Otto, Or, Up With Dead People

Narrative Feature
D: Bruce LaBruce; with Jey Crisfar, Katharina Klewinghaus.

Zombies: They may be legion, but they’re sure not happy about it. LaBruce, never one to eschew the Grand Guignol (or le petite mort, for that matter), takes one to the head and offers up the most provocative (and moist) zombie flick since Shaun of the Dead. The often sublime and sometimes genuinely moving subtexts abound – homophobia, AIDS, societal disconnect, Warholian wound-fucking – as existential everycorpse Otto, dead and hating it, staggers through Jörg Buttgereit’s Berlin, seeking his own particular brand of nekromance. “It’s not easy being undead,” says Otto. “The living all seem like the same person to me, and I don’t think I like that person very much.” We, the living, sympathize.

Wednesday, Sept. 3, 10:30pm

This article appears in August 29 • 2008.

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