Zombi 2 (1979) Review

Written by: Gardenofstone10   

I love all zombie movies but this is one that I have never seen before in my life.  So, when I stumbled across a copy at Borders, I knew I had to pick it up because I've heard nothing but good.  This movie is actually called Zombie, but because the italian translation of Dawn of the Dead was Zombi, this one had to put 2 next to it, but is not a sequel to anything. 

We start our movie off somewhere not in America with a guy shooting someone with a white sheet over their head...in the head.  Beautiful brain matter.  From there, a ship sails into New York Harbor passing by all of our favorite monuments.  Then, once the police examine this empty ship, our police friend's neck becomes lunch for our fat zombie friend. 

To skip ahead a half hour, our group of friends looking to find a lost island where this girls father goes missing, take a boat to the island.  To stop a scuba dive to get some sweet pictures, one of the ladies gets underwater attacked by a zombie, who later wrestles a shark.  It's a pretty badass scene, especially that it actually took place underwater.  The zombies in this movie look a lot more realistic than any other zombies of this time.  Even more so than from my favorite movie, Dawn of the Dead. 

Then we are taken to what I can only presume is the island where there are people living there and a couple white people for medical reasons.  A zombie totally breaks into this girls room and we get to see a very slow and up close eye gouging and it was probably the coolest thing I've seen in a long while.  Reminds me of something i'd see in J-horror as opposed to Italian horror that this is. 

The opening scene of the movie takes place again at about 50 minutes in, and the body in the sheet is thrown into a pit with other bodies in a pit, so obviously this island is hiding something.  Of course, I know it's a zombie outbreak, but the movie doesn't want me to know that. 

A factor of this movie that really sticks out to me and shows me the seriousness of the movie, the zombies eyes are closed.  Post Mortem eyes are a hard thing to produce for the screen as most zombie movies just have alive eyes.  It's also scarier when their eyes are closed because you don't know if they can see you or not.  It's amazing that they did this in the movie and I hope future zombie directors see this and utilize it. 

As our two survivors are finding their way home on the boat, they hear about how there is a national state of emergency with a zombie outbreak.  We are then taken to the Brooklyn Bridge where zombies are flooding the bridge.  LOL, because the budget wasn't high enough, they couldn't shut down traffic so there were cars going everywhere on the bridge.   

With the movie over, we are left with what many consider a masterpiece, I included.  Let's again point out the strengths of this movie, one by one.

First, we get a zombie origin story.  All too often in our zombie movies we just come across zombies with no lead as to where or what caused this outbreak.  So the source, Spanish settlers brought Christianity to a slavery infested island and it mixed to form Voodoo that brought the dead back to life.  Of course, it was really a disease or a curse if you will. 

Second, the zombies are realistic.  These zombies were all buried underground hence having a lot of dirt on them.  We also have them with their eyes closed.  A zombie hungers for the flesh and that's all.  They don't have any other senses so they really nailed this one head on, kudos to the creators. 

Third, the gore level.  Year: 1979.  Not many movies have hit America at this time with a lot of gore.  People were grossed out by The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.  Great movie, yes, but the gore levels were very minimum for being a massacre movie.  This one, we get to see brains, skin ripped apart, eye balls slowly gouged out of socket, blood splatter, everything to make up a delicious Thanksgiving Day dinner. 

There you have it, my two cents on a notorious Zombie movie, Zombie.  Or Zombi 2 if you live in Italy.  So grab a bowl of spaghetti and watch this Italian classic.  Until next time, children, be kind to your neighbors, don't eat them too fast!

Peace