Dead Set (2008)
Review by Scott Lefebvre
I usually take recommendations with a healthy dose of skepticism. The reason for this is that I have often been misled. Too often I’ve had something recommended to me and upon following through found the recommendation to be excessive in comparison to the merits of the actual experience.
Another drawback of having a particularly refined critical sense is that people ask what my opinion is on something seemingly solely for the reason of telling me what their opinion is. The problem with this is that if I wanted to know what their opinion was I would have asked them. And if I do ask someone what their opinion is it’s because I’m genuinely interested in their opinion rather than just looking for an excuse to express my opinion.
This being said, I was surprised when two of my friends from the horror convention circuit asked me if I had seen the U.K. television mini-series Dead Set on the same day. I’m used to politely suffering the opinions of convention-goers about the latest wide-theatrical release horror genre movie. They tell me it’s good, but I know that it’s not, and I have no intention of seeing the film based on their recommendation. But when two people who I know fairly well, two people who generally agree with my opinions, recommend the same thing on the same day, it’s hard to ignore the recommendation, especially when one of them says they have a spare copy I can have for my viewing pleasure.
Thankfully, my friends are the kind of people that won’t tell you anything more than you need to know about a given recommendation. They don’t give you a synopsis unless you ask for one, and they don’t praise anything so excessively that the actual experience doesn’t live up to the recommendation.
So I was going in blind, which is the best way to see a great horror film – to have no idea what you’re in for and to be completely blind-sided by the experience. If you haven’t heard of Dead Set yet, stop reading, go out and get a copy and then come back to read the rest of the review. Trust me. You’ll thank me.
But if you’re reading this, then you’re probably not going to stop reading when I warned you to.
You want to know a little more before you expend the effort to go out and find this mysterious movie (it’s currently not available in the U.S., only in the U.K.) and I really don’t blame you, but now I’m going to tell you about it. There will be a synopsis of sorts, but I’ll avoid spoilers as much as there are any spoilers in this kind of film. You’ve been warned.
Zombies. Maybe you love them. Maybe you hate them. Maybe you don’t care either way. If you love zombies, and I love zombies, then you probably care about zombie movies. You’ve probably seen George Romero‘s Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead, as well as Fulci’s Zombie and Tom Savini’s 1990 re-make of Night of the Living Dead and Zack Snyder’s oft-debated 2004 adaptation of Dawn of the Dead and Shaun of the Dead. In brief, you probably have an opinion about zombies.
The one line recommendation I’ve been giving people for Dead Set is “Fast zombies done right”.
Most self-respecting George Romero zombie purists had a violent visceral negative reaction to Zack Snyder’s sprinting zombies. Not that it’s going to affect your opinion, but I didn’t mind the reboot of the zombie concept. My principal problem with the 2004 Dawn was that it became a character piece about a bunch of generally unlikable people portrayed by mostly unconvincing actors, stuck in a mall, book-ended by respectably executed zombie apocalypse scenes.
Dead Set could have easily suffered the same fate.
We begin with the cast and crew of a reality TV show in a set securely sealed off from the outside world and the studio producing the broadcast when the zombie Armageddon occurs. A crowd has gathered to be spectators at the latest eviction of a cast member as friends and family of the cast and crew and employees make their way to the event. On their way in, these outside individuals encounter bitten or deceased and revived individuals (I hesitate to use the term “infected” because of the comparison to 28 Days Later, Resident Evil and, most recently, REC [review] and Quarantine [review]).After their encounters the individuals continue to rush towards the studio, bringing the zombie apocalypse to the event. The epidemic quickly reaches epidemic proportions due to the speed of the zombies and the cast of characters is quickly whittled down to a few survivors in the studio and the cast of the show to whom isolation has become awkwardly habitual.
The remainder of the shows plays out as the survivors from the studio and the survivors from the show move through the environment of the studio and the set, staying mostly in the set, with brief forays into the outside world.
The scope of the story is opened up a little, avoiding the primary downfall of Dawn of the Dead (2004) by following the parallel storyline of the love interest of the female lead and his journey to reach the studio after he discovers, due to a live feed broadcasting from the studio, that the object of his desire continues to exist in a non-simplified state.
In my opinion, the characters of Kelly (Jaime Winstone) and Patrick (Andy Nyman) carry the series and the show would not have been executed as well without her frantic intensity and his completely believable self-centered hostility.
As far as technical execution, the direction, sound design, light design, and set design were all completely complimentary to the show. There is nothing new in the realm of the technical execution of horror-genre film-making, but also there aren’t any glaring inconsistencies that draw negative attention to themselves by jerking you out of the imaginary reality of the film. The practical special effects, such as zombie make-up and injury illusions were well-executed and mixed well with the selective use of digital blood spray which would have gone unnoticed to most untrained viewers.
I can’t speak to the DVD special features since I had been given a generic copy of the show without any of the special features mentioned on the one disc DVD released in 2008. For that matter, I think the series may not have been released in the United States at the time I’m writing this review.
And I’ve saved the last for last.
Finally, I get the ending I’ve always wanted out of a zombie-themed film or, rather, TV show…but you’ll have to see it yourself to find out what it is!
Buy on Amazon
Or find on Amazon.co.uk!
Watch the trailer:
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