Dead Awake

What a silly silly short film. That doesn't make it bad though! This dedication to creativity and fun is just the sort of thing I like to see in movies. Turning the classic Aliens into a zombie flick seemed like a no brainer and countless Hollywood ripoffs have tried, but this is the closes we'll get to gold.

I think that if you showed this to someone who hadn't seen Aliens before, they wouldn't know it was a fanedit. That's how good the editing was. I can't imagine how much effort went into scene selection, recutting, and audio work. A very impressive edit from blueyoda.

The recut of Newt's last scene was very well done and brutal. One thing though: the audio probably should've cut out before Ripley said "they don't kill you, it's a lie". But that ending was great. I enjoyed this more than Aliens.

Wow. I see why this won short of the year. What a fantastic job blending so many sources together. A lot of mashups, even really good ones suffer just slightly from the characters not interacting directly. It's almost an uncanny valley of movie characters. This, on the other hand, excels. I never felt like we were looking at different stuff. Particularly the grabbing of the leg in the duct and the shot that pans from our heroes straight to the zombies. Little touches like that make the blend infinitely better. With so many sources, it's a miracle that it's almost never noticeable. The zombie jumping on the windshield towards the building could have been color graded slightly more but that two second shot is literally the only criticism I would have. Bravo, phenomenal edit.

Incredible how effectively BlueYoda has combined so many different sources!
And what a great/horrible way to end the short! You think the alien movies are dark? Let's wait till you see this version.
Just a fantastic work on this short and probably the best of the entire consecution!

Bullwinkle: Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat.

Rocky: Bullwinkle, it says here that for you to inherit the fortune, you have to spend the weekend in the ancestral home, Abominable Manor.

Bullwinkle: That's no problem. I've been living in an abominable manner all my life.

Boris: You busy-bodies have busied your last body.

****

Remember being a kid, taking legos from different kits, and building something altogether awesome? Something the manufacturers didn't have in mind? That's what I get when I open the doors to this piece. Zombies on earth are trouble enough, but interstellar zombies—yeah, you betchurass. Multiple sources are neatly woven to create an entertaining frankenmelange, in which the familiar becomes new again. Should be mandatory viewing at zombie film festivals everywhere.