Directed by: Joe Chien

Starring: Andy On, Jessica Cambensy, Michael Wong, Terence Yin, Jack Kao

Set in an unspecified city, a zombie plague is suddenly rampaging through the populace, affecting the residents just as a SWAT team prepare to do a drugs raid. As various factions try to survive the onslaught of flesh-hungry zombies, it becomes a case of kill or be killed...

Anyone who has seen Zombie 108 will know what to expect in tone from this loose sequel. But for the uninitiated this is an incredibly tasteless, entertaining and exploitative gore fest which needs to be seen to be believed.

At first, it appears one of the producers watched Gareth Evans' The Raid and thought "that was great, but it could do with a couple hundred zombies rampaging through the corridors". In amongst that there is a lot of carnage featuring the other residents, including a pretty courier, some drug dealers, a rap star and his brother, and a chemistry teacher celebrating his daughter's eighteenth birthday.

As with a lot of these sorts of films, there is some fun to be had in trying to figure out who is going to be chomped next. Zombie Fight Club has no qualms in killing off the most sympathetic characters, either, meaning you get wrong-footed quite often. A handful of characters do make it through most of the film, however, ensuring that the film doesn't devolve into a series of vignettes. 

The most interesting of these characters is the Chemistry teacher, who we meet hosting a birthday party for his daughter and learning that one of her friends has a crush on him. We see straight away that he has a cruel streak to him as he crushes a small spider with his thumb, a smile on his face as he does so. This particular storyline lurches into a nasty home invasion trope before taking the film in a completely different direction.

There is a lot of CGI gore in the film, as well as some practical fx and make-up designs. Given the shear amount of blood and guts on show, its not surprising that there is so much CGI blood being used, although a bit more money thrown at the fx wouldn't have hurt. Some of the editing could have been better handled as some scenes literally lurch into each other with zombies suddenly appearing from nowhere. 

Verdict:

There has been a trend of late to make zombie movies which hardly feature any zombies. Zombie Fight Club redresses the balance with balls to the wall carnage throughout. At times cheesy, exploitative and messy, this is also hugely entertainingand should win over the after-pub crowd.

7 out of 10 (MikeOutWest)