Braindead (also known as Dead Alive in North America) is a 1992 New Zealand zombie comedy splatter film directed by Peter Jackson, produced by Jim Booth, and written by Stephen Sinclair, Fran Walsh, and Jackson based on an original story idea by Sinclair. It stars Timothy Balme, Diana Peñalver, Elizabeth Moody, and Ian Watkin. The plot follows Lionel, a young man living in South Wellington with his strict mother Vera. After Lionel becomes romantically entangled with a girl named Paquita, Vera is bitten by a hybrid rat-monkey creature and begins to transform into a zombie, while also infecting swathes of the city's populace.

Plot

In 1957, on Skull Island, zoo official Stewart McAlden and his team attempts to smuggle out a Sumatran rat-monkey, a hybrid creature that resulted from the rape of tree monkeys by plague-carrying rats. While fleeing from the island's warrior natives, who demand the creature's return, Stewart is bitten by the rat-monkey. The crew, fearing the effects of the bite, dismembers and kills him. The captured rat-monkey is then shipped to Wellington Zoo in Newtown.