YMMV / BrainDead

• Angst? What Angst?: Paquita seems to take her dog being eaten by Lionel's mother quite well.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The scene where Lionel takes the zombie baby to the park. There's no logical reason why he did this, it adds nothing to the plot, and it's never mentioned again. But it was really funny. What makes it better is that it was only filmed because Peter Jackson had enough money for one more scene after completing the movie.
• Cult Classic: Thanks to Jackson's later works with The Lord of the Rings.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Where do we even start? The movie’s violence and extreme Gorn alone are so absurdly over the top that it becomes hilarious.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Everyone loves Father McGruder, even though he has a pretty small role.
• Fridge Brilliance: When you remember the fact that the very source of the zombie outbreak was due to an animal bite, it would make sense as to why the animal stimulant had such an effect on the zombies.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • A lot of people who watch this movie do so for the Gorn.
  • Others might only watch it for Father "I kick ass for the Lord!" McGruder.
• Memetic Mutation: "I kick ass for the Lord!"
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Those graverobbers that manhandled Lionel really had it coming.
  • Uncle Les is not a remotely sympathetic character from the get-go, but he truly shows what sort of person he is when he attempts to rape Paquita.
  • Turns out Lionel's mother crossed this long before she turned into a zombie, drowning both her husband and a woman he reputedly had an affair with in the bathtub. And then fabricated a lie that pushed blame onto Lionel.
• Nausea Fuel: Considering the film is regarded as one of the goriest movies in existence and so gut-churning for its time that cinemas had to provide sick bags for the audience, this is to be expected. However, the biggest offender is probably the custard scene (which is detailed below).
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Jackson gave some of the film's actors cameos in The Lord of the Rings. Roger is Isildur, Vera is a Sackville-Baggins, and Void is the leader of the warg riders.
  • And then Void became Nori in The Hobbit.
• Signature Scene:
  • Father McGruder's kung-fu battle with the zombies.
  • Lionel taking Selwyn to the park, and it backfiring horribly.
  • Lawnmower vs. zombies, anyone?
• Special Effect Failure: It's very obvious when Selwyn the zombie baby transitions between a puppet to an immobile dummy and/or a person in a costume.
• Strangled by the Red String: Paquita suddenly falls in love with Lionel for no reason except for a symbol.
• Squick:
  • When guests come over to see his ill mom, they have a relatively uneventful dinner until his mother's ear falls off and lands in the custard. She then absentmindedly eats the custard with the ear. And then one of her zits pops pus into one of the guest's bowls. He starts to eat it.
  • The attempt to embalm Vera. It didn't quite work.
    Embalmer: Cranial blowout!
• Too Cool to Live: Who else besides Father McGruder?
• Ugly Cute: Selwyn the zombie baby. Some characters in-universe even seem to think so. The intestine monster is honestly kinda cute as well.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The film definitely did not sugarcoat the gore and makeup effects, depicting gallons upon gallons of authentic looking blood and human meat chunks, puppetry that allowed for some of the more severely dismembered zombies, and fairly impressive blink-and-you'll miss in-between shots. The film even won several Best Special Effects awards, and rightfully so.

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