Been awhile since we wrote about this flick; I just learned (via Quiet Earth) that it's heading for home video – DVD/Blu-ray – on February 14th, just under a month away.

This is good actually because I'll finally get to see it for myself, after almost 2 years of back-and-forth on it on S&A. Almost every time I've written about it, expressing my concerns over its plot, my words are met with replies from fans of the film, or from the production team's camp, defending the film, and urging me to see it before judging it.

Well, it looks like I'll have the opportunity to do so, AND THEN I can judge it, after seeing it 🙂 

It actually received a limited theatrical run in the USA last fall, but, for some reason, BoxOfficeMojo.com is down right now, so I can't access box office numbers.

We first alerted you all to The Dead, in April 2010; at the time, its future was uncertain.

A month or so later, it screened at the Cannes Film Market to strong positive audience responses, and managed its way to some distribution opportunities – opportunities that are finally now being realized.

As I said in my initial post… if District 9 was the “Aliens In Africa” project, then we could maybe call The Dead the “Zombies In Africa” project.

Co-directed by brothers Howard J. Ford and Jonathan Ford (Americans), the film was shot entirely on location in mostly Burkina Faso and Ghana, in West Africa, and is described as “a powerful story of one man’s struggle to survive in extreme circumstances all the while battling against a menacing threat all around him!”

An American mercenary, the sole survivor of a plane crash, has to run the gauntlet across Africa, battling the living dead, joining forces with a local military man, who is desperately searching for his son amongst the chaos, as they fight together to survive.

Naturally, the American mercenary is Caucasian, not-so unlike the hero in District 9, amidst a sea of zombies, seemingly made up entirely of black Africans. It's not an allegorical tale, but some layered analysis of just the concept alone could be a dissertation.

As I've said previously, repeatedly, while I’ll certainly welcome, and even embrace a zombie film made in any part of Africa, starring Africans, this particular set up makes me a little uncomfortable, if past films about Africans in Africa, with white lead protagonists, produced by non-Africans (read whites) are any indication of what to expect.

However, once again, as already noted, I haven't seen the film, so I’ll reserve my full critique for when I actually do see it, when it's released on DVD & Blu-ray (and hopefully VOD) on February 14th. You can preoder it right now.

There may be more to it than I'm giving it credit for.

A brand new release trailer has surfaced and is embedded below: