WYRMWOOD: APOCALYPSE (2021)

Studio:     XYZ Films
Director:    Kiah Roache-Turner
Writer:     Kiah & Tristan Roache-Turner
Producer:  Tristan Roache-Turner, Blake Northfield
Stars:     Luke McKenzie, Shantae Barnes-Cowan, Jake Ryan, Bianca Brady, Tasia Zalar, Jay Gallagher, Nick Boshier

Review Score:

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Summary:

Amidst an undead apocalypse, a rogue soldier teams up with two pairs of siblings to take on a mad doctor and a military colonel orchestrating a gruesome conspiracy.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Siblings Barry and Brooke, the latter of whom is a hybrid human-zombie capable of telepathically controlling the undead, continue surviving in a viral apocalypse alongside sisters Maxi and Grace, whose deceased uncle Benny previously partnered with Barry and Brooke. However, Brooke suddenly loses control of her hunger and bites Grace before Barry can calm his sister with a vial of A-negative blood. Now fearing for their safety, Grace and Maxi abandon Barry and Brooke to go back on the road alone.

Corporal Rhys, whose twin brother The Captain previously battled Brooke and Barry, continues working as a deliveryman for The Colonel and The Surgeon General. Although Rhys believes he is capturing humans to be used in research for a cure to the virus, The Colonel and Surgeon General are actually part of a military conspiracy that turns humans undead so they can be ground up and turned into pills that quell viral infection.

The Colonel assigns Rhys with capturing Brooke. The Colonel adds that Rhys will have an opportunity to kill Barry, who killed Rhys’s brother. The reference photo Rhys receives includes Grace and Maxi.

Grace and Maxi both fall unconscious when Rhys incapacitates their vehicle. Rhys captures Grace and leaves Maxi behind. Upon delivering Grace to The Surgeon General, Rhys learns that Brooke’s bite transformed Grace into a telepathic hybrid too. The Colonel suspiciously insults Rhys when Rhys asks if Grace could be the key to a cure. While imprisoned, Grace witnesses The Surgeon General momentarily losing control of his body.

Maxi secretly stows away underneath Rhys’s vehicle as Rhys transports barrels containing zombies he believes are used only for fuel to a military bunker. Maxi subsequently captures Rhys and demands that he take her to her sister. Maxi asks about the reference photo. Rhys says it is a picture of terrorists. Maxi counters that Rhys belongs to the true terrorists. Rhys suddenly ejects Maxi from his vehicle and takes her prisoner.

Rhys delivers Maxi to The Colonel. As his suspicions about the military operation’s true motives mount, Rhys asks if The Colonel plans to kill Maxi. The Colonel curtly instructs Rhys to drive away. Rhys suddenly attacks The Colonel and his men, rescues Maxi, and drives away with a van in pursuit.

Maxi uses the eject function in Rhys’s vehicle to escape before The Colonel’s men capture Rhys. The Colonel ties up Rhys in a field where he is left to be encircled by zombies. Just as he is about to be devoured however, Maxi arrives with Barry and Brooke. Brooke uses her psychic power to freeze the zombies.

Barry forces Rhys to help storm The Colonel’s compound with a zombie horde controlled by Brooke. When they interrogate a doctor, Rhys learns that the pills he takes to quell the virus are actually made from pulverized humans he helped capture. Rhys explains to Barry that he didn’t know the truth behind what he was doing. Rhys angrily executes the doctor. Rhys, Barry, Brooke, and Maxi agree to storm The Colonel’s underground bunker to kill everyone involved in the project.

Rhys, Barry, Brooke, and Maxi battle their way into the bunker. The Colonel severely wounds Barry with a shotgun blast to the stomach and takes down Rhys too. Maxi ultimately recovers from her own incapacitation in time to blow off The Colonel’s head before he can kill either of the two men.

Meanwhile, The Surgeon General uses a device to control a cyborg zombie that he puppets to attack Brooke. The creature nearly kills Brooke until Grace, still held captive, uses her telepathic power to take over The Surgeon General’s body, forcing him and the creature to beat themselves to the ground. Brooke continues beating the creature with a pipe. However, The Surgeon General retrieves an electric prod that he uses to incapacitate Grace and regain control of his body.

Rhys, Barry, and Maxi regroup with Brooke, but they find Brooke lost control of her feral hunger. Brooke bites her brother before Maxi is able to calm her with a blood pack.

The Surgeon General escapes with Grace, locks everyone in the bunker, and initiates a self-destruct sequence. With Barry beginning to transform, he and Brooke elect to stay behind while Rhys and Maxi escape in a transport chute. The bunker explodes.

Rhys and Maxi follow The Surgeon General back to a lab where he uses another device to pump Grace’s fluids into his brain. The Surgeon General transforms into a powerful, sentient zombie. Rhys nearly dies in a fight with The Surgeon General, but Grace recovers in time to tear him apart with her bare hands. Grace then drinks a blood pack to stop herself from attacking Rhys. Rhys shoots The Surgeon General in his head.

Although coughing from the virus, Rhys chooses to not take the pills now that he knows what they are made of. Rhys moves to commit suicide instead, but Grace stops him. Maxi hands Rhys a pill as she encourages him to continue fighting alongside the sisters in order to get his “soul” back. Elsewhere, Barry and Brooke both emerge from the destroyed bunker as hybrid zombies.

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Review:

I didn’t remember 2014 zombie action movie “Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead” all that well prior to watching its 2021 follow-up, “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse.” But the detailed synopsis I wrote for my “Road of the Dead” review (review here) seven years earlier brought me back up to speed on the basics governing this two-film universe.

An undead apocalypse transforms Australia into a Mad Max wasteland. Macho men buffed out like “Gears of War” gunners blast, drive, and scheme their way across a savage landscape where zombies supplant gasoline as fuel and currency. Bad guys include evil military men and mad scientists. Good guys include scrappy survivors like siblings Barry and Brooke, the latter of whom becomes a hybrid human-zombie capable of telepathically commanding undead hordes to do her bidding.

Regardless of whether or not you’ve seen the first film, what’s in the preceding paragraph is more or less all that’s essential for anyone to know going into this one. “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse” catches up with Barry and Brooke as they redirect their ongoing fight toward “The Colonel” and his “Surgeon General,” who are conducting awful experiments on unwilling human captives, supposedly to find a cure for the zombie virus. Along the way, the brother and sister team up with another pair of siblings as well as a mercenary on a mission to uncover the truth behind a sinister conspiracy.

What my “Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead” review really reminded me of though, is that sometimes, a popcorn movie’s appeal can be summarized succinctly, without all the pomp and circumstance of critiquing acting, dialogue, directing, etc. At just an economic 680 words, my “Road of the Dead” coverage is up there as one of the shortest reviews I’ve ever written. It basically boils down to simply saying, “Look, this is a wild love-it-or-leave-it midnighter that makes no bones about its unapologetic desire to be a jagged-edge epic of gritty intensity, gnarly gruesomeness, and imaginative insanity.”

The same holds true for its successor. I probably could have written my “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse” review after watching only ten minutes of the movie because my initial impressions held true for the full hour and a half runtime. Like its predecessor, “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse” runs on blood and bullets, fire and noise, and comic book carnage cranked up on an amplifier whose starting volume already operates at 11. It is high-energy hullaballoo made more hectic by frantic editing, spinning drone shots, and monster-mashing montages chock full of freaks, fights, and cyborg hulks. As something some might describe as “guilty pleasure” entertainment, I enjoyed “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse” even more than “Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead” because I knew exactly what to expect and was not disappointed.

Sure, I could go through the usual motions of saying the sets look good, actors are appropriately grim and grimy without being boringly bleak about it, and a devil-may-care approach offers slick takes on the usual “Walking Dead” tropes. All that really needs to be said though is that with the vaguely campy buoyancy of “Re-Animator” and the brawl-for-all attitude of “The Road Warrior,” “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse” very quickly becomes the kind of boffo, badass B-flick for which the term “midnight movie crowd-pleaser” was invented.

My mind wasn’t in a particularly great headspace when I sat down to watch “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse.” I wasn’t even sure I could concentrate well enough to press Play. But “Apocalypse” immediately beamed my brain into a futuristic fright fantasy that completely commandeered my attention. That’s successful escapism as far as I’m concerned, and precisely what the doctor ordered, even if it’s only a momentary remedy rather than a complete cure for what ails you.

Partnering with his brother and co-writer Tristan, director Kiah Roache-Turner exhibits the same sort of vim, vigor, and verve as early Sam Raimi, but with a moderately better budget. If there’s a third installment of “Wyrmwood,” and I think there should be, I’d expect it to accordingly take an “Army of Darkness” route by being more theatrical, and possibly picked up by an established Hollywood studio. “Apocalypse” is evidence that Roache-Turner has nothing left to prove as an anarchic stylist of flashy cinematic splatter. Someone pick him up for a higher profile project already.

Review Score: 80

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