Osombie (2012)

Action movies overuse terrorists and horror movies overuse zombies for various of reasons. Both archetype can not guarantee whether or not the quality of a story will be good, but gives a good indication of what to expect when they come into play. The violent nature, the scale of danger, and the heroes developing methods to defeat their foes. It's high body count of victim also equals the numbers of flaws and yawns the audience might give to the film.

Osombie is about NATO special forces on a secret assignment to...find the plot. Within the first twelve minutes the plot already puts off some immediate red flags. Starting off with the assassination of Osama Bin Laden is acceptable, but the film depiction is historically inaccurate. According to the film apparently Navy Seals are experts on zombie killing, Osama Bin Laden kept pet zombies to kill intruders, and created a serum that would resurrect him back into zombie form. Though the film is fictional the liberty taken with Osama Bin Laden assassination don't amount to much instead of infecting the US Osama Bin Zombie somehow swims back to Pakistan after killing a couple on a beach. That is later followed up with the introduction of our NATO special forces. At first glance the group has personality making the most killing Pakistani zombies only to go downhill quickly. Immediately after being introduce to the NATO special forces the film plays up a character death with overly heavy dramatic music. Unlike the characters, as a viewer this scene should have been saved in the second act to come across more strongly instead of a throwaway plot device. Within these twelve minutes the film has a rocky start only to reach the destination in worse condition than it began.

Each character personality is copy and pasted among the NATO special forces. All are a little comedic, all spout out expositions, all have weak characterization, and everyone of them is idiotic. Forget about serving the country what these NATO special forces needed was better training. It's hilarious that a character who's an ordinary man (whose perk allows him to be explosion resistant) thanks Call of Duty for his proficiency in armed combat has better aiming than the NATO special forces. From combat maneuvers the NATO operatives are unaware of their surrounding that every other battle scenario results in a death no longer shocking them. More questionable is not carrying a melee weapon of any sort. The only woman on the NATO special forces has the right idea bringing a sword to not only carry out quiet kills, but also a back up when ammo run up dry. This decision is made more questionable when the NATO special forces clearly know of the zombies existence (yes the 9/11 attack and government is needlessly involved in this too). Even falling into the zombie plot device trap of splitting up into groups. Leaving you speechless that a character who fight zombies with his shirt off survives longer than someone with proper equipment. I feel sorry for this fictional America in "Osombie". I would never trust these clowns with my own life yet if these clowns are the best we have serving than America is doomed.

Director John Lyde works on a low budget and does impress in some areas. His shot position was that of an expert able make little appear as grander than it actually is. Zombies carnage is in huge supplies as well as some decent practical gore effects. These effects could be taken for granted whenever blood spurts out from a gunshot it's in CG and the shoddy CG is made more evident when in the last minutes with plastic looking air vehicles. Acting leaves plenty to be desired, though that's mostly from a poor script. Most of the performances are monotone and much like the characters personality the performances are copy and pasted. Paul D. Hunt being the exception with his charismatic persona on the stale material. Giving a scene a comedic value even if it's unintentional (one of his jokes is so bad it made zombies appear). Now the biggest strike against film is the editing by Airk Thaughbaer and Kurt Hale. There's several occasion when a gunshot or sword slashing off screen would drown out conversations making it difficult to listen to even the most basic of conversations. Another issue with the editing is the usage of music being bombastic. Some scenes would have left a bigger impression without hard rock music playing. Taking the fun of seeing zombies murder is also by the power of terrible, terrible editing.

Osombie provides a huge body count at the cost of competent editing making a bad movie harder to watch. Like the zombie terrorist themselves whatever life the script could have taken is beaten to the floor with poor characterization, editing that drown out what the actors are saying, and the utter lifeless essence of providing anything resembling joy. Infuriating the viewer instead of providing some dumb fun escapism.