Today the shopping mall is a dying affair. The ones that are still standing have plenty of empty storefronts. Various chains have gone under with nothing replacing them. If they’re lucky, a Spirit Halloween store possesses the vacant Sears. Half the time you feel like a zombie when you go inside and stagger around in search of a Record Bar, Hungates Hobbies or Sun Coast Video that’s been dead and gone for years. It’s a perfect place to feel undead. Bio Zombie takes us back to 1997 when the indoor shopping mall wasn’t such a bleak experience. The film gives us a sense of a mall in Hong Kong that’s a much tighter affair than the Galleria found in Phantom of the Mall. The stores are also a little bit more shady so it’s not inconceivable the something wrong is going to happen.
Woody Invincible (Jordan Chan) and Crazy Bee (Sam Lee) are low level guys working their way up the gangster food chain. The duo run a little shop at a shopping mall that sells bootleg VCDs of films still in the theater. The two are also the ones assigned to get into screenings and hold the camera to capture Titanic and other blockbusters. They have dreams of being real gangsters some day, but they gotta pay their dues. This includes taking their mobster bosses’ car off to get fixed at a remote garage. Somewhere else in Hong Kong, is another bit of black-market hustling. This involves military members making a deal with Middle Eastern for something a bit more dangerous than a film on a VCD. It’s a chemical that turns people into violent zombies. They test it out on a person to see the horrific effects. The chemical is stashed in a bottle of an energy drink. Before the deal can be finalized, the zombie breaks his chains and ruins everything. The one survivor grabs the drink bottle and makes a run for it. His escape is cut short when he runs into Woody and Crazy’s car. The duo attempt to revive the guy by pouring the drink into him. Energy drink just might do the trick. It doesn’t. They’re not sure how to cover their tracks so they toss the body in the trunk so they can get back to their shop at the mall. They get distracted in the parking deck and when they return to the car to see about the body, the trunk is empty. The good news is they have the guy’s cell phone so they’re going to sell it at a store so they can have a little cash out of the day. Little do they know this will be the last good thing that happens all day.
Bio Zombie plays like a mix of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and Kevin Smith’s Mall Rats. We’re treated to the nasty underbelly of Hong Kong mall culture since the stores are rather outlaw. Can you imagine your local ’90s mall allowing a shop to operate that’s selling extremely bootlegged VHS tapes? Or how about a cellphone store that has no problem putting a price tag on stolen merchandise? This is a cramped little thieves market. The film gets extreme with the fact that the two main characters are thugs-in-training. Woody and Crazy are not the innocent people we’re used to seeing in the midst of a zombie attack movie. They’re both nasty. Even when one of them seems like he’s about to have a romance with Rolls (Angela Tong), he gets criminal when given a chance. The only nice character is Loi (Emotion Cheung), the cook at the sushi restaurant. He likes Rolls. But being nice doesn’t help him when the zombie action goes into overdrive. Director Wilson Yip digs deep into the mall and the zombie gore. This is a fine zombie movie from 25 years ago that’s so worth discovering. Bio Zombie will make you think twice before you buy an energy drink at the mall.
The video is 1.78:1 anamorphic. The transfer allows you to see what’s on the shelves at the various stores in the mall. The audio is DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo in the original Cantonese and a Mandarian dub. The Cantonese sounds best. The movie is subtitled in English.
Audio Commentary by Frank Djeng of the New Asian Film Festival. He gives a context to the film in both the mall culture. The mall in reality has 98 stores per floor. Although it didn’t have a sushi place. That was created for the movie. He explains how “Sushi Zombie” happens in the film. There’s plenty of focus on the VCD bootleg culture that really financially screwed up the Hong Kong film industry.
Bio Zombie (18:59) is an interview co-writer/director Wilson Yip. He’s excited that after 20 years, Bio Zombie is coming out on Blu-ray in America. This was pretty much the first zombie movie made in Hong Kong. He gets into the shopping mall culture that was happening in 1997. Frédéric Ambroisine conducts the interview. He’s been responsible for many of the interview on the Shawscope boxsets.
Video Games, Contaminated Lucozade and Human Sushi (12:37) is a video essay from Chris O’Neill. He goes into the zombie movie genre from Day of the Dead, Evil Dead and Zombie. He points out that Bio Zombie was reviewed as a Hong Kong version of Dawn of the Dead. He gets into the comedy of the film including the fact that the opening credits are part of a pirated film. At that time, Hong Kong was flooded with pirate videos killing box office returns.
Alternate Ending of Bio-Zombie (3:17) is also effective. It would be a spoiler to say how it differs from the theatrical ending.
Vinegar Syndrome presents Bio Zombie. Directed by Directed by Wilson Yip. Screenplay by Matt Chow, So Man-Sing & Wilson Yip. Starring Jordan Chan, Sam Lee, Angela Tong & Wayne Lai. Rating: Not Rated. Running Time: 94 minutes. Release Date: February 14, 2023.
