★★½
“Slow, slow, quick-quick, slow”
This is all a bit confusing, not least because of the three different titles under which this is known. It also doesn’t help that it is one-third of an intended trilogy. This is the first part. I had previously seen the third, The Driver starring Mark Dacascos, a while ago (not GWG, but reviewed on my other site), and the second… hasn’t yet been made. Not quite the way I’d have gone about it. To be honest, you are probably better off having watched The Driver, since that explains a lot of stuff that this doesn’t. Which may well explain the eviscerating reviews on the IMDb. Though maybe it is the director: for a long time ago, he also made Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, which remains one of the worst-ever reviewed movies on Rotten Tomatoes.
There are really only two characters here: Sylvia (Gorum) and Rose (Tantayanon). They are the sole occupants of what seems to be a villa complex in Thailand, where they spend their days lying about and making yarn pictures. If you’ve seen The Driver, in which Sylvia and Rose appear at the end, you’ll know there’s a zombie apocalypse in progress, with these walking dead being particularly attracted to sound. Hence (because the film never explains it), S+R’s use of headphones, as well as a noise-cancelling toilet. Inevitably, it can’t last, and their idyll – “Another day in paradise,” as one of them sardonically comments – is eventually interrupted by a horde of fast-moving and extremely aggressive invaders.
Part of the reason I suspect it was critically eviscerated was that it’s fifty minutes or more before any zombies show up on screen, which is not what you’d expect from the trailer. It, quite deliberately, takes its time getting there, and depicts the boredom of our heroine’s daily life. Quite easy to mistake a portrayal of tedium as tedious itself, especially given the near-total lack of dialogue here. Even I, who was probably better prepared and informed than most, found this element severely overplayed. 10-15 minutes would have been fine, and done an equally good job of establishing the necessary atmosphere, rather than occupying the bulk of the film’s running time, as it does.
Eventually, and quite abruptly, it does kick into life, and there is an adequate amount of mayhem as the ladies realize their location has become untenable. It’s mostly close-combat, and in another interesting twist, the zombies are afraid of water (perhaps suggesting the disease here is akin to rabies?), something which can be used to humanity’s advantage. That said, it’s still not what I’d consider an acceptable payoff for the long lead-up, in which the sole point of note is probably some significant lesbian canoodling between Rose and Sylvia. This likely doesn’t count as enough, and as a standalone movie, falls short of satisfying. It might have worked as an episode of a long-running TV series, and is certainly different from your typical zombie film. Different, however, is not necessarily the same as good.
Dir: Wych Kaosayananda
Star: Milena Gorum, Alice Tantayanon, Brian Migliore
a.k.a. Two of Us or Dead Earth