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Dead Creatures (2001)

Dir: Andrew Parkinson

London, now.
A group of seemingly-normal young women, Ann (Antonia Beamish), Jo (Beverley Wilson), Fran (Eva Fontaine), Zoë (Fiona Carr) and their slowly dying mentor Alison (Lindsay Clarke) have contracted a degenerative illness that forces them to murder and feed on human flesh to arrest the symptoms and postpone the rotting corruption that their bodies fall into near death.

Adjusting to this terrible existence the women move from one dingy bed-sit and rundown flat to another to stay ahead of any Police attention.
Wherever possible they try to live together and offer each other support in finding food and in keeping each other’s spirits up.
Talk of their old life, sex, the future and what, if any, point there is to carrying on with their existence are the main topics of conversation over the latest fresh kill.

Meanwhile a driven man named Reece (Brendan Gregory) is on the trail of the ‘cannibals’ and kidnaps and tortures anyone who he thinks can help find his missing Daughter whom he thinks the strange ‘creatures’ (of both sexes) have knowledge of.

One day a newly infected young girl named Sian (Anna Swift), bitten by a ruthless male ‘cannibal’ named Christian (Bart Ruspoli) who prays on his dates, is discovered by Jo and is brought into the increasingly fragile group…..

 

Shot almost entirely on 35mm film this second feature by writer/director Andrew Parkinson (following 98’s “I, Zombie”) both looks and sounds professional on the technical side but thankfully also delivers in presenting another effective look at flesh eaters from a very different standpoint.

We are literally thrown into the picture without any build-up, plot re-cap or even a basic idea on what exactly is going on as we fall into the bloodied (but lovely) laps of our main characters as they literally carve out an existence for themselves.
There's very little talk between the women (and even less guilt shown) about the murders and the morality of how they get their food to survive and this is unsettling at first as dripping meat and murders happen without any kind of moral compass being brought in to help us on our journey.
The film itself takes the attitude of it's main characters as well by giving us almost nothing in the way of empathy for the dead (who are all faceless strangers), the attitude is they have to eat, this is what they eat, this is how they get it and that's that.

The women see no choice so what must be must be. Pity or conscience have no place here even when one of the victims Jo kills was a man rushing over to help her as she pretends to be unconscious on the ground. These are women as harsh as the lives they now lead.
The fact that their friend Alison has degenerated so much she can hardly move and is covered from head to foot in weeping. bloody sores and welts would also bring home to them the future for theselves that they ust strive to delay no matter what the cost.
Such a stance helps to put the viewer in the general mindset of the women but makes for pretty uncomfortable viewing as we see victim after victim, of both sexes, murdered and consumed with as much thought about the consequences as buying a pork pie and eating it. But perhaps that's the point?

The scenes with Reece are kept totally separate from the rest of the film (bar the crossing over of one character) until right near the end, and as such are a hit and miss aspect of the movie as these repetitive sequences take you away from the more interesting main plot featuring the women.
These scenes do have a satisfactory payoff though which tragically joins up the stories and bring us full circle. There are no answers, there are no solutions, there is no peace for anyone.

The status and social awareness concerning the infected is very shadowy. Zoë mentions to Sian rumours of others like them, and those with links to the infected, vanishing (which may well simply be the work we see Reece doing) and mention of possible Police action, detention centres and medical research. But none of this is shown to be the truth or not and nothing is actually shown past this talk. Again we are utterly in the heads of the women and as such know not much more than them.

As we join the women roughly 6 months to a year into their infection they have already come to accept their situation (and given the horrors of that situation this acceptance that the viewer is thrust into seems strange and uncomfortable) but with Sian there seems rather to much haste in her coming to terms with her fate, as unlike the others we are party to her pre-infection existence. Certainly more time could have been spent on seeing such a young girl face the facts she has a deadly virus and that she must murder and eat her fellow Londoners to exist.

It’s a matter of fact attitude that the entire film takes, not only from the characters point of view but also as far as the cannibalism goes. And it gives the film it’s unique feeling of grotesque reality not seen in any other movie in the cannibal sub-genre (the director seems to consider them Zombies but I see no evidence of them being anything but live people infected with a virus, who look perfectly normal until the infection kicks in for the final stages) .
The first time for example dismembered limbs are seen the camera suddenly introduces them with no build up or warning and then pans over them as if they are last nights dirty dishes. This of course is all they are really, and the point is a strong one well made.
In fact all the grotesque sights in the movie are handled as what they are to those they effect…just normal everyday reality.
At one point we see Christian patch up a long and nasty gash in his stomach with duct tape with nothing but slight annoyance on his face, we see human meat being picked at by the women like it was a bowl of crisps and one exceptionally strong moment of horrid reality is a ’lets get the job done’ cutting open and eating of a woman's torso, as the women share a communal meal on the floor of their dingy flat.

The other gore moments involve Reece and his interrogation and later disposal of those he kidnaps.
He dispatches them with a bolt gun through the head, which adds some nasty moments (though the bolt seems too slow and lacks any real skull cracking punch unfortunately) and the FX (and shock) highpoint is when Reece calmly dismembers a body on a table where we are shown in graphic detail him (with truly unpleasant sound FX to match the model work) slowly sawing off the corpse’s head.
Most of the gore (and the large quantities of blood in general) are shown with dim uplighting and at strategic angles to enhance the generally excellent effects work (by Paul Hyett
And his crew) and all this work is kept firmly routed in reality.
There are no theatrically spurting wounds of splats of blood hitting faces with cartoon sound effects, which would simply scream out the fact they are fantasy, gore fan-boy effects (take note the makers of “Live Feed”) and as such the gore is far more effective and unsettling.

Aside from the professional looking picture and cinematography (by Jason Shepherd) another plus “Dead Creatures” has over most other Indy horror films is the quality of acting.
No one gives a bad performance, all are at least well above average for this kind of films and in the case of Antonia Beamish as the ‘live fast because we are definitely dying young’ Ann and Beverley Wilson as the more grounded Jo we have two exceptional performances.

The entire enterprise is scored by the busy Andrew Parkinson with a suitably minimalist and highly atmospheric score that matches the bleakness and world weary feel of the film and all in all, despite a few misgivings as stated above, this is a fine, well made and acted and pretty damn unique cannibal/zombie film that shows just how good British Horror in the 21st century can be when passion and care for the project, (be it a low, low budget film like this or “The Last Horror Movie”, or something more budgetary substantial like “Severance”, “Dog Soldiers” or “ The Descent” ) is there for all to see.
It may not be to all tastes given the dialogue heavy, gritty realism, stance the movie takes, but if you are looking for something different that manages to be intelligent while still delivering the blood and gore, “Dead Creatures” is certainly worth your time.