Zombie 108 – A Taiwanese First

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When a Japanese nuclear disaster mutates a Flu like virus into something deadly, an apocalyptic curse of the undead is unleashed upon the world. In Taipei the government try and contain the outbreak with quarantine areas, controlled by the heavily armed police force. Unfortunately the areas of quarantine are already controlled by mafia gangs and fighting occurs between the police and the gangs until survival forces them to work together.

Using the plague as a cover, a sadistic murderer snatches female victims to chain and imprison in his basement, using them for sexual deviance and sick torture, including Linda, who was just trying to flee the city with her daughter.

Joe Chien directs Taiwan’s first ever zombie film, as well as writing it and starring as the sadist murderer. Completely fan funded, with over 900 producers, is also somewhat of a cinematic first, especially in the Asian film world.

Having never seen any type of Taiwanese film before, I was especially excited to see how stories are portrayed in other cultures. What I discovered was perverse, gory, complicated story telling.

It appears the tales of the police vs. Mafia, and Murderer parts of the story are not linked and its almost as if two different films have been tacked together. At times, and a fair few of them, the story is virtually impossible to follow, with characters thrown in randomly, that have nothing to do with anything

That said…The production values, camera shots, and zombie make up is relatively good, and the acting is not to bad with Chien himself playing the murderer and model Yvonne Yao as Linda, but that is it.

Zombie 108 comes across as an excuse to portray graphic scenes of abuse and rape on screen, and write in such a misogynistic way, that you need to add the odd zombie in to get it allowed. Whilst traditional style zombies are ok, the film can be very disturbing. Some people out there wont be bothered by excessive scenes of female torture, and they should enjoy the film. I myself did not.

Zombie 108 cannot be recommended by me purely because the rape and torture of woman doesn’t have to be in the film. Is this a zombie film? or is this a torture film?

I’m not sure even Chien himself can work out the chaos he has created.

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