Xombie – Dead on Arrival « The Undeath : Blog

27Oct/090

Xombie – Dead on Arrival

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Xombie - Dead on Arrival

Year: 2009
Type of Zombie: Slow with some "variants"
Phase of Infection: Zombie Wasteland
Primary Location: On the road
Zombie Characteristics:

Normally:

Slow moving
Basic motor functions

Variant:

Reasoning and logic abilities
Strength and agility

Both:

Must destroy the brain
Animals can become zombies

Xombie started out as a web video series gaining a cult following by James Farr (an ex-police officer turned writer … but we won't hold the cop job against him since he does at least like zombies). It has since released comic books and a DVD collection of the webisodes. See the following trailer for the DVD:

Xombie is an evolution of zombiism where some dead are able to rationalize, talk, and move about with surprising agility and grace known as "variants". Definitely not a zombie story for you purists out there. In the lineage of Blade and other self-loathing creatures of the night, we have Dirge. A zombie with a consciousness, he hunts out other zombies and dispatches them with the aid of his shovel and zombie dog, Cerberus. The story within the first couple of chapters actually does attempt to explain the zombie outbreak as well as how it's possible some of them can retain higher cognitive abilities.

As the story starts, a young girl, Zoe, wanders into a graveyard following the sounds of Mozart. She finds (SURPRISE!) a graveyard full of zombies! Then our anti-hero appears: Dirge. He saves the little girl and decides to take her to the nearest human settlement which is guarded by robots. On the way they run into Nephthys, a former Egyptian sacrifice and museum piece that lives in a natural history museum with her pet zombie dinosaur. I won't go into much more detail to leave a bit of mystery to story, but there are definite unrevealed secrets hinted at on the DVD that would likely be explored in future extensions of the story.

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Done in a clearly Flash-based visual style, Xombie doesn't impress compared to non-web videos, but as far as Flash animations go Xombie is one of the most visually interesting animations created. Some animation artifacts exist, particularly when Dirge is talking and lips purse around his normally exposed teeth. As usual with Flash animations and cheap cartoons in general, there are lots of reused characters and objects which do give some scenes a feeling of repetition and break the 4th wall, but it's standard fare for web animations and doesn't detract from the overall story.

Presented over 10 chapters, "Xombie - Dead on Arrival" covers 50 minutes of the story. My only complaint with this set-up is the constant "To Be Continued" messages followed immediately by the next part of the story every several minutes. They probably could have cut those out. The chapter headers were fine, just don't need to know that it's going to be immediately continued until the credits are about to roll at the end, and the story is left open for continuation and expansion.

The first 6 parts (Chapter 5 is in 2 parts) are available on Xombie's website, and the story continues in comic book form. Dreamworks is in talks to create a live-action movie adaptation of the series, so stay tuned for that.

Recommendation: Interesting story, worth seeing.

Pros: