Are you a fan of the gore, blood, and violence included in zombie movies? Then we have a real treat in store for you today. This Australian horror film is, in my opinion, underappreciated. There’s a lot of violence in this film, from people being beheaded to individuals cutting off their own hands — it’s 90 minutes of pure gore. Put your seatbelts on because you are all in for a wild trip.
Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead, directed by Kiah Roache-Turner and starring Jay Gallagher, Bianca Bradey, Leon Burchill, Keith Agius, BerynnSchwerdt, and Luke McKenzie, is a 2014 Australian action-horror film directed by Kiah Roache-Turner and starring Jay Gallagher, Bianca Bradey, Leon Burchill, Keith Agius, Berynn The storey follows a mechanic who is attacked by zombie hordes.
Turner was Roache’s first film, and it premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 19, 2014. We’ll dive right into the realm of zombies as the planet’s population is transformed into brain-dead, flesh-eating creatures who have forgotten their human existence.
A Zombie Apocalypse – Wyrmwood Road Of The Dead (2014)
The film follows mechanic Barry, his wife Annie, and their daughter Meganne as they live in the Australian outback quietly. During a meteor shower, Barry’s sister Brooke is attacked by her model and assistant, who have turned into zombies, at her Bulla, Victoria studio. She phones Barry and tells him he needs to get out of town.
He, Annie, and Meganne put on gas masks and race to the family car to escape but it doesn’t last too long. Soon Meganne and Annie become sick and zombify after removing their gas masks, and Barry is forced to kill them with a nailgun. Before he can murder himself, he runs out of nails and in the end, falls unconscious after a heart-breaking ordeal.
When Barry tries to kill himself with Chalker’s gun, which belongs to another survivor, he is stopped and knocked out. Barry ultimately asks Chalker to take him to Brooke’s studio, oblivious to the fact that she is being kept hostage by a paramilitary team in the back of a truck that serves as a mobile lab for mad scientific doctors.
The doctor keeps performing experiments of many kinds on the multiple zombies that were held captive in that truck. Brooke however, does not turn into a zombie and instead, gains the power to control zombies telepathically instead.
The scenes in the lab are positively terrifying and you will probably wince when the doctor cuts off his own hand to avoid the zombie infection because one of them bit off a couple of his fingers.
When Chalker’s truck breaks down, they must continue on foot, where they are unintentionally killed by a survivor named Benny. Chalker’s role in the film was originally intended to be that of Barry’s sidekick.
However, the actor who played him left in the middle of the production to do a play. As a result, Benny got the majority of his lines, and the character was killed off just five minutes after first appearing on television.
After having to execute their sick brother, Benny and Barry form a partnership and stumble upon a garage run by Frank and his helper. According to Frank, all flammable liquids have become worthless. However, the crew realises that zombie breath and blood are flammable and devises a zombie-powered engine as a result. Frank’s assistant becomes sick and is used as fuel during their escape.
Their escape is littered with zombie bodies and blood, but things aren’t looking up for them. According to Barry, Benny, and Frank, zombies quit inhaling combustible gas at night, allowing them to move faster.
And as they spend the night in the truck, Frank claims that the zombies are the consequence of a meteor shower; according to the Bible, a star named Wyrmwood has fallen, turning a portion of the world bitter.
Barry sets the truck’s compressor on fire by catching a zombie on fire after waking up from a nightmare. Frank is bitten while putting out the fire and asks Barry to shoot him, which Barry does because this is mercy in a zombie-infested world. The next day, paramilitaries in an electric-powered truck confront Barry and Benny.
Coincidentally, turns out that Brooke was inside the truck that was being driven by the paramilitary and she is finally reunited with her brother.After the troops kill the zombie that is powering Barry’s truck, it stalls. Benny is wounded in the stomach while waiting for Brooke to bring them a zombie so that they can start up the truck again.
When the troops pull over to take care of Benny, the troops catch up with them and overpower them. When the troops decapitate Brooke, her head will be brought to their higher officer.
Benny sacrifices himself to transform into a zombie so Brooke can control him and overwhelm the troops, while Barry prepares to kill them all in an explosion. He kills two of the three troops, but the captain shoots Brooke in the chest and kills her. He then prepares to kill Barry and tells him that all of this was for the greater good.
Barry challenges the captain to a fistfight when he pulls his pistol, but he is shot. After shooting a zombie, the captain’s face is coated with blood, and Barry fires his head with matches. Brooke awakens and commands a horde of zombies to eat the captain alive before Barry can shoot him. Incidentally, during filming, a major accident nearly killed Bianca Bradey’s stunt double when she misjudged her jump from the back of the lab truck to the zombie truck’s bonnet and was nearly driven over. Fortunately, she was uninjured.
When Barry and Brooke go out on the road, they come upon another lab car for the second time. When the soldiers refuse to tell them what they have in the back of the vehicle, Brooke orders a new bunch of zombies to strike and tear them apart.
One of the mazes during the 2015 Fright Nights event at Warner Brothers Movie World on the Gold Coast, Queensland, was inspired by the film. Funnily enough, because they only worked on weekends, the picture took four years to complete.
Wyrmwood succeeds where so many others have failed because it grasps the essence of a zombie film and gets right to work. The plot is fast-paced, nasty, and brutal, yet it contains enough original ideas, such as zombies as a source of fuel, to set it apart from the shambling hordes of mediocrity.
The character development is just enough to make you understand and sympathise with the survivors without detracting from or slowing down the plot. In addition, the film’s pitch-perfect performances from the indie ensemble and director Kiah Roache-outstanding Turner’s visual flair raise the film much above its astonishingly modest budget of $160,000.
The film achieves its objective of generating a euphoric, visceral experience that hits all the proper notes for a classic post-apocalyptic zombie thrill ride, such as handcrafted armour, a tricked-out war vehicle, and exploding brains, among other things. It also has outstanding cinematography, which spans from drab, washed-out sequences to others exploding with vibrant colour, all of which contribute to the film’s distinct flavour. Overall, a fantastic picture that deserves cult classic status and illustrates that there is still life in the rotten core of the zombie subgenre.
Zombie Virus Asteroid & Hybrid zombie (Brooke)
One of the primary questions you could have after seeing this film is, “Where did the zombies come from?” Well, according to Frank, one of the movie’s protagonists, they came from a meteor shower. Asteroids fell onto the Earth and from the very next day, the zombies showed up.
Frank tells quite the story and says that this apocalyptic event was pre-written in the bible where something terrible would come upon the Earth, causing judgement day. He also goes on to say that the good ones will go to heaven while the bad ones will go to hell but people like them who are in the middle, will be forced to face trial by fire and that is exactly what this zombie plague was.
In the film, the infection and zombieification are propagated in two different methods. To begin with, the virus spreads by gas in the air, as evidenced by the fact that everyone escaping wears a mask to avoid contracting the infection. It is arguably the green gas that the zombies expel from their mouths that passes on the pathogen.
The second way is the more traditional way of turning people into zombies which is, by biting peoples heads off. A bite from a zombie will turn you into one. However, there is a twist, it turns out that all of the people with A- blood group are immune from the zombie virus.
We’ve finally arrived at the hybrid zombie. The second most pressing concern is how Brooke will be able to manage zombies. We watch as Brooke is kidnapped by paramilitaries and brought away by a crazy doctor for experiments. Her blood is taken and she is constantly injected with some serum as she is kept chained and gagged. During experimentation she realizes that if she concentrates hard enough, she can move the hands of the zombie in front of her as her vision turns red. In fact, she uses her newly acquired zombie controlling ability to kill the doctor and escape from the truck. At the end of the movie, it is Brooke and her ability to control the undead that saves the day.
The zombies in the film are filthy and revolting, making them the best on-screen zombies we’ve seen in a long time. The special effects are spectacular, especially when you take into account the low budget of the movie. Visually, the movie is brutal and the zombies are extremely scary and give the effect that was intended.
Is There Going To Be Wyrmwood 2?
Did the gore, vileness, and blood make you desire more? Well, it appears that your prayers have been heard, and there will undoubtedly be a sequel. The sequel is going to be another zombie action adventure film and the people involved in its production believe that this one is even better than the last.
XYZ Film is offering the sequel, Wyrmwood: Apocalypse, to possible distributors at the American Film Market six years later. In 2022, XYZ will release Wyrmwood: Apocalypse on their own in the United States. Wyrmwood: Apocalypse is a zombie-infested Australian wasteland thriller written by Kiah and his brother Tristan Roache-Turner.
It follows Rhys, a soldier who has committed his life to locating and capturing survivors for the Surgeon General in the hopes of discovering a cure. Rhys joins forces with a group of superhuman survivors to prevent a young woman from being killed in a military experiment. Shantae Barnes-Cowan, Bianca Bradey, TasiaZalar, Jake Ryan, Nicholas Boshier, and Jay Gallagher star in the film.
The film will be released first in Australia, so folks in the rest of the globe will have to wait a bit longer until it reaches us from down under. I will be keeping an eye out for this one as it hits theatres.
Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead is a graphically violent film. The zombies are fantastic, the action is fast-paced, and the cast of people dons “armour” that seems like it belongs in The Road Warrior. When you blend the graphics with the story, you get something truly unique. The story’s clichés fade away, and you get the impression you’re witnessing a different kind of zombie film.
This movie is definitely worth a watch and once you have watched it, you will definitely take a liking to it. I would go as far as to say that it deserves cult classic status because of how it handles a largely overdone genre with an interesting twist and focus on the characters. This one could have been your regular run of the mill zombie movie but trust me, it is so much more than that.