Opstandelsen (2010) User Reviews

The idea was good...

[paul_haakonsen · 4/10 · 20 December 2015]

This is the second Danish zombie movie that I have watched, and I can't claim that either were overly impressive. I happened to come across "Opstandelsen" (aka "A Zombie Exorcism"), which is Danish for "The Rising", by sheer random luck, and being a zombie aficionado of course I just had to buy it.

I will say that the idea, despite its simplicity, was actually adequate. And as the director Casper Haugegaard said in the extras, that there is just something about having zombies in a church. Good concept idea, but the movie as a whole wasn't memorable.

The dialogue was almost not present, and what was there didn't really help to improve the movie much in any manner.

Now, what the movie had working for it was the gore. And while some of it wasn't great, gore is always good to have in a zombie movie. And there were also some gore parts which were really great.

The movie doesn't follow traditional zombie lore, as the zombies in the movie apparently could die by being stabbed through the Heart and the zombies were also fast, agile runners. Whether or not you like that is, of course, a matter of preference. I didn't though. No, I prefer the typical zombie lore; that zombies are slow shamblers that require brain trauma to be effectively put down.

The movie had moments of really questionable camera-work when the people (and zombies) were running in the basement passages underneath the church.

In overall, then "Opstandelsen" was a good-hearted attempt at a zombie movie that was ultimately a less than mediocre result.

really good

[sawaf_sims2 · 21 July 2011]

i liked it! , this movie wasn't supposed to have a major big story, but it just speaks about simple things, its like when u watch something that is short but gives a lot of meaning to it, this movie is one of them :D, i think the director/writer just wanted like a brief movie but still scary.

I liked the effects they had and there isn't much of story to tell but its still good though :) of course id say they needed a little more work on ending and story, yet i still think its good and frightening.

I rate it 7 for good effects, makeup, acting, it also left me confused a bit.

Worth Watching :D!

7/10

Focus on your peanuts

[nogodnomasters · 1/10 · 20 December 2017]

This is a short film of 49 minutes (box claims 70) with an added short feature that was 30 minutes plus a number of metal/ death metal music videos. The films had English subtitles with action that can put one to sleep. The zombies attack a church during a funeral, apparently saying the wrong words at the wrong time. In the middle of the film we have a guy whispering a rather long prayer which was incredibly boring.

Guide: F-bomb. No sex. Brief nudity in Music videos only.

Some guy's dead... Suddenly, zombies! THOUSANDS OF THEM!!

[NiceNrelaxed · 7/10 · 14 September 2010]

Okay.. Maybe not thousands.. But a lot!

Just got home from the theater, where the director/producer/writer etc. presented his movie. For a Danish horror-zombie flick, this rocks.. But only for the one reason that it's just a zombie-flick! Which isn't a bad thing.. At all..

It's got what you would desire in a zombie-movie, no sense, no plot, no deep characters.. Just zombies attacking and eating people!

I only have two complaints, which is the way it was shot.. It's shaking quite a bit, to make that confusing scary feeling.. Only it's so dark to begin with, it doesn't help at all, at seeing what the hell is happening..

The other thing:

******SPOILER********

The last and "epic" battle between the before mentioned dead guy and his brother (our hero) isn't epic at all.. It's over way too soon..

But seen with no expectations or prejudice.. This rocks!!

8/10

[djdomingostrike77 · 8/10 · 4 June 2021]

"A Zombie Exorcism" or "Opstandelsen" (which I think is a much better and less campy title, no?) was a blast of a zombie film. It doesn't quite break new ground but it's got a lot of spirit that is usually found in low-budget film. With gore aplenty and a lean runtime, I could not ask for more.

big surprise from the North

[trashgang · 6/10 · 5 September 2011]

I just saw this little gorefest in the shops and thought, well, just cashing in on the zombie hype still going on. But once I plugged it in the DVD player I came beware that we had something special. The director, Casper Haugegaard surely knows how to do things. When you have almost no budget then you will have to use the stuff you have and for him it was the location and the camera. For the location, it's a cellar under a church. So dark you can't see a zombie but he uses shaky shots to make it look real, remember Cloverfield and REC, and only uses the light on the camera to view things. Well, it worked out fine. The zombies are also a bit easily done, not like those Italian ones, but just some normal guys going crazy like in the British zombie flicks. The storyline doesn't make any sense but as so many zombie flicks, it's all about those little shockers. And they really do their work, it is messy and bloody and even sometimes gory. Due the fact that it clocks in at 50 minutes you can't really state that it is a full feature but surely one to pick up especially for the extras which are even better than the main feature, the director even made some music clips and let me say that Cephalic Carnage's Ohrwurm do has it all, nudity, blood and ultra gore, definitely not on youtube. And there is even another short available and worth watching, Kaeldermenneske. So if you come across this unknown feature, pick it up

Enjoyable and brutal shorter zombie effort

[kannibalcorpsegrinder · 7/10 · 2 February 2019]

Following a friends' death, a man trying to go his own way from everyone else around him finds his quarrels tested when a zombie outbreak occurs at the funeral, forcing him to band together with the family he abandoned to escape alive.

For such a short feature, there are some enjoyable aspects here. One of the more engaging aspects here is the original and creative storyline that brings up the charmingly original concept of bringing zombies to a church. The biblical connotations given here manage to imbue this with a solid and somewhat reasonable backdrop for such a plague to come along, especially with the stellar zombie action depicted here. As there's a ravenous, frenzied quality adding to their decayed and rotting look, they're incredibly vicious and brutal which makes the action all the more fun as they get chased through the bowels of the church running after the group. Several of the sequences are genuinely terrifying as the roaring horde closes in on the trapped group and with some utterly fantastic gore here that's exceptionally messy that adds to the brutality of the zombies these here hold this one up rather well. There are some problems to be had with this one. The main flaw here is the exceptionally awful and impossible-to-understand editing and filming that goes on during the zombie attacks. There's already not a great deal of light being in a church basement, putting this in an already disadvantage before adding in a camera that zips and zooms around to the point of nauseatingly impossibly scenes. The rapid-fire editing furthers how difficult to understand it by distorting the scenes even further, and that these scenes happen when you want to experience the craziness without being inundated with this blurred-out and nearly impossible to comprehend tactics. As well, there are a few issues with a protagonist that's absolutely impossible to get behind and care about, as the constant talk of disappointing the family isn't all that appealing or interesting. Alongside the abrupt ending that just ends this one rapidly, there's not much else to this one.

Rated Unrated/R: Extreme Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and drug use.