Nigel Floyd

An enjoyable if slightly innocuous biopic based on the brief life and short-lived fame of teen rock'n'roll idol Richie Valens.

Janiak has succeeded in making what she calls ‘an elevated genre story’, yet much of its frightening psychological ambiguity is erased by a disappointingly conventional ending.

Unfortunately, the political parallel between the ideological repression of Baby Doc's regime and the stultifying effects of the zombifying fluid is only sketchily developed, leaving us with a series of striking but isolated set pieces.

Softley negotiates layers of deceit with skill, but an uncharacteristic visual and narrative tightness leaves one wondering what might have been.

Unfortunately, Reynolds the director is as uncertain about the tone of the picture as Reynolds the star is about his screen persona. So while the action veers from lightweight action to extreme violence, Reynolds' character vacillates between macho tough guy and sensitive, vulnerable leading man.

Despite much old-school splatter, it’s seldom frightening and oddly unfunny.

Coppola's meticulous direction, and some exceptional acting (especially from Caan) never fail to rivet the attention, there's a pervasive and worrying sense of the central issues being gently but undeniably fudged.

When it became obvious that the film's mix of cutesy sentiment and vague scariness wasn't working, the company ordered whole sequences to be rewritten, re-shot or re-edited, then imposed a stupid ending that explains precisely nothing.

From the moment a pair of workmen crack open a seventeenth-century plague pit and unleash the undead, Matthias Hoene’s lairy, gory zombie comedy delivers.

First-time director Yuzna is happier with the sly humour and clever plot shifts than with the appropriately iconic but sometimes dramatically unconvincing cast. He nevertheless generates a compelling sense of paranoid unease, and shifts into F/X overdrive for an unforgettable horror finale.

The students keep filming when it is insane to do so, and an avalanche of speculative tosh smothers everything except our mocking laughter.

The film's would-be subversive ideas about the kneejerk appeal of social violence get lost in the mix.