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Released by: Another World Entertainment
Released on: 2010
Director: Casper Haugegaard
Cast: Marie Frohme Vanglund, Mads Althoff, Jonas Bjorn Anderson, Roxanne Tirkov
Year: 2010
The Movie:
Casper Haugegaard's 2010 movie Opstandelsen was shot for 50,000DKK, which is just under ten grand in U.S. Dollars - not a particularly big budget for any film, let alone one which relies quite heavily on makeup effects as this one does. You've got to give Haugegaard credit, however, as thanks to some clever editing and a prime location, he managed to make it work.
The film is set inside a church where Peter (Mads Althoff) is attending a funeral for a family member. He sneaks away from the service to get high and is caught in the act by his brother, Johannes (Jonas Bjorn-Andersen), who is understandably pissed off at his brother's behavior. They get into a pretty heated argument, which doesn't get any cooler when their sister, Esther (Marie Frohme Vanglund), shows up on the scene. The argument settles, Peter snorts his blow, and then heads upstairs to the church where the funeral should still be going on to witness zombies attacking his relatives. He blacks out and then regains consciousness in the basement with Joannes, Esther and a little girl they've saved from the undead hordes.
As they scout their location and try to figure out how to get out of there alive, the little girl turns and attacks her would be saviors, at which point the three siblings realize that they're going to have to put aside their differences and work together if they have a prayer at making a go of survival.
Borrowing heavily from the early zombie films of George A. Romero, this fifty minute feature is lean, mean and very fast paced. The set up takes about ten minutes or so and once that's over with we hit the ground running. Though the film is fairly short on character development it's tense and well shot and the basement of the church manages to become quiet eerie itself even before the zombies arrive. The acting isn't always perfect but for the most part our three leads do a fairly convincing job of keeping in the moment and staying in what you'd expect would be the proper frame of mind given their circumstances.
As far as the zombies themselves, the makeup effects are strong as is the gore that gets splashed out ever so liberally throughout the film. Haugegaard and company seem to have an affection and an affinity for splatter, and so much the better for the film. The gore here is all done with practical make up effects, there's no obnoxious CGI anywhere in site to take us out of the picture and it's all handed out in generous servings. So while, no, Haugegaard isn't reinventing the wheel with Opstandelsen, he has managed to craft an enjoyable and gory zombie film which wears its influences like a badge of honor. Grim, gory and most importantly entertaining, Opstandelsen exceeds its low budget expectations and turns out to be a pretty impressive production.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer looks pretty good, particularly when you consider the film's low budget shot on video roots. There was obviously quite a bit of care put into the lighting and camera set ups and that, combined with AWE's solid encoding job, has paid off. There are only minor compression artifacts in some of the darker scenes to note, aside from that the image is clean, clear and stable. Color reproduction won't set the world on fire but the film was obviously intended to have a dark and bleak look to it, something that is replicated here quite successfully.
Audio chores are handled by Danish language tracks in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo with optional subtitles provided in English and in Dutch. There's some good channel separation here and nice use of ambient noise and the film's score to build atmosphere throughout playback. The levels are well balanced and the subtitles are easy to read.
As far as the extras go, there's a commentary track from Casper Haugegaard and cinematographer Michael Panduro, but it's in Danish without any subtitles so I can't really comment on its merits. Thankfully the twenty-seven minute short film, Kaeldermennske, also directed by Haugegaard is subtitled. This story about the things that can go wrong at a wedding is a quirky and dark short film - if you dug Opstandelsen then the odds are pretty good that you'll enjoy this one too.
The disc also includes four music videos: Ohrwurm by Cephalic Carnage, I Will Return by Crack Mordaz, Get Drunk Get Mad Get Even by Helhorse and Hollow by Rotten Sound. These are moderately amusing if you're into grindcore and death metal and the videos aren't short of blood, guts or skin so they've got that going for them.
Rounding out the extras are a ten minute behind the scenes featurette in Danish with no subtitles, a teaser and a trailer for the feature, a still gallery and trailers for a few other AWE releases available on DVD. The menus for this release are presented in Danish, English and Dutch.
The Final Word:
It's not a perfect film nor is it all that original but Opstandelsen does what it does quite well and it does so efficiently and without overstaying its welcome. Gory, tense and well made considering the film's incredibly low budget, zombie film fanatics will want to check it out. AWE have done a fine job with the disc and if not all of the extras are English friendly, the presentation is, overall, quite good.
