Use of Tropes: Zombies Reborn

This is a 2012 Chinese film directed by Xia Yong (though Amazon lists the director as Xіа Wеі) and is one of the crop of fairly poor Chinese films that are filtering through at the moment in the “on Demand” feeding frenzy, as platforms search out films to add to their rosta. That said I was marginally entertained and it did use vampire tropes.

In fact, I did consider just listing it as a vampire film as we have the returned dead and there are fangs but, in this case, the overall name zombie seemed accurate (in, kind of, a voudon rather than Romero sense). Indeed, the film's subtitles use the term ghost, rather than anything else (due to the word gui translating to ghost).

stealing drugs

So, as the film starts, hospital guards are either sleeping or distracted and certainly not watching the CCTV. In the drugs store a man in pyjamas is stealing drugs – when he looks to camera, he appears to have a red glowing eye and this occurs just as a guard wakes and spots him. The guards contact Captain Lin who is reluctant to go to the police due to the lapse actions of his men. They realise that all the drugs stored on the shelf hit are expired ones – though before the expired medications were stored there the shelf was used for neurology drugs.

Lanlan

Lanlan is watching horror films on her laptop. When she falls asleep, she has nightmares and wakes up with a scream, much to the chagrin of her roommate. The roommate asks about her date with Jiang Feng but the couple have fallen out. We cut to the boyfriend, playing basketball and posing for the watching girls. He tries a slam dunk, grabs the hoop and the whole structure falls crushing him. Lanlan is called to the hospital (Captain Lin is her uncle) and is taken to the morgue. She is left there, as the drug thieves are back and Lin is called away, and opens the draw Jiang Feng is supposed to be in – its empty.

dog's blood

She thinks she sees him and chases after a pair in pyjamas running out of the hospital. They get in a car and she is hit by a falling overhead electrical cable and electrocuted. Back in the hospital she is pronounced dead and taken to the morgue. Two corpses uncover themselves and steal her body. The guards are convinced the thieves are restless dead and have managed to get dogs’ blood and infant urine to combat them. These are used within Chinese vampire films often but, in this case, prove useless. The police now get involved.

fangs

What they then see (on CCTV footage) is that at least one of the corpses has fangs. Lanlan has been taken to a lab to undergo the same procedure the other dead have been through – except she isn’t actually dead, just appearing so. The crux of the story is that a disgraced doctor (and genius) is searching for a method of regeneration to save his preserved, dead girlfriend. He has used snake (and lizard) DNA (?) to regenerate three corpses so far. The side effects have been developing fangs (and venom) and shedding skin (we also see a vertical set of additional eyelids at one point, causing an elliptical eye effect).

control unit

The additional issue is that the dead might be animate but they have no memory, or so he believes. He has given them artificial eyes (hence the red) that also allow him to control them by remote and this mitigates their violent tendencies, which the animal DNA has given them. This is why zombie fits, they are basically resuscitated automatons controlled by their creator (through science, not magic). Control comes via a holographic interface to a computer. However, Lanlan is special as she was alive when the serum was administered and he is trying to mitigate the side effects. He also realises that she can communicate with the others (when Jiang Feng hears her call and spontaneously awakens to save her).

the animate dead

There isn’t really anything else to cover trope wise. These are reanimated corpses that can follow instruction (we see them steal the wrong items as they are told to steal from a specific shelf, but also see them drive) but have a tendency to violence. The fangs come from the snake DNA and we do see a bite – but it is aggressive and not for feeding (indeed we see them being fed, but not what with, and they are fed by syringe whilst in dormant state). However, the idea of animate dead, with fangs and the attempt to use dogs’ blood and infant urine are all vampire tropes (at least, with the apotropaic substances from the Chinese tradition) and the use of apotropaic measures indicates a belief in vampires.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK