Dead Fury Review

Dead Fury is Frank Sudol's second zombie animation to be released by Unearthed Films, and a perfect homage to the "Demonic Possession" sub-genre.

FILM- This bizarre little animation open up with Max, his Pop, and his two friends Jake and Jen headed into the woods to hunt deer. After bitching about everything from where they parked to which animals to shoot, they finally come upon a deserted cabin in the forest- conveniently located at 666 Blood Drive.

Meanwhile, a hiker stumbles across an old book with bizarre writing in it. After reading it out loud (because we all know nothing bad ever comes from reading obscure, possibly demonic books aloud), the hiker is possessed by a demon. This rots his flesh and launches his eyes from his head, and the zombie hiker meets up with the hunting party on the outskirts of the cabin.

After attempting (and failing) conversation with the zombie, Max and his posse just decide to open fire. This accident leaves Jake with a nice gash torn out of his neck, so the logical thing is to head into the spooky ass cabin to look for medical help. As it turns out, this cabin was owned by a family of freaks (or you could say it still is, that all depends on how you look at demonic entities and property rights), who don't enjoy the company of normal people. One by one, the friends are stalked and hunted by the demons- and that's before the survivors even discover the horrors located in the basement...

Two things make Dead Fury what it is- the "funny gore" gimmick, and the animation. There's tons of gore, and quite a bit of humor; however, not all of it works. For me, about 75% of the spoken humor worked, and about 85% of the physical humor worked. While those are decently high numbers, the humor that didn't work pretty much took me out of the game for a while. When you go from laughing to rolling your eyes it can get a bit annoying, but this movie will have you laughing again in no time.

There's a few twists and turns, but most of it is done for comedic or gore purposes. The story is a mix between Evil Dead and Hills Have Eyes, and is just goofy enough to work. The gore is animated in a chunky way, but not sloppy. It's hard to describe, but the best way I can put it into words is parts fly off of zombies in chunks. Big chunks. And it all gets better when Max breaks out the chainsaw.

The animation is very static, not many things move in swift motions. It looks like something you would see on Newgrounds, really flash animation-ish. The characters hobble around, only move at the joints, and their head twitches like they're on a three day coke binge. Most of the time the weapons are held in an open hand, almost as if glued in place. I personally like this style and feel it suits the type of film Dead Fury is, but I can see it being a turn off for some people.

There's some annoying characters, and a good amount of the insults get repetitive (bastard and son of a bitch being the top spoken phrases), but it's still a fun movie, and it really takes off when Max is forced to enter the basement, which would even make Gacy nervous. However, no matter how well you like the plot or gore, the animation will either make of break this movie. 8/10

PICTURE/ AUDIO- Since Dead Fury was made on a computer, the picture is fantastic. Not damage or glitches to speak of. The animation does get a little blurry when the action gets rapid, but no pixelation or lag. Colors look great, and everything flows at a nice and even pace. 9/10

The dubbing for the characters was all done by Frank, the whole film was a one man effort. When some conversations are going on you can hear that "recording static" in the background, mainly when there's no sound effects or music. This is not a transfer problem, but it might take you a second or two to get used to. As far as technical issues, there are none. Clear sounds with no bugs, sounds pretty good to me. 8/10

EXTRAS- Unearthed has not been known to skimp on the extras, and just because this is animated doesn't mean they neglected it's supplement material. There's a making of, which is narrated by Frank Sudol, excluded storyboards and dialog, deleted scenes, a slide show, and a hand full of trailer to round everything out. A good chunk of extras for a good movie. 8/10

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