This could have been the horror movie of the year, with all it had going for it; an unusual and intriguing setting, a great concept and a twist in the tail that you don't see coming a mile off, and some really good shocker moments. The female lead is superb, and the child performers are good; the effects are well done, and the location is used to excellent effect. But in the end it fails to generate much tension or hold together, for several reasons. The makeup work could have been better, with the walking dead mostly appearing to just be having a bad hangover. The male lead, Ted Biggs, goes through most of the story with a knowing smirk on his face which is okay for the first part of the film, where he does not know or believe what is happening; but once he has been shown absolute proof, it becomes difficult to suspend disbelief when he continues to smirk throughout the most traumatic events. The music is patchy, at times brilliantly enhancing the mood and at others totally disrupting it. But the real problem is the scripting. The plot is garbled, taking the fascinating concept of the walker of the dead (who can raise corpses but is only supposed to do so in order to walk them to their homes for burial - an idea used years ago in Mr Vampire) and burying it under a jumbled mass of other ideas from daft to dull. There are pointless scenes involving the 'hero's' employer and an office boy back in the States; a gang of Chinese punks is dragged in and used in most cliched way possible. The villain, the demented chap with an axe featured so prominently on the cover, is blind, which allows for some creepy moments but which also begs the question of how a village-full of people failed to prevent him from murdering them all. Continuity is poor, especially in the scenes with the punks. There's a gaping plot hole so huge even the writer feels the need to refer to it without actually explaining it. And they can't make up their mind about the nature of the walking corpses; some of them are mindless zombies, some of them are self-aware, some of them appear to be vampiric. And the twist on top of the twist at the end, fails utterly because it makes no sense at all. So in the long run, while this film isn't by any means dire, it is disappointing. Worth a watch, there are some standout scenes and ideas, but I'd rent it if I were you.