Xombie: Dead On Arrival

Another movie I watched yesterday. A strange little movie running 50 minutes and divided into ten 5-minute chapters. So looked it up and originally it was a Flash cartoon on the web. Xombie: DOA is the second of a trilogy (so far) of Xombie stories.

Nice little tale. The animation is not exactly artistic but the backgrounds are good at establishing atmosphere and mood. In fact the background animation reminded me a lot of how Samurai Jack looks.

The story is a post-zombie apocalypse tale about a little girl named Zoe who washes ashore on a beach (according to the website, near the ruins of Washington D.C. but I couldn't tell that from the movie). She can't remember anything but her name. She hears music playing in the distance and follows the sound until she reaches a cemetery where she is beset upon by a horde of zombies. She is rescued by a "good" zombie, or xombie called Dirge who uses a shovel like a sword. He also uses a long chain for a weapon sometimes. Dirge was the one listening to the music, in his home (which is a small tomb or mausoleum?). He decides to take her to the nearest settlement of living humans, which is the only place she can be relatively safe. Dirge is accompanied by a zombie (or xombie) dog named Cerberus who was once a police dog and still retains his training and develops an affection for Zoe. They run into another xombie named Nephthys who was a museum exhibit: an Egyptian mummy who was mummified with her organs still intact (leading her to assume in her previous life she was not Egyptian royalty, but probably a servant), and she helps them on their journey to the human city. She tells Dirge that they are both what are called "variants," that is, zombies whose brains did not completely die before the zombie virus reanimated their bodies. This is why they retain their humanity to some extent and are not simply mindless zombies like that vast majority of undead. She is accompanied by a zombie velociraptor (how's that for an unstoppable monster?) named Chimaera, which she can't completely control, and she is armed with a scythe.

I liked it. The official website link is below. Also, there's a Dirge action figure that is not available yet but can be pre-ordered. According to the website, Dreamworks is interested in turning the story into a real movie, which will be pretty cool in my opinion.

Xombie Online