SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD is Romero’s latest art installation of his alpha z-mythology, what’s under the umbrella of “del muerte.”
Mr. Romero begins with a philosophical query into the nature of human behavior under stress, as I perceive it, his dead films follow through on questions of human response to disaster & duress. His observation in cinema form fits the model of modern cable news cycles. Think about the ubiquitous distant spotlight on news anchors knee-deep in the fire, flood, terror, tragedy. Slowburn zombies are the stars today, and despite the occasionally mediocre elements,
SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD could absolutely play in black & white, as an old time 1950s creature feature. Something new and something old, that’s exactly what I crave for modern horror. Romero continues legit academic scholarship in the field of the literature of the living dead. 3/5 cannibals in cowboy hats.
Before seeing it with my own eyes, I heard rumors that REC 2 was a sci-fi sequel equivalent to James Cameron’s ALIENS. Honestly, I didn’t hear that, but I’m telling you now. Rumor this: there are plenty of pleasant similarities between REC II and the comic pulp action movie style of the followup to Ridley Scott’s ALIEN. Indeed, it didn’t disappoint. Fast-paced horror delivers in frightening pulses, and like ALIENS, certain elements of the original become amplified stylistically.
To start, I noticed the intro motion graphics for the sequel involves an animated number two squared popping over the previous logo like: [REC]2 , which struck me as oddly meaningless from a mathematical standpoint, but whateva. The sequel could stand completely on its own, although [REC 2] follows an identical internal movie clock of the previous [REC], constantly expanding on the mystery of the fast zombie disease and/or violence haunting which has rapidly overtaken an apartment complex in urban Spain. Try pronouncing ”zombie” in a Castilian accent. Sounds like “thombie.” Yeah!
Anyhoo, the original began with a small TV crew and a first response team of firemen with the unfortunate luck to reach the totally evil cursed-condos before anyone else, and thus getting locked inside by some supra-shady government organization. Here we start out with a group of SWAT-like special operative military types dude. They all have fancy helmet cameras, so that’s convenient for us.
Just like the many reboots of successful video game franchise HALF-LIFE, each time we’re shown through a new pair of eyes. REC2 start in the tightly confined space of an army transport and, like said video game, showing you various first-person-perspective camera work to get you adjusted before the real narrative begins. If you’ve seen the original, it will be especially fun to watch the narrative timing of the sequel collide with the original REC movie. Sadly, some big studio of idiots will likely poorly remake it in English like QUARANTINE, because they think Americans won’t read subtitles. Lame. I prefer the version en Español.
Witnessing a horror broadcast from small town radio feels like a dreamy jump in the past. Forget that! AM radio is saturated with timely terror. Unchecked hate all alive and well, manipulated by right-wing trolls to rally the uneducated troops around political failures like Sarah Palin and the Iraq invasion. PONTYPOOL steps in when the zombie genre needed a boost of lo-fi charisma, thus Infection has and will continue to remain the theoretical mode of undead communication, so long as sci-fiction and sci-fact grapple with the inevitably of our familiar human apocalypse.
Growing out of a small town in frosty rural Canada, the PONTYPOOL flavor of zombism reeks of social collapse. Communication becomes the killer means for infection: madness, murder, feeding. For all those haters claiming the genre of the comeback corpse dies an unimaginative death at every new zombie book, movie, video game. Wrong. No. Het. Incorrect. Sorry, the zombie story is continually reborn in new mythologies thanks to directors like Bruce McDonald and writers like Tony Burgess.
5 of 5 undead radio DJs. Watch it, you damn zombie!
You can make a lot of fake blood for $25K. In the movie YESTERDAY, director Rob Grant makes sure the audience get a healthy dose of old school makeup and monster FX, including but not limited to sticky red corn syrup squirting hither and thither.
Quality bloodwork means a lot on super grainy 16mm film stock. And while there’s something beautiful about cheap film, I can’t help but to think that $25,000 Canadian dollars would have gone farther shooting in an inexpensive proconsumer HD format.
Bad dialog and bad acting permeate the film. With the exception of a bullet hole POV cam, most of the shots stink of lazy photography. Two zombie feet (out of five rotten foots). View the trailer
Watching THE ROAD entertained me on a purely exploitation film, pulp comic, dirty magazine level. Cormac McCarthy, like 1930s radio drama THE SHADOW, knowz what evilz be lurch’n da hards o’ dah menz. If only some wise person would reboot the original radio series, detective stories in LOLCat speak.
Anyway, THE ROAD has zombies…of a sort. More like pseudo zombies. Unzombies. Ugly, messed up, malnourished humans in the fallout of an unspecified apocalypse. No food. Everything is tainted and covered in ash – very much in a SILENT HILL manner. In the face of the devastating societal madness that comes with human extinction, cannibalism becomes more and more reasonable.
This gets to the heart of what I love about the zombie narrative. Mass disaster = humanity under stress. Especially after the collapse, after the pain of the initial shock, right into the survival and acceptance as you navigate a new kind of existence. Watching any disaster movie, for me, involves the hypothetical question of my own survival potential.
Could I live with zombies clawing outside my door every night? Sure, at first. With time, would madness wash over me until I give up at high tide and throw myself to the hordes of undead?
In most cases, I come to the conclusion that I ain’t the hardy survivor of my post-humanity fantasies. Guess I better team up with some skilled zombie killers when the time comes.
Put a good curse on the rare zombie movie that won’t tow the creative line. As a zombie fan, I tend to expect the same old Romero rip-offs…maybe a bit faster, plus an over-explained viral conspiracy plot.
I grew up in a smallish Texas town and found salvation in the form of late night cable horror and VHS rentals based on whatever b-movie cover art looked the best. Hastings, Two Day Video,
The Revenant (2009)
Randall’s & Albertson’s Family video rental…BLESS Y’ALL. My friends would take turns paying the rental/late fees and generously offering their parents houses for weekly late night screenings.
Tapes rewound. Tracking adjusted. Popcorn & Dr. Pepper in hand. Horror movies, along with the good company of a few friends, saved my adolescence.
Back to The Revenant – an adventure to watch the characters discover a new, difficult-to-classify vampiric zombie lore. Iraq War veteran returns home in a casket and later shows up at a friend’s apartment. Weird, dark, undead buddy-comedy film gets stranger and stranger. The zombies in The Revenant are unlike all others I’ve seen before. They retain their cognitive abilities (despite decomposition), shoot guns, commit crimes and ingest copious amounts of drugs – which begs the question: Can the dead get high?
Good acting, good gore and comedic moments that stick like superglue. If this film doesn’t get the wide theatrical distribution it deserves, it will nevertheless be a huge sleeper hit at the rental store, Netflix, DVD, Blu-Ray, etc.
Four and a half zombie thumbs up for The Revenant & the unafraid filmmakers who build new mythologies from dead scratch.
So I’m thinking: “Why is this movie so goddamn good?”…And ya know what I found? That old Wiki sez:
The Revenant is written, directed, produced and by Kerry Prior, who also supervised the visual effects on the film. The film is co-produced by Jacques Thelemaque and Liam Finn and edited by Walter Murch.
Walter “Maniac Editor of APOCALYPSE NOW” Murch!!! Are you kidding me, Wiki? For the sake of Sweet Zombie Baby Jesus, no wonder The Revenant is so damn good.
Put a good curse on the rare zombie movie that won’t tow the creative line. As a zombie fan, I tend to expect the same old Romero rip-offs…maybe a bit faster, plus an over-explained viral conspiracy plot.
