Dead Howling review – werewolf hunts zombies in tough-love apocalypse horror

Every bog-standard cliche is employed – and fails – in this moribund Aussie thiller, which entirely lacks both bite and bark When talk here turns to what would happen if the film’s werewolf hero were bitten by a zombie, the term coined is “wombie”.

Sadly, this inter-species thought-experiment never comes to pass in this otherwise lifeless and crushingly derivative Aussie post-apocalyptic slog, the only point of note in which is a very brief cameo from Mr Once Were Warriors and Jango Fett himself, Temuera Morrison. He drops off his niece and nephew, Megan (Téa Heathcote-Marks) and Billy (Riley Stiles), before succumbing to a zombie pile-on. The pair quickly encounter Carter (Armie Hammer lookalike Joel Jackson), a hulking former scientist turned one-man undead clean-up squad who still can’t get his head around this bog-standard apocalypse: rampant virus, flesh-eating zombie hordes, overwhelming guilt over not saving his wife and child, etc. But this…