I sat down to watch "Sang faa sau see" (aka "Bio-Zombie") again in 2021, and that makes it the third time that I have seen it.

While "Bio-Zombie" is not your average zombie movie, there is something oddly and profoundly entertaining about it. Perhaps it is the fact that this is a horror comedy that involves zombies and it is mixed up with that archetypical vibe that Hong Kong movies had in the late 1990s. Whatever it is, it definitely works.

Sure, if you sit down to watch the 1998 "Bio-Zombie" with the hopes of being in for a serious and gory zombie movie, then you will be sorely disappointed. Indeed, because "Bio-Zombie" from writers Matt Chow, Man Sing So and Wilson Yip is a light hearted horror comedy that is sort of akin to "Shaun of the Dead" in some aspects, but actually managing to be very much different at the same time. Yeah, I know that "Shaun of the Dead" wasn't out before 6 years after this one, but they fall within the same category.

The zombie make-up and prosthetics in "Bio-Zombie" are low budget, very, very low budget. It looks unbelievably fake, and it doesn't even feel like the movie makers were even bothering to make it look realistic. But it somehow adds to the charm of the movie, especially since the make-up and special effects are so low key and low practical that is borders on being hilarious.

What makes "Bio-Zombie" work out great is the two lead performers, whom are Jordan Chan and Sam Lee. These two put on very enjoyable and memorable performances in this horror comedy, and they definitely were so well-casted for this particular movie from director Wilson Yip.

I suppose the fact that "Bio-Zombie" takes place inside an archetypical mall, as those you'd find all over Hong Kong, but very much archetypical for Mong Kok, then there is a nod towards George A. Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" here.

If you enjoy the Hong Kong cinema, and if you enjoy horror comedies or zombie movies, then you most certainly should give "Bio-Zombie" a watch, provided you have the opportunity.

With having seen the movie three times, I can say that this is still a movie that proves entertaining and enjoyable after 23 years. My rating of "Bio-Zombie" lands on a six out of ten stars.

How much you enjoy the whole Bio--Zombie experience will depend a lot on how you fare in general with Hong Kong comedy, since there is as much, if not more, silliness in this film as there is splatter. Personally, I find the Asian sense of humour rather hard to get to grips with: there's way too much facial mugging and silly slapstick for my liking. And with this film featuring plenty of both, and also starring Sam Lee, one performer guaranteed to get on my nerves (there's just something about his face that annoys me),I found myself growing tired of proceedings pretty quickly.

Lee plays Crazy Bee, a no-good slacker who, along with his equally worthless pal Woody Invincible (Jordan Chan) runs a VCD shop in a mall; when the guys aren't ripping off their customers with dodgy pirated copies of Stephen Chow movies, they're cruising the mall looking for hot chicks and ways to make easy money.

Their carefree way of life comes to an end, however, when the mall becomes the centre of a zombie outbreak, and making a fast buck and scoring with women come second to avoiding being eaten by the undead.

Those viewers looking for a completely insane piece of Hong Kong horror will probably be fairly disappointed by Bio-Zombie: the first half of the film features next to no zombie action, preferring to concentrate on following our unlikeable heroes as they wander the mall, argue with sexist shop owner Kui (Yiu Cheung Lai),and try to win the affection of hot-pants wearing sexpot Rolls (the lovely Angela Tong); and the second half, in which the walking dead finally begin to wreak havoc, lacks the sense of outrageousness that can be found in so many other HK films.

Towards the end of Bio-Zombie, things start to get a little better as the few survivors fight a bloody (well, slightly bloody) battle against an ever growing number of flesh-eaters, but it all arrives too late in the day to rescue the film. Even a delightfully downbeat ending did little to change my overall opinion of the film: 5 out of 10—decidedly average!

Horror comedy with uneven make up. Two slacker hustlers Working at a mall selling video games and VCDs and DVDs. When they run over a man fleeing from an escaped zombie (he was looking to get the soft drink like substance that turns people into flesh eating ghouls when it all went wrong and he fled and then got hit). The friends give him a sip of the "zombie" juice and then throw him in the trunk and head back to the mall unaware they've just started a zombie infestation. Best described as Dawn of the Dead in Hong Kong with a humorous eye, this is a movie that works in fits and starts and ends up just missing. The problem is that while there are nice touches like the zombie chef who loves an unaffected girl, our lead characters are real jerks and while that makes for some good laughs, it leaves you with no one to really root for, or people you're rooting for by default. So much for the antihero and snarky tones that some films take. Its not a bad movie just a disappointing one. Worth a look for horror aficionados.