Operation Undead

War quite literally turns men inhuman in Operation Undead, a rousing antiwar saga in which Japanese and Thai armies come together to curb a zombie outbreak during World War Two. A gory, intelligent work of morbid humour, compositional wit and deep humanist commitment.

In Kongkiat Komesiri’s subversive, hair-raising historical thriller Operation Undead, zombies aren’t even the big, bad “Other”. They are capable of every emotion: from pity to piety, so much so that when faced with humans, emotionality even becomes their tragic flaw. 

Part counterfactual WWII fantasy, part bloody creature feature, Komesiri’s genre-bending film follows two brothers – dedicated soldier Mek and the pacifist Mok – torn apart by the Japanese invasion of Thailand. The Japanese coerce the Thai army into cooperation, but when their secret biological weapon goes out of control, the two armies are forced to join arms for an entirely different purpose.  

With constantly shifting dramatic fault lines ­– Thai/Japanese, human/zombie, civilians/servicemen, corporals/officers – the film keeps our identification in a state of flux, toying with our sympathies. Brimming with grisly visual gags, Operation Undead knows how to be silly fun, but also ventures into profoundly moving and thoughtful areas, turning the monster movie into a stirring hymn for the fallen.

– Srikanth Srinivasan

Trailer

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