Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead

Abstract

[...]of these experiments at the hands of a maniacal dancing scientist, and set to the dulcet notes of KC and the Sunshine Band's 'Get Down Tonight', Brooke is dramatically transformed from victim to victor through quite an unusual innovation, thus providing a refreshing twist to what is often considered a genre at the edge of exhaustion. An apocalyptic harbinger, according to The Book of Revelations, 'Wormwood' is a disease-carrying star which will wipe out mankind, carrying the souls of the good to heaven and the bad to hell, and condemning those left behind on earth to endure a trial by fire. When Old-Testament warnings have materialised, and family members who once loved and cherished you are now clutching at your throat in order to rip it open and eat the contents, all bets are pretty much off. [...]within the world of a zombie apocalypse, you can pretty much get away with murder, which is essentially what Brooke and Barry manage to do.

Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead (Kiah Roache-Turner) Australia 2014

Guerilla Films

(This review contains spoilers)

The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water - the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.

-Revelations 8:10-11

When you name your debut film after an apocalyptic star which is sent by some omnipotent deity to wreak havoc upon mankind, you better have the goods to back it up, and fortunately writer/director brothers Kiah and Tristan Roache-Turner's Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead delivers. Zombie films have historically displayed a tendency to be framed within an ecopolitical narrative - think Dawn of Dead (both the 1978 original and its 2004 remake), Day of the Dead (1985), 28 Days Later (2002), and Land of the Dead (2005), for example. Like these, Wyrmwood is a film of its time which seeks to capitalise on fears regarding pollution, scientific misconduct, natural fuel shortages, and shifting power dynamics. Such themes, of course, closely parallel the Mad Max films, including the recent Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), a film to which Wyrmwood has been repeatedly compared. From the films' subtitles (Road of the Dead vs. Fury Road) and depiction of the post-apocalyptic disintegration of society, to the way in which each posits female characters as not only being integral to a new way of life but actually the key to ensuring humanity's survival, these films are indeed comparable.

The theme of resurrection may be located at the heart of both these films, but there is one marked distinction between Fury Road and Wyrmwood: where the former ultimately maintains a largely serious tone, the latter mostly takes an irreverent approach. What's more, the world is beginning in Fury Road, and follows a road in the Australian outback that ultimately leads to a promise of rejuvenation and rebirth; by contrast, Wyrmwood travels along a road of the dead. For the protagonists in Wyrmwood, the world as they knew it is ending, a fact which not only drives the narrative trajectory but also provides the basis for much of its black humour.

Within the first few high-octane and bombastic moments of the film, the tone is set. Four heavily shielded men, in suits of makeshift armour comprised of hockey pads and welding masks, run from under a garage door and into a herd of the undead in order to reclaim their truck with chains and hooks. As vibrant red blood from the exploding heads of the undead perforates the dominant greys of the opening shot's mise en scène, the figure of Benny (Leon Burchill) stands amidst the chaos. With tufts of hair protruding from either side of his hockey mask, he goads the undead with a resolute, 'come on you fucking zombies!' While nothing about this scenario sounds particularly funny, the juxtaposition of Benny's provocation, the accelerated pace interspersed with moments of slow motion and staccato movements, and the shambolic stumblings of the undead do hint at the film's comic marrow.

Set in contemporary Australia, Wyrmwood tells the story of how two adult siblings find each other once the apocalypse has struck. Having lost his wife and child to a seemingly airborne zombie virus, Barry (Jay Gallagher) embarks upon a road-trip to find his sister Brooke (Bianca Bradey), accompanied by sidekick Benny. Once reunited, the brother-andsister duo endeavour to defeat forces more sinister than the undead: renegade military powers who for some never-explained reason are kidnapping the living for scientific experiments. As a result of these experiments at the hands of a maniacal dancing scientist, and set to the dulcet notes of KC and the Sunshine Band's 'Get Down Tonight', Brooke is dramatically transformed from victim to victor through quite an unusual innovation, thus providing a refreshing twist to what is often considered a genre at the edge of exhaustion.

At the same time, Wyrmwood does have issues elsewhere pertaining to character development. For example, some characters are represented as both tokenistic and stereotypical, as is the case with the military, all of whom are depicted as antagonistic alphas. Other, more interesting characters often seem to be squandered, a symptom perhaps of the accelerated pace at which the film moves. This is the case with Chalker (Yure Covich) whose altruistic efforts essentially save Barry from himself upon the immediate death of his wife. While he initially makes for a compelling inclusion to the plot as a counter-balance to Barry's fatalistic nihilism, though, he is ultimately demoted to playing the role of a bumbling stoner. However, many of the film's minor faults are saved by its fresh take on a number of themes such as religion, a theme which is typically more notable in zombie films due to its absence.

An apocalyptic harbinger, according to The Book of Revelations, 'Wormwood' is a disease-carrying star which will wipe out mankind, carrying the souls of the good to heaven and the bad to hell, and condemning those left behind on earth to endure a trial by fire. Religion in zombie texts usually comes in the form of a survivor's quest to comprehend why the undead walk again. Protagonists therefore generally try retrospectively to uncover what we as a species have done to deserve such a plight, highlighting the jumbled uncertainty that humanity calls faith. While biblical references abound in Wyrmwood, unlike the Spanish zombie film [R.E.C.] (2007), which ultimately uses spiritualism as an engaging plot device, it is strongly implied here that divine intervention within the world of Wyrmwood is contingent upon humanity's ultimate quest to destroy itself through science.

Emblematic of this destruction, Wyrmwood employs the trope of the psychotic madscientist whose experiments on both the living and the 'dead' hint at possible explanations for why the latter are returning as flesh-crazed zombies. Seen as far back as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), the trope of the mad scientist is not necessarily a novel theme within zombie narratives. Yet the manner in which Wyrmwood invokes the trope of the mad scientist as an unhinged disco-dancing enthusiast is not only evocative of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992), but also seeks to denigrate the position of man-made science, so that it comes to seem like little more than comic buffoonery in the shadow of the greater laws of natural science. As a consequence, Wyrmwood shares a further similarity with Mad Max: Fury Road, in that it reveres the laws of Mother Nature above the dogmatism of religion and man-made science.

While eco-undertones and theological rhetoric do permeate the film in quite innovative ways, what really distinguishes this zombie film is a satisfying return to comic horror that combines absurd zombie humour with apocalyptic logic. Though punctuated with quite surprising moments of pathos, such as Frank's (Keith Agius) admission about the death of his son, for the most part Wyrmwood is outlandish without being slapstick and immensely macabre without being morbid. When Old-Testament warnings have materialised, and family members who once loved and cherished you are now clutching at your throat in order to rip it open and eat the contents, all bets are pretty much off. Thus, within the world of a zombie apocalypse, you can pretty much get away with murder, which is essentially what Brooke and Barry manage to do. Like the fallen star which seeks to root out all that is corrupt in mankind, Brooke and Barry have made their peace with the dead and now set their sights upon the evil which lives.

Sarah Cleary