A locally made, low-budget film featuring zombies suffering from Sars has been blasted as inappropriate and disrespectful by survivors of the deadly virus, which killed 299 people in Hong Kong 10 years ago.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome also infected 8,000 people worldwide and claimed 774 lives.
SARS Zombies - depicting Sars-infected people turning into zombies who then go on a killing rampage - was a shocking work of insensitivity, said Lam Chi-yau, chairman of the Hong Kong SARS Mutual Help Association.
"It's shocking that on the 10th anniversary, there is a movie that focuses on violence and a twisted depiction of Sars patients turning into zombies," he said.
The film's website describes it as a metaphor for Hong Kong's situation: a "sick city with an incurable virus; with problems like high land prices, government policies, a wide wealth gap and parallel-trader issues, all eating away at Hongkongers' spirit like the deadly epidemic".
But Lam said the film was disturbing for survivors and extremely disrespectful to the dead - some of whom were medical staff who heroically gave their lives for others during the epidemic in 2003.