Ruptured Review: World War Dead: Rise Of The Fallen

Country of origin- UK 

Year of release- 2014/15  

Directors- Freddie Hutten-Mills, Bart Ruspoli 
Stars- Philip Barantini, Kacey Barnfield, Robert Bladen

Oh dear me, this is going to be something. This is a found footage film that follows a group of annoying and incredibly stupid documentary filmmakers who travel France to make a film about some of the mysteries of the battle of the Somme. Already this plot is simply screaming originality and creativity. Once the group arrive at the site of one of the most important turning points in the battle, strange things begin to happen, as the camera man sees some unexplained figures in the distance that quickly vanish. Later on, while the crew are filming in ‘Devil’ wood they drag the chain bound skeleton of a WW1 South African solider out of a large pond. They find a strange amulet inside the chest cavity of the skeleton, and decide to take it while leaving the skeleton unburied. As the crew are leaving the woods and heading back to their van they are attacked by a horde of flesh hungry WW1 zombie soldiers, who seem to be from both sides of the conflict which at least shows some reconciliation on their part.

I would be lying if I said I was expecting anything other than pure shit when I went into this one. Before I get into the many problems with this pile of mess, I will say that some of the make-up effects on the zombies themselves were fairly well done, and some of the cinematography wasn’t too bad. So with the positives out of the way let’s get into the negatives. The first issue and the most noticeable is the characters, a collection of moronic scum bags that frankly don’t die quick enough. The worst of the bunch is the Director played by the talentless Ray Panthaki, who comes from such a brilliant background of work such as EastEnders, and Ali G Indahouse, it’s practically Shakespeare folks.

The next issue is pretty much a general pervasive complete lack of shits given on the part of everyone involved. Everything from the script which must have been written by a five year old, and then edited by a four year old, to the plodding predictable story felt like it was pieced together without a single emotion or identifiable essence of care.

But for me the worst thing about this film is its bad taste. Now I know the shouts of hypocrite will be bellowed from the roof tops once people hear me complain about bad taste considering I generally love it, but let me explain. This film is essentially exploiting the war dead of the most horrific and devastating battle in human history, and it treats it’s exploitation of this subject with about as much finesse as a sledgehammer to the balls. And it does this on the centenary of the beginning of WW1, that decision almost transcends exploitation and becomes arrogant ignorance. I wouldn’t even encourage you to steal this film, just let it die its inevitable bargain-bin death and be forgotten. This bucket of rat shit otherwise known as a film gets a 1.5/10 from me.