this is not a gore fest—as Yip mentions in the commentary, the effects were sort of an afterthought and… not very good. Hazy camera effects and abrupt edits often obscure them—sometimes to hilarious effect, such as in the case of a fake severed head chucked like fucking football at one of the actors. It’s completely unexpected, and it’s hilarious. This will not scratch the same itch as, say, a Fulci flick, but it’s not trying to.
What it will do is transport you back in time. From the stylish photography to the slacker sensibilities of its protagonists, this movie is dripping with 90s vibes. If you remember sailing the high seas searching for torrents of obscure foreign horror, if you pine for the days of tacky all-over print t-shirts, pixie haircuts, and crude humor, or if you just like a good ol’ fashioned ZomCom, this is a treat. It feels very much like a prototype for Shaun of the Dead, and I’d be shocked to learn it wasn’t an inspiration for Wright and Pegg’s breakout film.
The Vinegar Syndrome release is fantastic. The transfer looks. So. Good. It’s a significant improvement over the original US media blasters release. Feature-wise, you get brand-new artwork, an interview with Wilson Yip, an informative video Essay, and an alternate ending.
