I haven't been writing in here at all lately. Part of the problem is that it seems like something you have to sit down and do, and nothing seems like it'd be interesting enough for me to bother commenting on. That isn't to say that my commentary is in any way unique or insightful, but by the time I hear of something and convince myself to write about it, it's been written about by everyone, everywhere.
That isn't to say that there hasn't been anything to write about. I could have written a review of the new Indiana Jones movie (better than Temple of Doom, not as good as Raiders or Last Crusade) or yammered on about the fact that if you get into a car-on-bike accident with a laptop (which wasn't my fault, other than biking in Chicago at night, as opposed to me doing something like riding my bike down the wrong side of the road) and then trying to get home in the rain a few months later will eventually kill it, followed by a review of my new sort-of-cheap laptop which is better than what I had. I could have commented on the whole “Lesbians At SafeCo” thing, but that would have been a rather predictable “People shouldn't be so frightened to talk to their children to explain what's going on, but the Mariners are a private organization and can tell anyone to leave for any reason, but they probably wouldn't have done it if it were a straight couple, but I'm bored of this and desire nachos.” I could have continued blogging about the whole “let's try not to be such a fatass now, shall we?” but given my penchant for nachos, that seems sort of hypocritical.
Thankfully, there are things that exist explicitly to get me to break out of these blogging slumps. And those things are really bad horror movies.
I don't think I've seen enough bad horror movies actually. The worst, I think, has got to be House of the Dead, which might be in my top three for worst movie I've ever seen, but that's Uwe Boll and hardly controversial. The worst premise has got to go to The Mangler, adapted from a Stephen King short story in which a laundry folding machine is possessed by a demon and starts killing everything. My standby, even for bad horror, is the zombie genre. There are a lot of terrible zombie movies (the copies of Undead and the more ancient and MST3K friendly Revolt of the Zombies remind me whenever I go by my DVD rack.) But there have also been a lot of fantastic ones. In what can be an abused genre, there is the basis of a terrific story. George Romero's Living Dead movies (at least the original three, and arguably Land are rich studies in social commentary. Ben's level-headedness and fate in Night and the Hari Krishna/Nun zombies as well as the dissatisfaction inside Monroeville Mall in Dawn are what make those movies terrific to this day. Day as well has some interesting insights into the authoritarian mindset and asks, essentially, “Who is a person?” with the Bub subplot.
So when I heard there was going to be a remake of Day of the Dead, I got excited. After all, the remake of Dawn in 2004 was a pretty good horror movie. They discarded more of the social commentary of the original than I would have liked, but overall, it's a fun zombie movie, done really well and very much in the style of 2002's 28 Days Later. Surely, I thought, this Day remake will be along the same lines, and I'll enjoy it and not spend the entire movie wishing for the sweet embrace of death.
Not so much, it turns out.
Netflix, which is my primary source for entertainment given that I don't subscribe to cable, had Day of the Dead on their “Instant Viewing” service, meaning that I could watch it streaming online without having to wait for it in the mail, wasting an actual mailing. I have never been more glad about that. I watched it last night while I was stuffing pipette tip boxes (a tedious task that's relatively mindless, and therefore something during which it's ok to watch a movie) and ... my God.
It's bad enough that it's the first movie that's compelled me to write a Netflix review. Let's start there.
Actually, let's start with this. There are going to be spoilers following this disclaimer. If you haven't seen Day of the Dead (and why should you?) and want to keep things a surprise, by all means, stop reading now. And then don't ever watch Day of the Dead.
It turns out that Day 2008 was initially supposed to be a theatrical release, but after poor reviews during screening, became a straight-to-video project. It discards everything about the original except very superficial concepts, like “the military is involved” and “Bub”, whose role is diminished and is confusing. It starts off as many zombie movies do. The military is quarantining an area in Colorado (which we eventually learn is because there's a virus that kills you, causes you to grow bad makeup and leap across the room, searching for a victim that's been released). There's initially no explanation as to why. People start getting sick. The family members of the protagonists start getting nosebleeds, and we all know what that means.
They'll turn into zombies within five minutes or so (though the timing seems to be kind of arbitrary, with some having enough time to be admitted and given a hospital bed and others, prominently “Bud” being left in a humvee for all of a minute). All hell breaks loose because, apparently, dying and reanimating now gives you goddamn super powers. It looks a bit cartoonish as zombies leap after their victims, but it's basically all lost when they start climbing bare walls and running along the ceiling like they're Spider-Man. I guess this is the next step after “fast zombies”.
Characters we don't care about (Mena Suvari and her brother, who have some sort of dispute in the past that's never actually explored, Ving Rhames, who was in the Dawn remake but is playing a completely different and unrelated character here, Nick Cannon, whose primary function is to run around playing bad-ass and making the lamest puns imaginable, and a motley crew of other survivors that are completely uninteresting) have to try to make it out of the town to, well, someplace that doesn't have zombies. What follows is about an hour of jumping out of windows, Nick Cannon getting a machete, Ving Rhames turning, getting up to eat his own eyeball for some reason (which raises the question of why zombies wouldn't eat other zombies, since apparently they're just really hungry) and Mena Suvari's boyfriend-that-she-met-literally-a-few-hours-before being bitten and reanimating and, for some reason that's not actually explained, being allowed to hang out in the back of the Humvee. There's a handwaving explanation as to why he's docile (“They must retain some bit of what they were, and Bud was a vegetarian”) and they never adequately explain why he's the only one in the town who doesn't immediately tear the flesh off the nearest person. They make it to a barn, then go down the road to the enormous military/medical bunker that's apparently in the side of the mountain in the middle of the woods to find a doctor who deserted them earlier and is working for the government, who released this on everyone. He explains that “certain people are immune to the virus, but if you're bitten that immunity goes away” (which I'm almost certain is now how viruses and immunities work) and shows a video which introduces Patient Zero, the doctor who was working on the virus. The protagonists try to kill him, but he dodges bullets. Because, you see, they retain something of what they were, and all biochemists are Neo from The Matrix.
Trust me. I work with a few and they're always going on about the struggle against the machines and the Architect and it's like whatever, man. Play around with your plasmids and let me eat my bagel in peace.
Anyway, yes. Neo Zombie and a horde of others chase our heroes (minus Nick Cannon, who thankfully finally gets killed by something) to a broom closet full of gas tanks, and what follows is an affront to both physics and special effects. One of the characters knocks the valves off of the canisters to release all the gas (which I'm almost certain would send them rocketing through the wall, not just sitting there slowly releasing their gas, given the pressure those tanks are under), while another lights a spark and the Magical Oxygen follows the zombies around, melting them the way nothing melts while leaving our heroes unscathed to go back outside, where everything's magically ok now. Somehow.
Which brings me to my final complaint. Ok. It's a terrible movie. Whatever. It's even got nothing to do with what it was claiming to be a remake of. Fine. But, and this is the same complaint I had with House of the Dead where there is no House, all of the events take place over about ten hours at night in Colorado.
So, Day of the Dead is not even set during a Day of the Dead.
There are a few “what the hell, why not” moments, mostly comprised of zombies flying over things or, the only decent scene in the film as far as I'm concerned, emerging from a bunker with automatic weapons firing wildly into the air (because you're damn right that's what I'd do if I were a zombie), and at least one memorable line (“What a dick!”, which is actually the most convincing part of the whole endeavor), but overall, it was miles and miles of awful.
So yes. Maybe I'll start writing here again.
Showing posts with label zombies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zombies. Show all posts
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Diary of the Dead
I was pretty sure this was going to happen, where I'd have trouble putting down my thoughts about Diary of the Dead. I wanted to do it right and almost bought a pen and a memo pad on the way to the theater, but decided against it. I should note first that it's incredibly bizarre to me that a movie made by the guy who essentially invented the socially conscious zombie movie is only playing in one theater in Chicago, and that this theater is somewhat inconveniently located, especially when the CTA has decided that for what seems like the fiftieth straight week, no trains are running northbound through the subways and it took an hour to get home. Again. Because the management focuses more on finding new places to renovate slowly and poorly while contemplating shiny new cars and ignoring the fact that they're talking about spending insane amounts of money while claiming that they're nearly bankrupt instead of, you know, making the trains run on time.
But this isn't about the trains.
This is about zombies, which are much more interesting and reliable. And occasionally on fire.
Oh, and I've got no training in film theory, so I'm just going to go along with probably missing a bunch of technical things and mostly talk out of my ass. You'll get over it.
First, a short review of what actually happens. I'm going to presume that if you're reading this, you will be doing so with the understanding that there may be spoilers. I'll try to keep it minimal, but if you are really excited about seeing this and don't want any plot points revealed, stop reading. There's one very near the end, but my complaint with the bit I'm analyzing is that it's so obvious from the outset of the film, so you can make up your mind as to whether or not you think that's enough of a spoiler for you not to read this. So yes. Diary of the Dead is presented almost entirely as "The Death of Death", a documentation of the events surrounding the beginning of a zombie outbreak made by a film student at the University of Pittsburgh (which answers my previous question as to whether this would have any ties to the city). He and a group of students that are filming a socially-conscious mummy movie in the woods near Pittsburgh (a not-at-all subtle nod towards Night of the Living Dead) decide to capture what's happening on film after hearing a radio broadcast that claims that the dead are rising and attacking the living. Most of the rest of the movie involves an incredibly long road-trip from Pittsburgh to Scranton by way of Winnebago which one of the students just happened to have in Oakland, apparently and how they deal with the problem that surrounds them. I'll get more into their specific actions later, but that's essentially all you need to understand what's going on here.
I said the other day that I was glad Romero was returning to the roots of the zombie outbreak and showing what happens at the beginning. I later realized that that's really the only place he really could have gone as far as pursuing a new direction in the chronology of the whole zombie outbreak scenario. He's already explored what happens in the middle of the outbreak (after the initial chaos, but before an actual response is formulated) in Dawn of the Dead, the military response to such an outbreak in Day of the Dead and the "zombies as the dominant species" in Land of the Dead. There isn’t anywhere really to go beyond that that doesn’t involve continually showing how the survivors are dealing with a prolonged zombie plague, and so it makes sense to “reboot” even if every other movie franchise there is has done the same thing recently. That said, I thought his depiction of the first few days was pretty solid. He addresses the issues uncertainty surrounding whether the people the protagonists kill are actually dead and the skepticism of a few of the group's members as to whether this is all actually happening, the stress this imparts upon the group, the film-within-a-film-maker's decision to try to make a documentary out of the situation and how this goes over with most of the people who just want to stay alive and the idea that they'll all have to adjust to living in a world where the undead are a constant threat. This, to my mind, is the most interesting part of the sequence of things that happen in most zombie movies, as the more it's clear that living humans are a besieged minority, the more it turns into a straight-up war movie.
What distinguished Romero's zombie films from the standard zombie horror has always been his ability at weaving bits of social satire throughout the plot. It's been more subtle at times (particularly in Night, which seems to me to be the purest horror movie of the series) and less so at others (addressing commercialism by sticking the movie in a shopping mall, for example). What I mean to say is that subtlety is not a sticking point for me. Sure, Dawn of the Dead is pretty explicit about what it's satirizing, but that's part of the reason I enjoyed it. With Diary, a lot of the social commentary is delivered through the voice-over of the girlfriend of the student who makes the film, often combined with a series of images that are intended to enhance the concept that an over-powerful government is spinning the reports of a zombie apocalypse (for unspecified reasons, presumably to decrease panic? I guess?) and that only through blogs and YouTube can the truth be disseminated. It comes across as something which has been tacked on and stated explicitly, rather than expressed through the narrative of the movie. Even in Dawn of the Dead, the parallels between the zombies and consumer culture and organized religions were expressed by isolating the protagonists for long stretches in a scenario where they had no material wants and then throwing Hari Krishna and nun zombies at them. There wasn't a voiceover telling you that the survivors got restless and realized that satisfying their needs by looting a JC Penney's wasn't enough. Unfortunately, that's the case for much of the voice-over for Diary. I'm not sure if there's a better way to do that if you want to make a point about media portrayal of disaster and the way the media and government work in general, but I'd have been more satisfied if it didn't feel tacked on at the end.
The reviewer for Slate criticized the movie for being "almost Luddite in its skepticism about the now-ubiquitous technology of information" which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing, though the constant references to YouTube and MySpace do get a bit tiresome and gave me the same feeling that I got from Live Free or Die Hard, that the person making the film is only vaguely familiar with what he's talking about and is trying too hard to relate to the younger viewer. (I should note that in saying that, I am in no way implying that Diary is as technologically ludicrous as Live Free or Die Hard. It's not. Everything that happens is actually pretty plausible. Except for the whole zombie apocalypse thing.) She further notes the inclusion of Samuel, a deaf Amish man as a hero as further commentary on the constant barrage of information and technology on the modern world, but this is exactly the kind of humor and satire that made me love Dawn. The scenes with Samuel, by the way, are easily the funniest of the movie and, while a bit confusing, rates as probably the best. The "corruption of those with power" scenes, such as the National Guard members stealing the supplies of the group at gunpoint also manage to make a salient point without having a voiceover, and I really wish that could have been more consistently what was going on throughout the movie.
As a zombie movie, you could do much worse. Many have done much worse. Romero sticks with his characteristic style of zombie, in that anyone who dies in a way that doesn't cause severe brain trauma reanimates (not just those who are bitten), that a zombie bite is fatal even if the bite itself, if received from another creature, would not have led to death, and zombies are slow, shambling creatures. He actually explicity states his preference for the slow undead by having the in-film director make reference to it, though he gives an explanation that differs from Romero's original rationale behind slow zombies. It's now "they'd snap their ankle off" rather than a misunderstanding of the phenomenon of rigor mortis, which is actually a worse explanation for me because it implies that the zombie is consciously choosing to move slowly. I've always been a fan of Romero's zombie more than the virus-ridden quick zombie of Boyle's 28 Days/Weeks Later because I think it ups the danger factor (by having anyone who dies reanimate, so that even seclusion in a group does not protect against the monster) and because a slow, lumbering mob that you know you should be able to get away from if it weren't for their sheer numbers scares me more as a thought experiment than ultra-fast zombies. Slow zombies, for me, carry with them a sort of brute-force determination that overwhelms because of their sheer numbers and the psychological terror of seeing someone related to the protagonist who has died and reanimated, but is more subtly a danger because they're not running at you screaming, but lumbering toward you looking for all the world like they person they were before becoming a zombie, which makes it much more difficult for the protagonist to go through with the whole killing thing. With a group of really fast zombies coming at you, it's really no different than if they were anything else that was fast and wanted to attack you. They could just as easily be angry tigers. There's no reason for them to be the reanimated dead, except that you'd become one if they got you, but that really isn't that terrifying to me, or any more terrifying than death. Romero's always been great at portraying the slow zombie as a terrifying creature, and Diary of the Dead is no different. He makes good use of the fact that the group is for some reason always wandering through the woods or stumbling through a darkened warehouse, though I wish he'd spent more time showing the claustrophobic nature of the Panic Room at Ridley's house near the end of the movie where those who have survived decide to "wait things out" or explain just how the hell the survivors edited the footage together and distributed it.
That was actually one of the few things that bothered me about the movie that I think would have been ok if I weren't from western Pennsylvania. Some of the errors confused me, as Romero, though born in NYC, has spent a large part of his life in the Pittsburgh area. So when it's taking two days to get to Scranton from downtown Pittsburgh (even through back roads, that's maybe an eight hour trip), somehow forgetting to drop the character that's going to Harrisburg off on the way (which is stated as the plan), claiming that a member's family should have beaten them back to Scranton (despite the fact that they were somewhere in West Virginia, which is a larger distance no matter how you slice it than Pittsburgh to Scranton) and that West Virginia is claimed to be "one hundred miles" away from northeast PA (it's more like four hundred). I just don't really understand the nature of those screw ups.
And it still bugs me that they had a Winnebago in Oakland somewhere. I've just... where do you park that?
Overall, I enjoyed it, but as I thought would be the case before I went, it can’t hold a candle to his first two. It’s an interesting movie, if a bit blunt with its points at times, and I’ll always prefer a Romero zombie movie to a lot of horror movies. I’d have liked the voiceover to have a bit less of an “added on” feel, though I suppose that makes sense with the movie’s premise and think that there were a few parts where it could have been a bit less predictable (Spoiler: If the voiceover is done entirely by the girlfriend of the person making the film rather than the person making the film, chances are he’s going to bite it at some point, probably near then end). It successfully mixes horror with the occasional comic relief (“Hello, I’m Samuel” and “I’m stealing shit.” spring to mind), while eliciting laughs in some places where they’re not intended (running over zombies on the way out of Pittsburgh, before it’s been established to the group’s satisfaction that they’re actually the living dead is intended to show the level of stress this causes, particularly between the driver of the Winnebago and the strongest skeptic of the group, but comes across as somewhat goofy as the zombies get knocked over like they’re pedestrians in Grand Theft Auto). I’d recommend going to see it, but try not to hold it to the unreachable standard of Romero’s earliest zombie films. I have a feeling for most of you, that shouldn’t really be an issue, so go to the theater if there’s one in the state that’s playing it and enjoy the carnage.
Oh, one more thing. There was one zombie in the scene where they're leaving the Amish barn that just didn't look like he was committed to the whole shambling thing. That annoyed me, and that actor should get no more work as an extra in zombie movies.
I think that’s easily the longest thing I’ve ever written for Murphspot.
But this isn't about the trains.
This is about zombies, which are much more interesting and reliable. And occasionally on fire.
Oh, and I've got no training in film theory, so I'm just going to go along with probably missing a bunch of technical things and mostly talk out of my ass. You'll get over it.
First, a short review of what actually happens. I'm going to presume that if you're reading this, you will be doing so with the understanding that there may be spoilers. I'll try to keep it minimal, but if you are really excited about seeing this and don't want any plot points revealed, stop reading. There's one very near the end, but my complaint with the bit I'm analyzing is that it's so obvious from the outset of the film, so you can make up your mind as to whether or not you think that's enough of a spoiler for you not to read this. So yes. Diary of the Dead is presented almost entirely as "The Death of Death", a documentation of the events surrounding the beginning of a zombie outbreak made by a film student at the University of Pittsburgh (which answers my previous question as to whether this would have any ties to the city). He and a group of students that are filming a socially-conscious mummy movie in the woods near Pittsburgh (a not-at-all subtle nod towards Night of the Living Dead) decide to capture what's happening on film after hearing a radio broadcast that claims that the dead are rising and attacking the living. Most of the rest of the movie involves an incredibly long road-trip from Pittsburgh to Scranton by way of Winnebago which one of the students just happened to have in Oakland, apparently and how they deal with the problem that surrounds them. I'll get more into their specific actions later, but that's essentially all you need to understand what's going on here.
I said the other day that I was glad Romero was returning to the roots of the zombie outbreak and showing what happens at the beginning. I later realized that that's really the only place he really could have gone as far as pursuing a new direction in the chronology of the whole zombie outbreak scenario. He's already explored what happens in the middle of the outbreak (after the initial chaos, but before an actual response is formulated) in Dawn of the Dead, the military response to such an outbreak in Day of the Dead and the "zombies as the dominant species" in Land of the Dead. There isn’t anywhere really to go beyond that that doesn’t involve continually showing how the survivors are dealing with a prolonged zombie plague, and so it makes sense to “reboot” even if every other movie franchise there is has done the same thing recently. That said, I thought his depiction of the first few days was pretty solid. He addresses the issues uncertainty surrounding whether the people the protagonists kill are actually dead and the skepticism of a few of the group's members as to whether this is all actually happening, the stress this imparts upon the group, the film-within-a-film-maker's decision to try to make a documentary out of the situation and how this goes over with most of the people who just want to stay alive and the idea that they'll all have to adjust to living in a world where the undead are a constant threat. This, to my mind, is the most interesting part of the sequence of things that happen in most zombie movies, as the more it's clear that living humans are a besieged minority, the more it turns into a straight-up war movie.
What distinguished Romero's zombie films from the standard zombie horror has always been his ability at weaving bits of social satire throughout the plot. It's been more subtle at times (particularly in Night, which seems to me to be the purest horror movie of the series) and less so at others (addressing commercialism by sticking the movie in a shopping mall, for example). What I mean to say is that subtlety is not a sticking point for me. Sure, Dawn of the Dead is pretty explicit about what it's satirizing, but that's part of the reason I enjoyed it. With Diary, a lot of the social commentary is delivered through the voice-over of the girlfriend of the student who makes the film, often combined with a series of images that are intended to enhance the concept that an over-powerful government is spinning the reports of a zombie apocalypse (for unspecified reasons, presumably to decrease panic? I guess?) and that only through blogs and YouTube can the truth be disseminated. It comes across as something which has been tacked on and stated explicitly, rather than expressed through the narrative of the movie. Even in Dawn of the Dead, the parallels between the zombies and consumer culture and organized religions were expressed by isolating the protagonists for long stretches in a scenario where they had no material wants and then throwing Hari Krishna and nun zombies at them. There wasn't a voiceover telling you that the survivors got restless and realized that satisfying their needs by looting a JC Penney's wasn't enough. Unfortunately, that's the case for much of the voice-over for Diary. I'm not sure if there's a better way to do that if you want to make a point about media portrayal of disaster and the way the media and government work in general, but I'd have been more satisfied if it didn't feel tacked on at the end.
The reviewer for Slate criticized the movie for being "almost Luddite in its skepticism about the now-ubiquitous technology of information" which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing, though the constant references to YouTube and MySpace do get a bit tiresome and gave me the same feeling that I got from Live Free or Die Hard, that the person making the film is only vaguely familiar with what he's talking about and is trying too hard to relate to the younger viewer. (I should note that in saying that, I am in no way implying that Diary is as technologically ludicrous as Live Free or Die Hard. It's not. Everything that happens is actually pretty plausible. Except for the whole zombie apocalypse thing.) She further notes the inclusion of Samuel, a deaf Amish man as a hero as further commentary on the constant barrage of information and technology on the modern world, but this is exactly the kind of humor and satire that made me love Dawn. The scenes with Samuel, by the way, are easily the funniest of the movie and, while a bit confusing, rates as probably the best. The "corruption of those with power" scenes, such as the National Guard members stealing the supplies of the group at gunpoint also manage to make a salient point without having a voiceover, and I really wish that could have been more consistently what was going on throughout the movie.
As a zombie movie, you could do much worse. Many have done much worse. Romero sticks with his characteristic style of zombie, in that anyone who dies in a way that doesn't cause severe brain trauma reanimates (not just those who are bitten), that a zombie bite is fatal even if the bite itself, if received from another creature, would not have led to death, and zombies are slow, shambling creatures. He actually explicity states his preference for the slow undead by having the in-film director make reference to it, though he gives an explanation that differs from Romero's original rationale behind slow zombies. It's now "they'd snap their ankle off" rather than a misunderstanding of the phenomenon of rigor mortis, which is actually a worse explanation for me because it implies that the zombie is consciously choosing to move slowly. I've always been a fan of Romero's zombie more than the virus-ridden quick zombie of Boyle's 28 Days/Weeks Later because I think it ups the danger factor (by having anyone who dies reanimate, so that even seclusion in a group does not protect against the monster) and because a slow, lumbering mob that you know you should be able to get away from if it weren't for their sheer numbers scares me more as a thought experiment than ultra-fast zombies. Slow zombies, for me, carry with them a sort of brute-force determination that overwhelms because of their sheer numbers and the psychological terror of seeing someone related to the protagonist who has died and reanimated, but is more subtly a danger because they're not running at you screaming, but lumbering toward you looking for all the world like they person they were before becoming a zombie, which makes it much more difficult for the protagonist to go through with the whole killing thing. With a group of really fast zombies coming at you, it's really no different than if they were anything else that was fast and wanted to attack you. They could just as easily be angry tigers. There's no reason for them to be the reanimated dead, except that you'd become one if they got you, but that really isn't that terrifying to me, or any more terrifying than death. Romero's always been great at portraying the slow zombie as a terrifying creature, and Diary of the Dead is no different. He makes good use of the fact that the group is for some reason always wandering through the woods or stumbling through a darkened warehouse, though I wish he'd spent more time showing the claustrophobic nature of the Panic Room at Ridley's house near the end of the movie where those who have survived decide to "wait things out" or explain just how the hell the survivors edited the footage together and distributed it.
That was actually one of the few things that bothered me about the movie that I think would have been ok if I weren't from western Pennsylvania. Some of the errors confused me, as Romero, though born in NYC, has spent a large part of his life in the Pittsburgh area. So when it's taking two days to get to Scranton from downtown Pittsburgh (even through back roads, that's maybe an eight hour trip), somehow forgetting to drop the character that's going to Harrisburg off on the way (which is stated as the plan), claiming that a member's family should have beaten them back to Scranton (despite the fact that they were somewhere in West Virginia, which is a larger distance no matter how you slice it than Pittsburgh to Scranton) and that West Virginia is claimed to be "one hundred miles" away from northeast PA (it's more like four hundred). I just don't really understand the nature of those screw ups.
And it still bugs me that they had a Winnebago in Oakland somewhere. I've just... where do you park that?
Overall, I enjoyed it, but as I thought would be the case before I went, it can’t hold a candle to his first two. It’s an interesting movie, if a bit blunt with its points at times, and I’ll always prefer a Romero zombie movie to a lot of horror movies. I’d have liked the voiceover to have a bit less of an “added on” feel, though I suppose that makes sense with the movie’s premise and think that there were a few parts where it could have been a bit less predictable (Spoiler: If the voiceover is done entirely by the girlfriend of the person making the film rather than the person making the film, chances are he’s going to bite it at some point, probably near then end). It successfully mixes horror with the occasional comic relief (“Hello, I’m Samuel” and “I’m stealing shit.” spring to mind), while eliciting laughs in some places where they’re not intended (running over zombies on the way out of Pittsburgh, before it’s been established to the group’s satisfaction that they’re actually the living dead is intended to show the level of stress this causes, particularly between the driver of the Winnebago and the strongest skeptic of the group, but comes across as somewhat goofy as the zombies get knocked over like they’re pedestrians in Grand Theft Auto). I’d recommend going to see it, but try not to hold it to the unreachable standard of Romero’s earliest zombie films. I have a feeling for most of you, that shouldn’t really be an issue, so go to the theater if there’s one in the state that’s playing it and enjoy the carnage.
Oh, one more thing. There was one zombie in the scene where they're leaving the Amish barn that just didn't look like he was committed to the whole shambling thing. That annoyed me, and that actor should get no more work as an extra in zombie movies.
I think that’s easily the longest thing I’ve ever written for Murphspot.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
How Did I Forget About This?
I've just gotten done preparing samples that I'm going to analyze, and I don't know if I'll be done before midnight, so I thought I'd put this up now.
I'm not one who claims to be exactly linked in to popular culture at large. I don't have cable (as I'm down with either watching things online at a network's website or waiting for Netflix to bring me television and it's way cheaper that way) so I tend to miss a lot of things, but I also try to keep up with news sources, radio and the intertubes. Having said that, I've let something slip so drastically that I fear that I might have to stop claiming to be an enthusiast of the genre. I am speaking, of course, of tomorrow's release of Diary of the Dead.
IMDB.com claims one of the other taglines is "Shoot the Dead" which I like for its "Hey Guys! Zombies!" straightforwardness, but I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a reference to something which is more conventionally done with the dead
For some reason, it was stuck in my mind that this was coming out in May. Apparently, that was completely wrong, and now I'll have to fit seeing (and then reviewing) Diary of the Dead into the weekend, which sadly shouldn't be too hard. I could write for a very long time on the subject of zombies in horror fiction, of my preference for slow zombies in the eternal slow (Romero) zombies versus Fast (28 Days Later) zombies which does not hinge upon the pedantic argument that Boyle's zombies aren't true zombies because they're not dead. I grant Boyle's zombies "zombie status" but still find the slower counterparts more interesting. And while I was disappointed with Land of the Dead, I'm not holding up high expectations for Diary. It's not going to be in the same league as Night or Dawn because those were simply astonishing blends of horror and social commentary (a bit more on the latter in Dawn) that it's unfair to expect Romero to match it, though I do maintain that largely avoiding the overt social commentary is what made me not like the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead all that much. The premise sounds a bit too much like Blair Witch Project with Zombies but I think if executed well, it should be an interesting twist on the origin-bit of the whole zombie tale and could provide an interesting device to follow the survivors who are, after all, what the story's really all about (a prime example of a story which executes this very well, in my opinion are the Walking Dead series).
I'll be interested to see, because I can't find much information online (in the time I'm giving myself to look for it) whether Romero continued to set his movies in Pittsburgh. That's always added a little bit to the appeal of his movies for me, if I'm able to recognize that sometimes, cemeteries in Evans City get screen time, that if there's a zombie outbreak, George Romero envisions the residents of Johnstown having a blast with the whole affair and that I can remember going to the Monroeville Mall on days when it was, thankfully, cleared of the undead. Even when he either set Day explicitly elsewhere, it was nice to know that it was filmed in Beaver Falls of all places, and Land let me know what downtown would look like from Mt. Washington if there were suddenly a giant citadel in the middle of it.
As I said, I could go on about that for a very, very long time, but I won't. I'll save that for the review, and for when I have more free time.
So yes. Expect a post on that soonish.
I'm not one who claims to be exactly linked in to popular culture at large. I don't have cable (as I'm down with either watching things online at a network's website or waiting for Netflix to bring me television and it's way cheaper that way) so I tend to miss a lot of things, but I also try to keep up with news sources, radio and the intertubes. Having said that, I've let something slip so drastically that I fear that I might have to stop claiming to be an enthusiast of the genre. I am speaking, of course, of tomorrow's release of Diary of the Dead.
IMDB.com claims one of the other taglines is "Shoot the Dead" which I like for its "Hey Guys! Zombies!" straightforwardness, but I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a reference to something which is more conventionally done with the dead
For some reason, it was stuck in my mind that this was coming out in May. Apparently, that was completely wrong, and now I'll have to fit seeing (and then reviewing) Diary of the Dead into the weekend, which sadly shouldn't be too hard. I could write for a very long time on the subject of zombies in horror fiction, of my preference for slow zombies in the eternal slow (Romero) zombies versus Fast (28 Days Later) zombies which does not hinge upon the pedantic argument that Boyle's zombies aren't true zombies because they're not dead. I grant Boyle's zombies "zombie status" but still find the slower counterparts more interesting. And while I was disappointed with Land of the Dead, I'm not holding up high expectations for Diary. It's not going to be in the same league as Night or Dawn because those were simply astonishing blends of horror and social commentary (a bit more on the latter in Dawn) that it's unfair to expect Romero to match it, though I do maintain that largely avoiding the overt social commentary is what made me not like the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead all that much. The premise sounds a bit too much like Blair Witch Project with Zombies but I think if executed well, it should be an interesting twist on the origin-bit of the whole zombie tale and could provide an interesting device to follow the survivors who are, after all, what the story's really all about (a prime example of a story which executes this very well, in my opinion are the Walking Dead series).
I'll be interested to see, because I can't find much information online (in the time I'm giving myself to look for it) whether Romero continued to set his movies in Pittsburgh. That's always added a little bit to the appeal of his movies for me, if I'm able to recognize that sometimes, cemeteries in Evans City get screen time, that if there's a zombie outbreak, George Romero envisions the residents of Johnstown having a blast with the whole affair and that I can remember going to the Monroeville Mall on days when it was, thankfully, cleared of the undead. Even when he either set Day explicitly elsewhere, it was nice to know that it was filmed in Beaver Falls of all places, and Land let me know what downtown would look like from Mt. Washington if there were suddenly a giant citadel in the middle of it.
As I said, I could go on about that for a very, very long time, but I won't. I'll save that for the review, and for when I have more free time.
So yes. Expect a post on that soonish.
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