A young man has been stuck in an elevator for what only seemed like
minutes, but the world he returns to is not the one he left: The whole
city seems to be totally deserted, and there are traces of violence
everywhere. Eventually, the young man finds a corpse, horribly mutilated,
but what's worse, the corpse comes back to life, as a zombie. And after a
short while, our hero runs into other zombies as well, and they seem to be
hell-bent on killing him and eating him up. Cornered by the zombies, the
young man is only just saved by a man with a gun. The two of them try to
make it to a save haven, wherever that may be, and along the way, pick up
another guy and a woman - both of whom soon fall prey to the zombies
though. Eventually, our two heroes find a car and continue their escape to
god-knows-where on wheels, until a (clearly not zombified) hitchhiker
blocks their way. They want to give him a ride, but the hitchhiker has
other ideas, shooting the man with the gun dead with his shotgun, then
chasing the young man away ... and finally, the young man too becomes a
victim of the zombies ... The tried and true carnivorous
zombie-narrative, stripped to the bone: No explanation (which is just
as well, as explanations in zombie-movies usually suck), very little
dialogue, but many close escapes, much running and shooting, much dying
and quite a bit of violence (though not as extreme and/or explicit as in
other zombie flicks). This all makes Era dos Mortos a very
straight-forward but also a very blunt film, as it offers literally no
variations on its main theme. That said, the film's main saving grace is
its short running time (no more than 40 minutes) - and if you ask me, it
could just as well have been even shorter -, which means it ends before it
outstays its welcome ... so if you like zombie entertainment for its own
sake, expect to be entertained, but don't expect to be surprised - and
don't expect a masterpiece ...
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