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Such a frustrating disappointment

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

LaBruce, makes an attempt at being edgy, ironic, and satirical… but what he delivers is an uninspired, poorly written, poorly acted, poorly edited waste of time.Firstly, I don't know what's more offensive… The fact that LaBruce exploits the struggle for LGBT rights, by using it as an obvious crutch to deflect criticism of his depictions of vile and unconscionable acts of violence and necrophilia, or how badly he misses the mark and twists what could have been a brilliant metaphor, into something you could imagine being shown in the basement of the Providence Road Baptist Church. Then again, it could be his sad attempt at a parody of post-modern nihilism, which also shows not a spark of insight, and instead of skewering the genre, he just parrots it.Whatever his intent, LaBruce misses irony by miles and wouldn't know satire if Groucho Marx shoved a copy of Huckleberry Finn straight up the orifice from which he originally pulled the screenplay for this film.His ironic metaphor, to take mainstream societies rejection of homosexuality and place it parallel to the gristly abomination that zombies represent in fiction; *could* have been brilliant, but his half-hearted effort lets it fall flat and as dead as his protagonist. The real horror here is the result of LaBruce's failure to show any irony at all in this metaphor, or prove it false. Instead, he actually drains all the humanity out of his story and actors, the very characteristic that would give lie to the idea that homosexuals are monstrous abominations that defile human flesh, what's more, he adds fuel to the stereotype by having his characters devalue, exploit, and abuse one another casually.One may be tempted to forgive LaBruce, his blatant exploitation, since this film is a excuse for pornography, disguised as social commentary, disguised as art. It could even be ignored that LaBruce feels free to dispense with the character development, continuity of plot, dialog, humor, or even context that might make this movie bearable… that is, if this really was pornography… but even at that LaBruce fails miserably.What's more tedious than watching some lifeless derivative piece of art house drivel? Why, it's watching an *insincere* rendition of that same lifeless derivative piece of art house drivel; where only the most obtuse and predictable observations are made as satire and then we are expected to find them profound and witty. LaBruce attempts to mock the genre… but does so in such an artless way he becomes part of it. Like two mimes pretending to be mirror images of one another…only that's not the best description, because the mimes may accidentally entertain you… unlike this film.I would recommend this film to anyone who has survived the zombie apocalypse in actual fact. After mankind is wiped out and all his works have fallen to ruin, watching this film would ease the sense of loss. One could shrug and say… "the culture that produced this is dead and gone… good riddance." Think you Mr. LaBruce, for giving us all just one more reason to be ashamed of humanity. Well done.

A very "different" zombie movie. I mean, this could have been a critically acclaimed one if not for the downpour of gay porn in every other scene!The idea of a zombie with tender feelings & thoughts are all nice but all that eating of body parts and graphic gay sex almost made me puke. They could have been done more aesthetically. And too much talking! The female director(actor Katharina Klewinghaus) yaks, yaks & yaks to glory.Nothing special to say about any of the cast. All are average.Verdict: Soft-core gay porn movie. Dead or alive!

Canadian artist / pornographer Bruce LaBruce is known in underground circles for his transgressive and satirical no-budget contributions to Queer cinema. His films Raspberry Reich, Hustler White and Skin Flick, among others, endeavor to explore themes such as alienation, fascism, terrorism, persecution but are held together by Bruce's real "meat 'n' potatoes" - hardcore gay sex (and in one case, amputee sex).Somewhere in the near future where zombies are the norm (particularly homosexual ones) and have somewhat evolved from mindless flesh-eaters into talking, rational-thinking corpses, Otto is rising from the grave. He doesn't remember anything about his past so he begins to wander the streets aimlessly, eating roadkill as he goes. Otto cant bring himself to kill & eat a human - he muses that maybe he was a vegetarian in his former life.Otto is soon "discovered" by Medea Yarn, an avant-garde filmmaker. Medea is close to finishing her epic political-porno-zombie movie, Up with Dead People, and wants to begin on a docu-drama starring Otto. Medea's crew consists of her brother, Adolf and her lesbian partner Hella Bent, a silent screen siren who is always seen in scratchy black 'n' white.Intermittently Otto has minor flashbacks to what he thinks was his life before he became one of the undead. When he eventually discovers his wallet in his back pocket, he finds in it little clues to who he once was, one being an ex-boyfriend's phone number. He arranges to meet up with this ex and through him learns some important details about his past."An original and inventive take on the zombie genre" Otto; or, Up with Dead People is a German/Canadian co-production predominantly shot in Germany with local actors. The majority of the dialogue in the film is presented as voice-over narration either by Otto or Medea, who we are introduced to, and who continues to address us via interview-type footage. The elements of satire are pretty blatant when it comes to Medea, the utterly pretentious filmmaker with her long indulgent diatribes against our capitalist, consumer-driven society. Then there's the queer-zombie bashing, Otto the mindless teen zombie (product of a consumerist society?) and the sense of disdain that the general public regard Otto with.Sex 'n' gore-wise I didn't find the film too over-the-top; yes there are a few cocks and some gay sex but no XXX scenes. One of the more notable scenes is in Medea's film Up with Dead People where the lead zombie penetrates his partner's recently inflicted stomach wound. With regards to the typical gory zombie film though, I don't think Otto can really compete, there's very little grue, just the odd eating of roadkill.One of the questions the film asks is - is Otto really a zombie? At the beginning it seems rather obvious that he is but as the film develops you discover that before he "died" he was committed to a psychiatric hospital after being diagnosed with schizophrenia and a severe eating disorder. Throughout the film people are constantly commenting that "he thinks he's a zombie" and wonder what is wrong with him.Otto; or Up with Dead People is an original and inventive take on the zombie genre, although for some, the lack of typical genre staples may disappoint. Recommended for Bruce LaBruce fans and/or indiscriminate zombie film lovers.

It takes a certain caliber of film-maker to approach a genre which was intended to horrify its audience and, instead, make it amuse and move them. I found "Otto; or, Up With Dead People" to be Bruce LaBruce's strongest work to date. The plot was both the most linear and accessible, and at the same time the most convoluted. Even with a lack of chronology, a dizzying metafilm of movie within movie, and multiple points of view and filming techniques, the movie manages to devote more time to standard plot development than previous Bruce LaBruce works. Perhaps this was necessary to reach out to all the viewers on a more explicit level, and create empathy for a character, who belongs to a group of otherwise reviled monsters. It was quite bizarre to leave the theater relating to characters who had been shown brutally eviscerating each other in graphic detail. But it is this feeling of commonality with a supposedly terrifying monster that makes the movie powerful and touching. The equivocal metaphor that compares conformist society to zombies is more like a thinly veiled reality: take away the blood and guts and what's the difference between the two? It goes to show that you don't always need a grandiose and earnest tone to say something significant. Sometimes, the silliest and most ridiculous metaphors are the ones which uncover the most meaningful truth.