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Otto; or Up with Dead People (2008)

tomatometer

33

Average Rating: 4.6/10
Critic Reviews: 6
Fresh: 2 | Rotten: 4

No consensus yet.

audience

50

liked it
Average Rating: 3.1/5
User Ratings: 1,301

My Rating

Movie Info

An gay teenage zombie falls in with a pretentious experimental filmmaker who casts him in a politically themed porno while documenting his experiences as a walking corpse in this existential gut-muncher from Canadian provocateur Bruce LaBruce. Adorable twink Otto (Jey Crisfar) was wandering the streets of Berlin and feasting on road-kill when avant-garde filmmaker Medea Yarn recruited him to appear in her latest film, a porno-political-zombie flick set during the gay zombie uprising. Gradually,

Unrated, 1 hr. 35 min.

Drama, Horror, Comedy

Bruce Labruce

Feb 10, 2009

Strand Releasing

All Critics (20) | Top Critics (6) | Fresh (9) | Rotten (13) | DVD (2)

Moviegoers with a LaBruce fetish will appreciate another imaginative offering from the filmmaker. Mainstream audiences should stay far, far away.

January 16, 2009 Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle | Comment
San Francisco Chronicle
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Otto deliriously intermingles sex and entrails but is also imaginative and witty

December 5, 2008 Full Review Source: Los Angeles Times | Comment
Los Angeles Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

LaBruce devotees will be tickled pink; others will be perplexed and/or disgusted.

November 7, 2008 Full Review Source: New York Post | Comment
New York Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

One of the more disciplined entries in the LaBruce oeuvre, Otto is sexy and silly in just the right proportions, a cult item with a real heart.

November 7, 2008 Full Review Source: New York Times | Comment
New York Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Campy but not comical, reactionary but not very clever, LaBruce's film is best saved for those tickled by the sight of homo-zombie orgies or the hardcore penetration of an open wound.

November 5, 2008 Full Review Source: Village Voice | Comment
Village Voice
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Canadian queer-cinema provocateur Bruce LaBruce continues his trademark blend of sexual explicitness and shoddy technique with his numbing necro-porno, Otto; or, Up With Dead People.

January 28, 2008 Full Review Source: Variety | Comment
Variety
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Zombies don't ever take bubble baths, not even gay zombies.

August 16, 2011 Full Review Source: East Bay Express | Comment
East Bay Express

Its metaphorical examination of the plight of queer zombies in Germany is readymade for former LaBruce fans. Get ready for copulation with a hole in the stomach and such memorable quotes as "I was a zombie with an identity crisis."

July 29, 2011 Full Review Source: indieWIRE | Comment
indieWIRE

Concessions to the audience's expectations certainly make Otto a more palatable viewing experience, but they also make it seem less dangerous.

February 15, 2009 Full Review Source: MovieMartyr.com | Comment
MovieMartyr.com

Sadly, this is one of those moments where I have to scan my reviewer's list of dismissive nouns to come up with the perfect word to describe this mess. Ah, yes, here it is: claptrap.

February 11, 2009 Full Review Source: Filmcritic.com | Comment
Filmcritic.com

Even more surprisingly poignant and intelligent upon repeat viewings, Otto is attractively rough around the edges.

February 11, 2009 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine | Comment
Slant Magazine

Veers between raw zombie cuisine, raw gay porn, high calorie sex that includes entrails-devouring as foreplay, and cranky anti-establishment rants against advanced capitalism. Not to mention that it's hard out there for a zombie too.

February 8, 2009 Full Review Source: NewsBlaze | Comment
NewsBlaze

LaBruce's film is such a riot of conflicting information and signifying styles that inner logic never really gets a grip.

December 5, 2008 Full Review Source: Los Angeles Daily News | Comment
Los Angeles Daily News

Some have described this as more cohesive than most Bruce La Bruce movies, but it's still sophomoric junk.

November 10, 2008 Full Review Source: Film Journal International | Comment
Film Journal International

Calling a zombie movie lifeless is bad enough. But when the charge is leveled at a gay zombie movie by Bruce LaBruce, queer cinema's most radical fairy, the disappointment cuts that much deeper.

November 5, 2008 Full Review Source: Time Out New York | Comment
Time Out New York

For a movie with this many ideological loose ends, Otto comes up with a convincingly sweet resolution.

November 2, 2008 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine | Comment
Slant Magazine

Veers between raw zombie cuisine, raw gay porn, high calorie sex that includes entrails-devouring as foreplay, and cranky anti-establishment rants against advanced capitalism. Not to mention that it's hard out there for a zombie too.

November 1, 2008 Full Review Source: NewsBlaze | Comment
NewsBlaze

When the viscera and seminal fluids are cleared away, there is something less flagrant but more durable resembling a beating heart inside this bloody stump of a movie -- a coded message to do with loneliness and loss.

October 31, 2008 Full Review Source: Boxoffice Magazine | Comment
Boxoffice Magazine

Bruce La Bruce's latest offering is a deadly affair of heavily politicized metaphors that overflows with imagination, angst and a smattering of good old fashioned porn.

May 2, 2008 Full Review Source: JWR | Comment

A genuinely touching horror-porn movie.

April 20, 2008 Full Review Source: Shadows on the Wall | Comment
Shadows on the Wall
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for Otto; or Up with Dead People

This film does a terrific job at eliminating audience members - weeding out the weak. Do not watch this film if you can't handle: gratuitous gore of the intestine eating sort, explicit gay sex (between zombies using fresh improvised gashes as sexual orifices), frequent cross-cutting of "reality" and "film", and

September 11, 2009
Stinger839

Super Reviewer

More than anything else, I think this film spoofs pretentious film directors who only like to make artsy-fartsy documentaries where they deal with more or less deep subject matters (being a zombie) through what they consider to be really thought-provoking means (gay porn). Don't despair during the first half an hour,

June 29, 2009
vierasesine

Super Reviewer

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Foreign Titles

  • Otto; or, Up with Dead People (DE)
  • Otto; or, Up with Dead People (UK)
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