Bio Zombie (aka Sun faa sau si) (1998)

Bio Zombie (aka Sun faa sau si) (1998)

6/10

This is Hong Kong's version of zombies in a mall. There are some similarities to Romero's "Dawn of the Dead", but first person shooter videos games have a stronger influence on this film.

Woody Invincible and Crazy Bee run a VCD (cheap bootleg video CDs of movies) store. They spend a lot of time trying to get the attentions of two girls that work at the beauty salon, Jelly and Rolls. Those are the girls' names, not the store's. The guys spend most of their time goofing off and annoying just about everyone.

While they proceed with their shenanigans, an underworld transaction for bio-weapons takes place. As you can imagine, things do not go well. One thug gets away from the carnage with a flask of the bio-agent, only to get hit by the car driven by Woody and Bee. They graciously give him a drink of the bio-agent (thinking it is soda) before he dies, then stick him in the trunk for the time being. They go back to the mall's enclosed, underground parking lot.

The duo of Invincible Crazy (could be a good band name) go about introducing us to the rest of the important characters. There is a waiter at the sushi shop, a security guard, and Mr. and Mrs. Kui, who run a semi-legitimate electronics shop.

At this point the zombie breaks out of the trunk and starts to munch on people. From here on out the film is a basic zombie movie, although with more humor than most. There is also a nice bit of Hong Kong flair to the atmosphere. There are screens that summarize the characters like a video game, with stats like 'Power', {astrological} 'Sign', 'Idol' (Hello Kitty?), and 'Sex Drive'.

The film takes a while to get started and even after the action starts there are long lulls in the action. Invincible and Crazy provide a good bit of humor, though they also spend a lot of time acting like jerks. The zombies are fairly well done, but nothing special.

The film looks good, the audio is decent, and the music is average. There is violence and gore. The practical FX are average for a lower budget film. The dialogue is often very odd, probably due to translation problems. Or the writer was on drugs when he wrote the dialogue, your choice.

Not a bad zombie film, and there are a lot of humorous parts, but it suffers from long periods of dialogue, much of it not leading anywhere. The action parts are good but do not get started until around the halfway mark. I would suggest a rent for its different flavor, but would hold off on buying until you have seen it.

*** SPOILERS ***

At the end we find out the zombies are taking over the world.

Nice scene of zombie being served sushi by a zombie chef.

Some fun bits where the movie starts to act like a video game, including messages like "Reload" popping up on the screen.

*** SPOILERS ***