With the pending release of Survival of the Dead, we will have now seen George A. Romero's version of the Star Wars trilogy, but with zombies. Nobody questions the original trilogy (Night, Dawn and Day) are the pinnacle by which all zombie movies are judged. Dawn alone is one of the best horror movies of all time. But what of this new trilogy? Do we horror fans turn into geeky fan boy bashers when it comes to Romero's new take on his creation?
Think about how this so closely resembles that "other" trilogy.
The new zombie movies had:
1.) Big name actors (more so in Land than in Diary) 2.) Tons of CGI effects (CGI zombies, gore and splatter) 3.) Gimmicky film device (SOV, hand held camera shakiness) 4.) Special effects and big budget excess (both flicks) 5.) Lots of references to the previous films (both flicks)
And Land (2005), Diary (2007) and Survival of (2009) have all come out 2 years after each other.
So let's get into the thread of the week. Which film did you like better or do you think was better? Which one sucked monkey balls?
Will Survival of the Dead be better or worse than these 2 previous films?
the jaded viewer says: OK, the hype Land of the Dead receive was insane back in 2005. I mean it was Romero's first zombie flick since Day. And though it had its flaws, I dug it. I dug the characters, the setting and the zombies. And the satire is in plain sight no matter how obvious. It's about classism, the rich vs the poor, the haves and the have-nots. The fact the status quo somehow remained intact in the middle of a post apocalyptic world.
My gripes for Diary of the Dead can be found in my review. To sum it up I had problems with the 1st person camera thingy, the characters sucked, lack of splatter and gore and the nerve of George to explain to me about what he was satirizing in a voiceover.
Winner: Land of the Dead!
OK now it's your turn. Which movie did you think was better? And what are your thoughts of Survival? Will it be better? worse? the same?
I first read about Colin and it's $70 shoestring budget on CNN which has a interesting article about the film and its UK director Marc Price. Now that its premiered at Cannes and is getting hype among the horror-sphere I am intrigued by the set up.
It's a zombie film from the zombie's point of view.
Now's that's different. But on the proverbial flipside of the coin is the thing I hate the most. From what I read it's got that Blair Witch/Cloverfield point of view shaky cam also. Arghhh.
A movie POV where we are not tagging along with survivors sounds interesting to a point. I'll have to check this out when it gets distributed. You can check out the trailer below.
"Is this on? Are you taping? Keep taping!! Is my mic working? Damn this thing is out of focus!"
"OMG! What the hell is coming towards us?!?!?"
"Turn the camera light on!"
"Use the night vision!"
[Cut to something blurry]
"Run!"
[Camera shakes uncontrollably while running]
Where have you heard all this before? Yup it's another 1st person POV flick ala Cloverfield and Diary of the Dead.
Mind you if you read my reviews of those films, I hate this stupid sub genre of horror. You feel naseous while watching, they quickly pan over what they should be taping directly and it's just alot of shaky camerca shots while running.
But Rec actually pulls this off and makes a decent showing using this convention.
Hollywood also knows this which is why they are remaking this brilliant Spanish film into a movie called Quarantine.
I don't know what it was but at a relatively 1 hour and 10 minutes, I really did enjoy myself. I didn't feel vomity, they recorded stuff that should have been taping and there was minimal running camera.
When you do everything the opposite of what I hate, jadedviewer likes.
Boring Plot-O-Matic
A hot looking local TV reporter named Angela (Manuela Velasco) and her camera dude are doing a story about the fire department and the men who work there. Out of the blue, they are called to an apartment building where neighbors and police are investigating a screaming crazy woman. But chaos ensues and soon the building has been quarantined by the special police trapping all the residents, police and firemen.
We see Angela continue to interview the neighbors and videotape the chaos. A health official soon drops in and explains a lethal virus has been unleashed that seem to create violent zombie-ish corpses who spread the illness through bites.
Soon, the building is overrun and it's Manhunt, Manhunt 1-2-3. Angela and camera guy try to find a way out.
Awesome Review-O-Matic
Angela is hot. So seeing her in most of the shots was easy on the eyes. But Manuela Velasco does an awesome-rific job of being the fearless reporter and acting scared shitless. She's definitely the catalyst for the flick and if she couldn't pull off this performance, Rec would have been another movie in the used bin.
And whereas you always question the cameraman and why he doesn't help during the crazy chaos of whats happening....in Rec, our fearless camera guy Manu actually does some useful things. In doing so, the camera actually helps. Complete darkness? No problem, use the camera light. No camera light? Use Night Vision. Logical...I appreciate that.
The 1st 20 or so minutes sets up the chaos to come. The 2nd 30 is so minutes is everybody trying to find out what the fuck is going on and the final 20 is a survival horror at its best.
I particularly didn't like the ending as it came out of leftfield but it's satisfying like lemonade on a hot sunny day.
Influences
Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, Diary of the Dead, 28 Days Later, The Ring
Gore-ipedia
Bloody chomps on necks, old fat crazy lady wounds
WTF moment
The final 10 minutes
The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis
I'm still jaded by these POV flicks. I just don't really like em. But this is the first one that I actually sorta enjoyed that didn't have me beating my head against the wall.
The residents of the building were all very unique. A Chinese family, a woman and her sick daughter, an elderly couple and a guy off his rocker. At least they weren't hipsters.
A lot of hype will accompany this film and its Hollywood ripoff as the handheld "cinema verite" flicks keep giving birth.
I can honestly say I wasn't bored and I'm a nega-reviewer on these flicks.
Just remember when your in a life threatening situation, and you have a camera...keep recording. Because your battery will never die, you'll have endless tape and you'll always keep things in focus.
And after you die, all your friends will see the video of you in our last waning moments, actually know how big of a wimp you are and give them vague theories as to how you died.
If George A. Romero made a zombie-verse and Matt Reeves made an alien monster world, director Jim Mickle has made a rat monster utopia in Mulberry Street. It’s by far the better of the 3 movies either director made this year.
With a guerilla, docu-style and the nitty gritty look of NYC’s Mulberry Street as his backdrop, Mickle takes us into an apocalyptic city nightmare come true. Because as every New Yorker knows, the 2 things we hate the most are tourists and rats.
Our main “Ben” (aka lead character from NOTLD) is Clutch, a former boxer who lives in an apartment on Mulberry Street (it’s the main street in NYC’s Little Italy). With his friend Coco, they eagerly await for Clutch’s daughter Casey to return home from Iraq. We also meet the other tenants in this dilapidated complex, Charlie and Frank who are a couple of old timers and Kay, a bartender and her son. It’s never explained what caused the “sickness” that is making every New Yorker slowly turn into rat creatures but that’s not important. What is important is that we see a depiction of real New Yorkers dealing with a supernatural threat and basically doing what we always do, survive. There is no nauseating shaky camera, no annoying hipster looking for their girlfriend and no film students trying to film something so they can post it on YouTube.
What we do have is seeing the pseudo-realistic media coverage of a threat and the response to it with some very chilling scenes of attacks from a mass of rat infected zombies.
I know what you’re saying. Really? Rat creatures?
It’s not as cheesy as it sounds. The infected don’t develop RAGE like super strength or quickness but become, well more psychopathic and ratty. And boy are these creatures hungry and bloodthirsty. The tenants have to pummel and kick and fight thru the city streets in order to survive. These are all fast paced and suspenseful scenes and are quite well done.
Mulberry Street uses the same genre conventions of a Living Dead or a 28 Days Later. And even though they may be assembly line tricks of the trade, they work.
And that’s the fun of Mulberry Street.
Jim Mickle also takes a page from Romero’s satire handbook by not so subtly commentating on the world, post 9/11. More specifically, the slow government response to a Severe Red Theat Level event (the President was in Bermuda!) is an obvious crack at the government’s reaction and response to Hurricane Katrina.
The only negatives are that the movie does look a little like a 99 cents store. The acting was very plausible though the dialogue was a little dry. The special effects seemed to be Sci-Fi channel-ish and the darkness blurred many scenes into utter static. But on a meager budget, Mickle used quick shots, music video style editing and a couple of good gory bloodbaths to get his point across.
Mulberry Street is the biggest gem in the After Dark Horrorfest catalog. So if you didn’t like the zombie or giant lobster monster movies you watched this year, maybe enter the cannibal-rat monster-verse, it’s a cheesy movie you probably might like.
As this was a DVD, I was able to watch the extras as well. Here's a recap.
The Extras:
The extras are pretty bland in comparison to the movie. There are storyboards, 2 deleted scenes which pretty much sums up that most of the cut is the finished product. Also included are director’s Jim Mickle’s early sketches of scenes and of the rat monsters (which would make great background wallpaper). There are makeup tests which are hilarious as you can see the evolution of what the rat creatures were to become. Also, there are behind the scenes of ratty munching and outtakes which are always funny as this is a horror film about rat infected humans.
Finally there are behind the scenes of the rats that are featured predominately in the movie. From the looks of it rats never follow their cues and are so demanding with their list of outrageous demands.
Included in all of the After Dark Horrorfest DVDs are the Miss Horrorfest Contest webisodes. Think Surreal Life meets the Misfits. It’s a VH1 version of the Suicide Girls.
Diary of the Dead Diary of the Dead (2008) Directed by George A. Romero
Cloverfield with Zombies.
Oh George. Where were you trying to go with this one?
Suffice it to say, I didn't enjoy DOTD. The overall film didn't give me a happy like Land of the Dead where George with his all star cast and special effect zombie gore was like a good meal.
Here are my gripes in no particular order.
1.) 1st person perspective/multiple camera shooting type movies
I'm beginning to hate this film device with a passion. Cloverfield did it and it made me sick. Here the film is edited together from shot footage and for a zombie movie, this just doesn't work. The threat of zombies is seeing them in large masses. That's scary shit. They may be slow but in huge numbers your going to shit in your pants. The movie doesn't need this FPS type device to make it work. George could have made it without this crap and it would have been way better
2.) These characters suck and the acting was horrible
NYU-film school hipsters are worse than NYU hipsters being chased by a monster.
These characters are very badly written.
Jason (the director guy): Yo, you really gotta film everything? Seriously? I mean put the fuckin camera down and help your friends before they get eaten
Debra (the survival girl): She is a spitting image of Eliza Dushku. So annoying with her "I need to save my family" crap. I really wanted her brains eaten.....slowly.
Tony (a dude): ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
Tracy (hot Texan girl): She barely got naked.
Mary (victim girl): The "where's the religion" perspective
Maxwell (the snotty drunk teacher): ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. He can shoot arrows really well. Mummy guy, other director guy, etc.
I wanted all of these characters to die. All of them. I hated all of them. They were actually worse than the Cloverfield hipsters. That says a fuckin lot.
3.) Missing: Gore Gore Splatter Gore
A couple of good gore moments. Sickle through the face. Gunshots to the head are always good. Arrow through the head. Acid through the brain. And that was it?
George, we know you don't fail us with the gore and splatter. It's what we love your movies for. But where was it here? I hate this CGI zombie kill gore. It just doesn't look real. We need Savini (I can't believe I wrote that). We need good ole fashion blood pumps and pig intestines.
That was a monumental failure in this movie. Without gore and splatter and blood, it's not a zombie movie.
Where were the scenes of zombies just munching and lunching? I paid $11 to see that shit.
Finally............
4.) The satire doesn't need to be explained to me through a voiceover
Horror fans are smart. We appreciate satire in our horror.
We got it. We didn't need it explained to us.
Night was about the plight of blacks in America, Dawn was a crack at consumerism, Day was a reflection on the corruption of power and Land was about classism and how through the most dire of circumstances the status quo somehow remains the same.
Diary is of course about how technology and media separate ourselves from reality and the world we live in.
George, we didn't need Debra telling this us in monologue voiceover. We didn't need those scenes explaining to us that he's shooting the film but not taking part in it.
We get it. You kind of made me mad and assumed I wouldn't get it.
But that didn't save the movie.
Only George would do an homage to his own Night of the Living Dead in Diary.
Diary at the end of the day is perceived as a zombie movie with a gimmick. Romero is of course the creator and he can take his zombie-verse anywhere he wants to.
As I am still compiling my list of Top 2007 Horror/Underground Movies of 2007, below you will find the Top 6 anticipated Hollywood horror movies of 2008 with the trailers so you can be overhyped like the rest of us.
Neil Marshall, the director who gave us Dog Soldiers and The Descent is back with a futuristic 28 Days Later like scenario that can only be terrifying and scary as shit.
Release Date: February 15, 2008 (limited), May 20, 2008 (wide)
It's #1 because it's Romero + Zombies = AWESOMENESS. Did I mention it's freakin Zombies! The premise is all Blair Witch-ish but that won't stop this from giving us our zombie fix.