Rammbock: Berlin Undead (2010)

directed by Marvin Kren
Germany
63 minutes
3 stars out of 5
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So we start with the typical invasion/outbreak: The city is overrun, our protagonist is separated from his lady friend, and the newscasters begin spreading rumors of politically-motivated terror. The creatures in this film are not technically undead, just infected with a rage virus a la 28 Days Later, but considering that the term "zombie" in its root form never referred to a dead person, I feel fine calling the people in this film zombies.

One of the first glimpses of the zombies that we get to see as viewers is an infected riot cop preying on civilians, and regardless of whether or not there's specific intent behind it, I think the image of a zombified/ghoulified cop has meaning on its own. Later, in one of the news segments the characters have on in the background, we can hear somebody talking about the outbreak and asking "Is this Germany's 9/11?" It took me a moment to connect that statement to the film as a whole, and it still may have just been an offhand comment with no intention, but thinking back to the zombie cop gave me pause- because when I think of the response to 9/11, one of the first things I think of is widespread abuse of innocent people by law enforcement.

I think to some extent this movie intentionally looks at the way violence and terror attacks play out, using the zombies as a metaphor for an uncontrolled populace, but I'm not sure to what extent that message was specific to terrorism and what of it was simply done the way it was done because the writing was meant to portray the generic expected response to any national disaster. The curveball with regards to how the zombie virus develops- the fact that if you stay very, very calm, the disease won't propagate itself in you- makes me think about the mentality after a disaster that if everybody could just be rational, level-headed, and normal, nothing further bad will happen.

These theories of a representation of hysteria following a terror attack are thin threads that barely connect, but they were things spurring me on throughout an otherwise fairly unremarkable movie. I appreciated the total normality of the protagonist most of anything; that he wasn't an action hero but also not the played-for-laughs slacker made to face an insurmountable challenge, he was just a guy. The zombies themselves are particularly nice too- not too gory, not too stereotypical. I'd say this is a good example of the German zombie film.