Interesteg What makes it different from others?

Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Leofwine_draca An unusual zombie film from Italian director Pupi Avati which receives mainly negative reviews due to the incorrect advertising of the American release, which markets it as a BURIAL GROUND-style Italian gut-muncher. Instead it's a deliberately slow-paced, action-free epic which weaves a complex, dark, and mysterious plot around the viewer and is indeed difficult to comprehend at moments. As for the zombies, well they pop up at the beginning and the end to offer some good scares, but the majority of the movie is simply an atmospheric and spooky detective-thriller as the lead investigates the mystery and becomes caught up in a conspiracy with lots of shady characters.The film begins as it means to go on with an apparently possessed girl attempting to dig up a basement. When investigating scientists dig in the earth they discover a coffin containing a skeleton, which has been wreaking havoc in the house in which it is situated. Avati makes good use of shadows and lighting for maximum atmospheric impact and his direction recalls the movies of the '40s that Val Lewton produced, and indeed there's a direct reference to CAT PEOPLE with a haunting scene set at a deserted swimming pool.It turns out that this is all a flashback and the film begins proper with the film's lead, Stefano, played by the greatly unappealing Gabriele Lavia (one of the movie's biggest flaws, it has to be said) receiving a decrepit typewriter. Reading strange text on the ribbon, he meets the previous owner, a priest at the local church. The priest denies all knowledge. When he returns later on that day to question the priest further, Stefano discovers that the man was an imitator and the real person he is looking for is dead. The plot becomes even more involved with the intervention of a shadow conspiracy who commit murder to cover up the secret of the K-Zones, geographical locations in which the dead can return to life. After a spooky interlude in a cemetery (which includes a fantastic shock in which he discovers birds living in a coffin), Stefano discovers the location of one of these K-Zones at a partially-built but as yet uninhabited hotel. The scene is set for encounters with the undead...Although with its very slow pacing and almost total lack of action or violence (a single stabbing is all the film can muster), ZEDER is definitely not a film for all tastes, viewers will be rewarded by the finale which includes some very frightening moments. The finest of these in my opinion is when the main character watches (via monitors linked up to a camera) a corpse wake up in its coffin and begin laughing in an eerie manner. This really sent the chills running down my spine. The sight of the dead pushing their way up from below the ground is also effective, as are hands emerging from walls, and the film's final downbeat twist may have possibly influenced Stephen King's PET SEMATARY.The actors are as poorly dubbed as usual and the cast is of unknowns (even for an Italian movie). Lavia is miscast as the boring lead and unable to breathe life into his role, although some of the supporting actors playing the bad guys aren't bad at all. The thing I liked most about this movie was the soundtrack, with emphatic music which recalls THE BEYOND and some very weird sound effects to add to the horror. These include distorted computer effects and heavy, distorted breathing. While I don't label this a masterpiece as some others have, I did find it to be a very unique and interesting film and watching it makes me want to check out more of Avati's directorial work.

bradleybean86 If you were referred to this movie via a search for a classic 'zombie' action/gore-er and are expecting something fast paced with a lot of cool deaths that border on action over drama and mystery - you've been misled by the title. I'm not sure the director intended us to receive this as a 'Dead/Zombi' type title, but it seems that it was marketed over here that way (and who can blame them?)It's a pretty moderate to slow paced mystery that borrows a lot and innovates a tad (can't expect any more.) There are some cool sequences of discovering various types of secret doors inside dated structures etc. Don't expect it to be anywhere as engrossing or epic as Inferno, but in that same spirit. What lucio fulci or argento would have done differently is probably added depth to this not by trying to overcomplicate the plot but to add in some truly scary horror elements that involve either on screen or implied brutality from the antagonist(s) that we are unquestionably convinced that they are evil and malicious. A little over the top kill or two only makes the seemingly serious parts 'seem' more serious but makes the movie more of an exciting coaster rather than the not so exciting unfold events that take place here.No cool 'creatures' 'killers' or anything of that nature. I suppose the idea is to creep us out but too many other movies (even 10-20 years older than this) had already gone above and beyond what this movie is trying to do years later. So even though it's 3 years older than me, I must say as an 80's child that this doesn't hold up anywhere near the other true giallo titles. And always keep in mind, ratings are numbers and never let them discourage you from seeing something you're interested in; if not just to appreciate other titles more !

schism101 Pupi Avati's ZEDER, is a different take on the undead genre, but is not a zombie film outright. Rather than being all out 'dead rising from the graves and feeding on the flesh of the living' the film takes its time to build up tension and atmosphere, that adds a genuine sense of creepiness to the films tone. A young journalist, given a typewriter as a present from his girlfriend discovers some text written on the ink ribbon, and threw this mysterious text he uncovers a past story of a scientist called Paolo Zeder, who discovered areas of terrain that can revive the dead. The journalists investigations lead him to a group of outlaw scientists who are attempting to reconstruct these experiments in the present day. Avati clearly goes for atmosphere over gore, though there are a few scenes where we see the aftermath of some murders, the film doesn't show any bodily mutilation, and instead the films builds up tension and dread through suggestion and use of sound, and characters reactions. It's a clever and excellent choice of direction that makes ZEDER stand out as an intelligent and if slightly obscure and offbeat entry into the living dead cycle.

Oslo Jargo (Bartok Kinski) *Plot/ending analyzed*This is a very un-typical horror film which makes it quite refreshing and interesting. For most of the beginning I was quite enthralled by the pacing and the effort of the protagonist to reach some sort of conclusion. The start of the film shows us a house in Italy in the early 1920's and it is haunted by some horrendous and malicious ghost who has recently killed an old hag, next comes a clairvoyant and a scientist who walk into the basement where the girl clairvoyant assumes the identity of the dead man from a previous life. Once they find the bones of the man, they find a wallet and it reveals that the man was 'Edward Zeder', an albino, lunatic-philosopher who had believed in "Kai-zons", areas which were places where death had no value, this is an ancient idea which stems from the Persians and the Greeks. Arrive in Italy in the 1970's where a struggling writer who smokes too much is using a typewriter and he finds that the ribbon has some used text upon it and he types up a few papers from what he finds and has a mystery upon his hands. He goes through the usual odds and ends in an attempt to crack the mystery of the "Kai-zons" and he visits a small village where there is a cemetery and all sorts of weird people. The end of the film, in which his girlfriend dies and he takes her to a "Kai-zon" to bring her back, is a result from the lack of his willingness to have loved a living creature while she was alive and it is quite expected when she eats his neck. This is a very good film and the director is quite capable of pushing a story of interest along. For those of you expecting a zombie film, this isn't it.