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Above is a scene of a Moscow woman who had been beaten and robbed in a village and stumbled upon a group of bumpkins for help. Word had leaked out what had happened in Moscow, but the government -- since they were partly to blame for the whackadoodle 'Create a Master Race' plan that so terribly went awry -- covered up what really happened. The result is all the Moscow residents are feared as possible zombie virus carriers, so that's the level of hostility Moscow refugees can expect.
That works nice as a plot device because it ties our outbreak survivors to the hot zombie babes as all being outcasts, and therefore all being worthy of our sympathy. Still, Season Three frequently goes off the rails.
Zombie stories are handicapped from the beginning by having a completely preposterous premise. They can only work when they're not too ridiculous on the edges that surround the central absurdity of the story. Unfortunately, or depending on how you look at it fortunately, Season Three of Vyzhit Posle is freighted with a lot of ridiculousness around the edges.
The new characters are all pretty silly. Above is Kristina, the best of the new lot, although admittedly I may be allowing skimpy costumes and cheesecake poses to cloud my judgement a bit. At any rate, she is a Russian version of the manic pixie dream girl. She hooks up with Skat, the hacker in the bunker from the beginning who's main purpose had been, until he met Kristina, to be a fount of expository dialog.
It looks like they were building him up for a bigger role in Season Four, but in the mean time he has sex with Kristina, listens to her babble about having a no-strings-attached relationship and watches her cutely faint from time to time. One's suspicions as to where her story is headed are borne out when she lights up with joy upon discovering that the hot zombie babes can self-repair themselves. Yup, she is a manic pixie dream girl with an incurable disease. I must say, her attempts at getting herself infected are pretty entertaining.
Above is Valera, the skin head with a heart of gold who in Season One had fallen crazy-mad-in-love with the beautiful, soon to be zombified Aijan (aka Valera's One True Love #1). In the screen cap he's in a partial state of undress and playing tonsil hockey with Nika (aka Valera's One True Love #3). In the background, circled in red, is Katya (aka Valera's One True Love #2). Hey, I told you that this show had a lot of silly soap opera stuff going on and it's only gonna get worse.
Anyway, to make a long story short, after Valera thought he had killed zombie Aijan at the end of Season One he fell in love with Katya, a spunky newspaper reporter who snuck into Moscow's quarantine zone to try to get the truth. Needless to say when zombie Aijan showed up again the ensuing love triangle proved to be problematic. However, it all came to an end when the Eeeevil Dr Lobodo locked Valera and zombie Aijan in a cage, conducted unholy experiments on her and ended up brutally torturing poor Aijan, who at that time only wanted to tear Katya's face off and then snuggle with her sweetie Valera.
By Season Three Katya graduated from print journalist to the host of 'Black Day', which is the State ran TV channel's top-rated zombie show. In that capacity she ended up interviewing Dr Lobodo. That's a bit surprising because she and Lobodo had shot each other at the end of Season Two, but she's under a government contract so she lets bygones be bygones and puts a positive spin on him and paints him as a hero. Due to the whole 'torturing zombie Aijan' business Katya's craven behavior infuriates Valera. So he dumps her and runs to the arms of Nika before going back to the quarantine zone to settle a score with Lobodo. BTW, did I mention that Nika is engaged to Andrey, the Russian special forces guy? I wonder if that is going to complicate things?
Speaking about Dr Lobodo, that's him above with Inge, the naughty vixen who runs the Eeeeevil lab. Due to a rare semi-successful experiment at the lab they're about to have some celebratory bondage game fun. Lobodo has fallen head over heels in love with her, but she just uses sex to manipulate him in her nefarious schemes. In the above scene she is more or less taunting Lobodo after he asked her if she really loves him. It strikes me, especially if you're chained to a bed, that might be a bad approach to take with an Eeeeevil co-conspirator who may, or may not, have a syringe full of zombie flu in his back pocket.
BTW, the resolution of the Valera/Lobodo confrontation is quite the plot twist.
Above we have Nadya (far left), the former yum-yum girl turned alpha zombie queen. She has snuck out of Moscow in search of a refuge in the woods where she can stop slaughtering people left and right and instead live an idyllic and peaceful life. She has hooked up with a couple other hot zombie babes in search of the same. In the screen cap they are shown dancing around, waving torches in the air and wearing tree branches as tiaras. Way to keep a low profile ladies.
Unfortunately for them their seclusion doesn't last long. Soon enough they are found out. No, not by their late night pagan frolics, instead it through the sheer stupidity of Mitya, Nadya's boyfriend. In fact his idiocy so infuriates Nadya that she breaks up with him. Surprisingly she doesn't tear him limb from limb, instead she just storms off in a rage.
Earlier I mentioned silly new characters. Easily the silliest was Rapida (right) shown above confronting Nadya. She's the sort of 'tough' character you find in a bad video game. She wears goofy leather armor in is supposedly a fearsome zombie hunter. However, from what we see of her she is inept in everything she does. For example, in the confrontation above, Nadya starts the scene bound and gagged in the trunk of a car. Rapida begins by pointing her gun at pregnant Nadya's belly and sneering about the abortion she is about to perform with a bullet. True to Rapida's usual blundering, around 20 seconds later her partners are slaughtered by Nadya and Rapida ends up zombified. Quite the zombie huntress.
Finally, after much mayhem, soap-opera hijinks and amusing closed captioning Nadya gives birth to her little monster... errr… I mean darling little baby zombie girl. Above is Mitya, the proud father of the bundle of joy, holding the little tyke. One of my great regrets in the show being canceled is missing out on how, or if, he survives the toddler's terrible twos.
With all my joking in this post about the show, it is actually quite good. As I said in Part II, this is one of the best and most unique takes on the zombie genre I've seen in a long time. It is also much smarter than my review probably makes it seem. For example, the fate of Aijan hangs over, echoes through and informs a lot of the soap opera stuff in Season Three. Dr Lobodo's "I didn't understand" applies to more than just himself.
Finally I spent a long time trying to find a good video of the hot zombie babe's movement. It is very striking, almost birdlike with their arms thrown back and a weird twitch in their shoulders. Below is the best video I could find. There is a lot of action, but sprinkled throughout it are shots of the hot zombie babes in all their glory.
Season I: Vyzhit Posle
SeasonII: Can true love survive zombification?
Season III: Hot zombie babes just want to be your friend (sort of)
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