I was originally just going to do a “Top 10 Horror Films of the Past Decade” list. However, once I started getting into it, I changed my mind. Instead of a list that would have focused on only a couple of strong years, I decided to pick the best horror movie from EACH year. Then I realized that there were way more BAD movies, so I figured I should list the best AND the worst from each year.

Although I stand behind this list 100%, I have to begin with a disclaimer: I haven’t seen every horror film from the past decade. This list will obviously include only those movies which I’ve seen. If you think this list is missing some important films (or if you just disagree with the picks) please let me know!
Other notes: Movies were categorized by the U.S. release date. And if the movie was labeled as “Horror” by IMDB, then it was included for consideration. If the movie was released straight to video, it was considered and reminisced about, but was not allowed to take a top spot.

Let’s go!!

Check out Part 1: 2000-2004

2005 BEST:

LAND OF THE DEAD

This is the fourth of George Romero’s “dead series”. I was afraid it was going to be bad, but I was wrong. If you like zombies and stuff, you should watch it.

2005 WORST:

ALONE IN THE DARK

Once again, Uwe Boll saves Rob Zombie from winning the number one slot. I really wanted to put The Devil’s Rejects here, but Jesus… it might take a genius to make a worse film than Alone in the Dark.

Other movies being considered:
Sasquatch Hunters: a direct to video bag of sewage.
Feast: the film made during Project Greenlight 3. Very run of the mill.
Constantine: Awful. If you ever want to be upset, just pop this in.
The Gingerdead Man: Well… it’s obviously bad!
The Amityville Horror: Man… I don’t really care for the original, but this one is quite a bit worse.
High Tension: Lots of people love this one, but I thought it kind of fell flat.
White Noise: Michael Keaton listening to EVP recordings. Not awful.
The Ring Two: Yes… it’s not worth watching.
The Exorcism of Emily Rose: This film is not bad. Probably one of the better movies involving demonic possession.

2006 BEST:

THE DESCENT

This year sucked. It took me a long time to come to a decision on this, and although The Descent is not a movie I would describe as “a great horror film”, overall, it’s a better film than any of the others that I could think of from 2006.

2006 WORST:

THE LAST WINTER

I was sure that See No Evil was going to win. I mean, what can be worse than a generic horror film made be the WWE and starring Kane?! Well… The Last Winter can! At least See No Evil was entertaining…

More movies from 2006:
Dracula’s Curse: “there was a sweet scene where john harker was driving to romania in his little red convertible, while 80’s hair metal was playing.”
The Hills Have Eyes: The original is fun. This one is not fun.
The Omen: Another remake made for no good reason.
Silent Hill: I enjoyed this. Sure, it’s a stupid video game based film, but it has its moments.
Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead: A troma film. What else do you need to know?
Final Destination 3: This one strays a bit from the story of the other two Final Destination movies, but still maintains the dumb fun of the series.

2007 BEST:

BUG

Crazy people getting CRAZY!! I think this movie deserves more respect than it gets. Give it a shot if you like getting crazy!

2007 WORST:

DIARY OF THE DEAD

GODDAMMIT ROMERO! WHAT HAPPENED?! You’ve let us all down.
HERE’S A REVIEW I WROTE AFTER WATCHING IT!

If you don’t believe me, here’s what Matt had to say:

“I think Scott is really wrong in his appraisal of Diary of the Dead by George Herbert Walker Romero. He makes it seem like it’s pretty bad. He claims the actors seem to have been chosen by ‘lottery’. Whatever. Don’t believe him. The truth is that Diary of the Dead is the
BIGGEST LETDOWN OF ALL TIME”

HERE’S THE REST OF HIS REVIEW

Other movies that were considered:
Grindhouse: Both of these movies were a lot of fun. I would recommend them.
I Am Legend: This movie… ugh. fuck you!
Hostel: Part 2: I challenge anyone to make a bigger waste of time.
Hair Extensions: This is a fun Japanese horror film about killer hair extensions.
28 Weeks Later: I liked this one, but it’s nothing like 28 Days Later. Beware!
[rec]: They remade this and called it Quarantine. Don’t watch that one. Watch this one.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: Another fun movie. I guess this year wasn’t too bad?!

2008 BEST:

THE ORPHANAGE (aka el orfanato)

Another Spanish orphanage ghost story, and another winner. No big scary monsters or crazy effects, just effective storytelling.

2008 WORST:

DAY OF THE DEAD

Oh bother. Remakes are always bad. Remakes of classics are especially bad. Remakes that just use the name of an old movie to capitalize, and then put a completely different film underneath, well… they have a special place in hell.

The only other film in the running:
The Happening: this film fits perfectly in the slot between good and bad.

2009 BEST:

DRAG ME TO HELL

Sam Raimi’s return to horror. And what a great return! I was nervous, but this is a really well done film.

2009 WORST:

THE THAW

I didn’t hate this film, however it was obviously a lower budget film, and I tend to give these a lot more leeway. Friday the 13th was also in the running, but was more entertaining overall.

The only other movie I saw this year (sorry):
Let the Right One In: I enjoyed this, but I also had some problems with it. It’s good, though!

Sorry about these last couple of years being so low on contenders. If you know of some really good films that I should watch, please let me know!

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scott

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• Movie Challenge 2005: Chapter 9
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Director – George A. Romero

Cast – Michelle Morgan, Joshua Close, Shawn  Roberts, Amy Ciupak Lalonde, Joe Cinocol, Scott Wentworth, Philip Riccio, Chris Violette, Tatiana Maslany

Release Year – 2007

Reviewed by John of the Dead

This film is George A. Romero’s fifth entry of his “Dead” series, and is definitely his most unique installment for obvious reasons: it is told in the pseudo-documentary form made popular by films like The Blair Witch project and REC.  I was quite surprised when I saw that this legendary filmmaker was going for this aspect of film, but he once again surprised us all and was able to give us a unique film thanks to his constant successful use of social commentary in his flicks.  This film is told in the pseudo-documentary form for a reason, and watching this film will tell you why.

Diary of the Dead follows a group of film students making a horror film in a forest.  One night during filming they are interrupted by a buddy listening to news broadcasts about the dead coming back to life at hospitals, crime scenes, and morgues.  The group decides to end the shoot and go back to the city to see what is going on.  Upon returning to their university they notice that something bad has definitely been going on and calls to their families prove fruitless due to cell phone towers going out.  The young students then decide to hit the road and try and locate their families on the way but many obstacles occur and they get a taste of what has caused so much global panic.

I really do not understand why this film has gotten so much hate from horror fans.  Sure this is not Romero’s most solid installment to date, but it is not a BAD film by any means.  If you really look into the film’s subject matter, and the statement Romero is trying to make, you will understand why he went the route he did with this film.  As you should already know, George A. Romero is known for his big use of social commentary in this film, and this film tackles the media and our current digital age, which is EXACTLY why this film is shot the way it is.  I loved how we are shown the media’s focus on violence and how easily cover-ups are concocted to conceal horrific events.  Pay attention to the news broadcast of the military general giving the cover-up, the military general is none other than George A. Romero himself! The use of character Jason Creed in this film goes to show how documentary filmmakers and investigative reports will take all risks to “spread the word” of atrocious events they feel they are called upon to bring to the surface.  This caused much conflict in the film and I liked that because it shows how these types of people can actually do harm by having this attitude.  You’ll see.

Fair warning: if you have not viewed any of George A. Romero’s previous “Dead” films, I suggest you not watch this film unless you really understand what I just said in the previous paragraph.  This film is not the proper way to be introduced to Romero’s films because you simply do not have the understanding of how his films work and what to expect from this maestro of horror.  If you view his earlier work then you will have something to compare this film to, it will make more sense,  and will ultimately help you enjoy this film more.  If you watch this film before watching his other films then do not make attempts to weigh in on Mr. Romero until you have seen his other works first, and THEN watch this film again afterwards.  It will change your perception and open you up to this brilliant man.

Romero’s direction in this film is positive, and he once again doesn’t skimp out on the gore.  This film being told in the pseudo-documentary fashion is unable to capture as much zombie action as his previous installments due to nearly all of the film being shown from Jason’s point of view, but we still get enough to remain fulfilled.  The writing for this film was interesting, especially because this focused more on having our characters in different settings throughout the film.  This is a big advancement as far as Romero’s writing goes because his previous “Dead” films all took place in one or two locations with the characters taking residence in the film’s final location about halfway through the film.  The use of all these different sets and locations in this film made it a fun watch and is what really kept me into the film.  One thing I noticed about this film is that there is very little firearm action, which kind of sucked.  I understand that these are film students and do not have much access or knowledge with firearms, so I won’t dock this film for that.  It is just that with this film following Land of the Dead, which had TONS of firearm action, it was a complete 180 in that aspect, which is actually quite cool and goes back to Romero’s original Night of the Living Dead which left the characters to fend for themselves without much firepower.

I did not have any major gripes with this film either, but I was a bit annoyed with the character Jason Creed, who helms the camera in this film.  Some of his actions really seemed outlandish, and uncharacteristic of even the most decent of human beings.  I understand he was obsessed with getting footage to “show the world what is really going on”, but for him to let this get in the way of helping his colleagues when there is no one else to help them is pretty ridiculous.  Of course this is part of Romero’s point that he is trying to make about digital heroism, so it pretty much had to go down this way.  My other gripe with this film is the same gripe that I had with Land of the Dead, there is no big ending!  The film does have a positive climax, but it pales in comparison to the climaxes of Night/Dawn/Day of the Dead.  I hope he finally comes out with an awesome climax for his newest “Dead” film, Survival of the Dead, which has yet to release theatrically here in the US.

Overall, this is a positive watch that I am sure some Romero fans will not enjoy because of how it is told, but look a little deeper into what this film is set to do, and you will understand why.  Regardless, this gives us an interesting take in the zombie genre and once again shows that Romero is king.

Rating: 7/10

Like zombies?  Like horror?  Like to get a free book for the New Year?  Well you’re in luck because I’m giving away a FREE copy of “Tales from the Uprising”.  All you need to do is go check out the author’s page at my site to find out how you can be eligible.

In as many words as you can string together, tell me how you would survive an outbreak of zombies in detailed plans.  I’ll randomly choose a winner, runner-up and place. 

First place:  A free signed copy of “Tales from the Uprising” burned on CD (with some bonues) a starring role as a zombie in the next book “Dead Zone: Youngstown” and a free copy when it comes out in 2010.

Second place: A supporting role as a zombie in “Dead Zone: Youngstown” and a free copy when it comes out in 2010.

Third place: A free copy of “Dead Zone: Youngstown” when it comes out next year.

Easy isn’t it?  Well what are you waiting for?  Get to writing and send your submission to:

christophercnewman@att.net

Good luck…and stay hungry!

Chris

You know those typical horror mass-infection movies? Resident Evil, 28 Days Later, Diary of the Dead, and so on? Left4Dead basically lets you play out that sort of story. And it’s fun – serious fun – mowing down wave after wave of zombies with high-powered rifles. It’s mindless, really – typical rail shooter, no puzzles, just gunfire. Perfect relaxation game.

Left4Dead Title Screen

It’s based on Source, so it feels pretty much just like Half-Life 2. Just with less enemy types and more shooting. Loads more shooting. And blood – don’t forget the blood. As with most of the better games these days, it’s available over Steam.

I’m going to do a best of the decade in late December, along with my best and worst of the year. However, as I’ve been useless recently, and Xi and Wolf have got their lists started I thought I’d chip in with my bottom of the decade list.  Which I feel I can do because I don’t think I’ll see anything worse than this lot before the year end.

This isn’t actually as easy as it sounds. Honestly. I had to narrow down a longlist from about 1000 pieces of absolute garbage. To be absolutely fair, I’m going to define the rules first:

1) These are all films without a single redeeming feature

2)These must be films that aren’t just bad but offensively awful and manage to piss me off in some way.

3)No more than one Superhero film can make it- I could quite easily have filled the list with about 10.

4)Only 1 of original and sequels can make it.

5No Platinum Dunes remakes. I could have filled the list with them

Anyhow, criteria defined- here we go. In reverse order:

Dishonourable Mentions:

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of The Crystal Skull, The Terminal, Van Helsing, Cabin Fever, Head Cheerleader Dead Cheerleader, Countless Superhero movies, Watchmen, Transformers, Matrix Sequels, Twilight, Scary Movie 2, Get Over It, The Sweetest Thing, The Last Kiss, Hannibal Rising, The Da Vinci Code, Poseiden, Oceans 12, Rob Schneider’s canon, The Cat in The Hat, Kill Bill 2, The Pirates of The Caribbean Sequels, Shrek 2 and 3, Swordfish,  The Heartbreak Kid, Battlefield Earth, anything with Eddie Murphy/ Martin Lawrence  in a fat suit.

*edit*

Since I wrote this I’ve been reminded of these other stinkers, that are actually worse than DM, but not quite bad enough to make it into the top 10:

Atrocious, but not quite top 10 level

14) Smokin’ Aces

A festering load of wank, this. Alicia Keys as a possibly lesbian hitwoman and a group of other dickheads try to murder a smug magician cunt. Absolutely diabolical, and proof that Carnahan is on a one man mission to fuck his own credibility in the ass.

The film that somehow manages to be worse than Shoot ‘Em Up.

13)9 Songs

Utter shit. Basically, just a slightly more explicit porno than Lust Caution. The reason it loses out to Ang Lee’s magnum snoozefest is that the chick in it shaves her armpits. Mediocre music combined with characters that aren’t so much ciphers as vacuums and the most explicit sex outside of hardcore porn.

To be honest, you’re better off putting on some music you actually like then watching hard core with the sound off.

12) Diary of the Dead

Romero proves Renton right once and for all: “You get old, you cannae hack it any more then you die”. All that’s left is for him to die.

Utterly dreadful, the central character is a complete cunt and he’s not alone. Romero needs to retire. However, like Xi, I’ve got battered wife syndrome with it, and will no doubt watch his next film.

11)Inland Empire

Unwatchable. Like putting your brain in a blender. As much fun as having your nipples electrocuted while some cunt asks for help with The Times crossword. By the end of this pretentious garbage you will be bleeding from the ears and your frontal lobe may have killed itself to relieve the pain.

The 10 Biggest Bags of Shit in the Last 10 Years

1o: Death Proof

Catastrophically dreadful. Completely boring. Totally useless. What the fuck was Tarantino thinking? This was billed as some kind of 70’s Grindhouse experience. It isn’t. What it is is hours and hours of boring self-indulgent women talking Tarantino (proving once again that he can’t write for women) before a ham fisted car chase. However, what makes this film a platinum stinker is that the climax of the film involves Kurt Russel crying.

Go and fuck yourself Quentin, you cunt. This is our Kurt, this is Snake Plissken, Macready, Jack Burton and you’ve made him cry. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your arsehole.

Absolutely unforgivable.

9: Lust Caution

The film that finally confirmed to me that I just don’t like Ang Lee films. A UK critic coined the term “Boredom Porn” to describe it and he’s completely right. It redefines dull for an hour, then there’s some nasty sex between two unlikable twats for an hour. Then it ends.

Dreadful. If you want to watch two people fucking, watch porn. Strictly for people too embarrassed to purchase dirty films. Or for dwarves to small to reach the shelf with real porn on it.

8: 2 Days in Paris

Before Sunrise was wonderful. Before Sunset was even better. This is, however, atrocious. Someone told Julie Delpy that she had some talent for writing, so she rips off those 2 films wholesale. Except for one thing, one tiny, important detail: the characters in those 2 films weren’t complete and utter cunts. Boring exposition following 2 self-indulgent twats around Paris. Julie Delpy’s character in particular is such an obnoxious bitch that I’m amazed he didn’t dump her yonks before the break up at the end.

Seriously, she shows naked pictures of him to her parents. And expects him not to be upset. And as if that wasn’t insulting enough- it turns out this is a picture she takes of all her boyfriends. Cow.

Oh, and there are far too many gratuitous cock shots of Goldberg.

7: Hostel

A plague on torture porn. This is, in my opinion, the absolute worst of a genre that frequently rips up the bottom of the barrel and then burrows towards the Earth’s core. The whole plot is simple: unlikable assholes get tortured to death in Europe. It fails for several reasons but most importantly, that you just don’t care about the people getting tortured. Diabolically bad, relentlessly dull and proof positive that that terminally useless cunt Eli Roth couldn’t direct piss into a urinal without help.

6: Funny Games

Personally, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t like being told I’m a complete cunt for watching a film by the fucking director of said film. Boring rubbish with delusions of grandeur and a completely pointless remake to boot.

Did I mention that it’s the only film I’ve ever seen to tell me I’m a cunt during the film?

5: Attack of the Clones

There’s been so much written on the Star Wars prequels in general (fuck you Lucas you soulless cunt), and yes, it is true that they do suck and probably did interfere with everyone’s favourite childhood memories. This one however, manages to comfortably be the worst of the 3. There are so many different reasons that this film makes this list, but I’ve included it because it’s the only film that I have ever successfully got my money back from the cinema for. That’s how bad it is- I managed to get Camden Town Odeon to refund me after the film.

And no, the last half an hour of it is not good- unless Yoda bouncing around like a demented ping-pong ball floats your boat.

4: Shrooms

I ACTUALLY OWN THIS PIECE OF SHIT AND CAN’T BRING MYSELF TO THROW IT OUT.

I admit it. I fell for the tag line. I’m a complete and utter cunt.

Dismal, predictable, ridiculous, boring, stupid, annoying, badly written, worse direction and just not scary. For some inexplicable reason they do a “hallucinogen cam” that just induced a migraine in me. If you can’t work out who the killer is within three seconds of turning it on then you should be banned from watching horror films.

Luckily, I saw this after OUTLANDER (motherfuckers), because if I hadn’t then the presence of Jack Huston in Outlander may have stopped me from seeing it. And that would have been tragic.

And now for the top 3 hall of shame:

3: Spider-Man 3

The presence of this film here in absolutely no way validates Superman Returns.

Ouch. This is the 21st Century equivalent of Batman and Robin. To be absolutely honest, it was a toss-up between this and Superman Returns for this spot, but this gets the honour for the following reasons:

1)Dunst sings. Twice

2)Tobey Maguire struts his funky stuff.

3)Tobey Maguire dances.

4)Sandman kills Uncle Ben (nb- I usually don’t give a fuck about abusing funny-book canon, but this was daft)

5)Plotholes you could park the QE2 in.

6)Sympathetic villain that wasn’t sympathetic.

7)Far too much crying.

8)Incomprehensible final fight scene with annoying cut away to reporter telling us what’s going on, as clearly we don’t want to see it in a film called Spider-Man 3. No, we came for the song and dance numbers.

9)For some inexplicable reason Spidey fights a Power Ranger.

10)Butler with the power of Wikipedia who only exists to explain the whole plot to Harry.

I could go on and on with this, but you get the idea. Raimi just clearly didn’t give a toss, and I suspect that it was that massive cunt Arad’s fault for shoe-horning Venom in.

Spider-man 3 is just a shit film, and very, very nearly a franchise killer.

2: Sex and the City

This is actually a contender for number one. Not just a bad film but a truly dreadful effort that reeks of cash in. Who in their right mind wants to follow 4 horrid self-indulgent cows in their various and terminally boring adventures.  Not to mention the fact that the damned thing is over 150 minutes. This film is nothing short of offensive- every male character, bar one that gets appallingly treated by slut in chief, is a complete cunt and don’t get me started on the women.

Bear in mind that nothing of any interest to man or beast happens in that time.

Mrs. Jarv, in a moment of weakness that got her Lovefilm privileges removed for 6 months rented this. Even she admitted it was shit.

1: Alien v Predator: Requiem

Fuck me. Where to begin?

How about this- setting it on Earth in the present day. Or what about the fact that some cunt forgot to turn the lights on when they were shooting? There isn’t a redeeming feature to this fetid pile of garbage.

However, the real reason it’s number 1 in the Hall of Infamy is: The Predalien

Who in their right mind thought this piece of depressing fanboy wankery was a good idea? Who? Tell me, and I’ll feed them their own entrails.

A bad idea, poorly executed and even were the rest of the film as good as Alien (which it isn’t) then this would still be enough to make it the worst film of the last ten years.

However, when you add this little touch to the aforementioned poor effort, then you get what I think is the worst film for the last 20 years.

Alien v Predator: Requiem is a film so bad that it makes Uwe Boll look like Stanley Kubrick.

If anyone wants to give me more suggestions, then I’ll gladly expand this- it’s fun to do and I can summon up some real hatred for a lot of these films.

Cheers

Jarv

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Next Day Air

What can i say, anything with mos def in it is Gold, just kidding, this movie is just ok, its just like a black shortened version of Snatch. Id say most of you never even heard about this movie, but its got a pretty star studded cast; you got Julius from remeber the titans, you got dude from scrubs, some hot latina girl shes not famous but id just like to point out that shes foine, and of course you got mike epps who seems to be in every black comedy, and dont forget the evil mexican guy but who knows his name? noone.  watch this if you are bored out of your mind and need some visual stimuli, it wont blow you away it wont actually do anything to your thought, your mind equilibrium will be at the same place you left it when you pressed play. What is cool about this movie is that the one dude who you… oh wait THE OLDER BROTHER FROM FAMILY MATTERS IS IN THE MOVIE, ok anyways the one dude who you want to live, lives, this semi good looking charming 50 cent kevlar wearing dude lives, YAY, but the dumb fuck stoner dude who is weak and pathetic also lives, so basically you have to live with that at the end of the movie.  whatever.

Monsters Vs Aliens

I could find no worthy alternate movie posters, cause i like putting up alternate movie posters.

So after Bee Movie and fucking terribad piece of shit cunt rag Kung Fu Panda, i really didnt want to watch anymore fucking animated movies, you know before movies like Toy Story and  Shrek were animated masterpieces, they were like 16th chapel kind of spunk, 10 years in the making kind of work. Now they fucking pop em out like a case of day after munchies crapathon there is no gold standard anymore, the market is just overfilled with these shitty animated films now. But for some reason out of nothing to watch i watched Monsters vs Aliens, when im skeptical about a movie i do a brief skim of the movie on my computer you know just like take a peeky weeky at some scenes, like when you got to a beach yaddamean. So i came upon this scene.

Beverly Hills cop anyone? who doesnt like axel foley mang, come the fuck on, thats a great fucking scene, so i watched it and i was very pleased and very amused during the whole time, with little giggles and monstrous chuckles. Its a good flick, young old, watch it. The famous people they had doing voice overs, actually played a role not like that fucking retarded kung fu fat fucking bear movie. The story was simple, the battles were epic, and the story is played close to home.  Fucking Jack Bauer is in it, enough said, just kidding that usually wouldnt be a winning point, the movie is good, watch it.

there was a 30 min halloween special, not that good, but the movie is good.

…fuck watched allot of movies, oh yeah i went into like Zombie mode and wanted a good fucking zombie movie, but yeah

Diary of the Dead

I just dumped a harvester in the toilet and it smells awfully dead. So, you know im a pretty big skeptic of Romero, you know the zombie father, the one who started the Zombie panic in the film industry, dude whatever, hes like Grandmaster Flash, starters of something great, but truthfully really stink at what they do, dont get me wrong mad respect, just they dont got the skills to make what they started into something retained and beautiful. So Romero got into a binge of making kind of like a new “dead’ series from what i can see and from what minimal information the wiki says on him, so hes made a couple of new films, and from my site the one i dl my movies from this one had the most dl, suggesting its probalby the best one or the most sought/watched one. I watched it, thought it wasnt bad, HEY MAN ROMEROs finally caught up to the standard. oh how wrong was i. but this movie was good, the one i watched after was  a shit show. Romero likes to do allot of things with society, he kinda of does this whole naration this sarah conner experience, and it eludes to this media socialism, which fucks everyone during the rise of the dead. This panic with the media, is all this shit fake or real, if the media did a big practical joke and sent this shit out through all outlets, would it be chaos, or just a big laugh. Its humorous, its got some good explanations, and a bunch of god references, overeall its enjoyable. The camera work is done in a pretty crafty way, though its clear that the film was lacking a budget. It got me thinking a little, it had some Zombie survival guide moments which is always a plus, but overall its the best  on the market right now like in Requiem when they try to get the drugs cause thats all thats on the market, pysche Zombieland trumps this, but to me not by much.

Day of the Dead

with such a cool poster, you think theyd have a good movie, but fuck no. I looked at the stats you know like oh its got Ving Rhames oh its got Mena naked chick from American Beauty(btw thats a fucking weird name Mena Suvari). Fucking Ving he did great in Dawn of the Dead, which to me is the best of the best of all zombie movies, what can i say Zack Snyder is a beast man, he had all the right elements. man train of thought done, i m not going to spend any time on this movie, it fucking sucked, fucking nick cannon is in it, the only redeeming role hes ever had was in Chappelle show, fuck this movie, i can almost finish every movie i watch, not this one, its fucking shit.

Thirst

Park Chan-Wook, this korean director is quite the olympian amongst movie standards, this is his second film to get one of the top awards at the Cannes film festival, you may have heard of his other film Old Boy. In my opinion i was kind of turned of watching the rest of the movies in his vegence series, i really thought this dude just puts some really fucking brutal shit in his movies that is hard to watch, and he does it in a sexually pent up way. But seeing as how “the weird” was in this movie, i said hey why not. This movie is about vampires, vampires are pretty cool, Park’s movie heavily dwell in the psyche of the main characters mind, his emotions are dealt with his actions. SO man becomes vampires, man use to be priest, man still wants to be priest but has conflict of interest due to his new fucked up thirst, which comes with some awesome powers. This movie is very violent, gruesome at points, there is tons of pent up sexual tension, cause HES A PRIEST AND ALL YOU KNOW, and is littered with funny parts that go along with this sexual tension, as cvax would say the “asian formula” for movies, at one point i was like this movie is going to shit, but at the end it balanced it self out like a roller coaster. This is also the first korean movie that has shown full frontal male nudity, so for all those out there wanting some good cockshot, watch it. I enjoyed certain scenes of this movie, there are some points where im like why, i dont know why this scene is in here, i really enjoyed how like i said early the movies dives into the main characters mind and you struggle with him, especially with a dead dude soaked in water, who appears during sex. HAHAHAHAHHAHA, but yes the movie is in eyeopener with the gruesome scenes, but hey thats what makes it fun. its different from your typical hollyamerican forum, watch it if you want something different, and watch it cause vampires are pretty sweet.

Julie&Julia

so what can i say meryl streep does a fucking excellent job per usual, as for amy adams shes just doesnt look hot in this movie what the fuck, i guess i kind of missed the whole point of this movie. Its a chick flick i would say, it goes into the two lives of these two women, its done kind of bad, like it does a pretty good like back and forth between the two  in the beginning then you kinda jump into a well with one for like 15 minutes and you totally forget the other characters. the worst part was the ending cause your like ughh “so she got owned” then you do a little research into the actual julie character and you find out this bitch is like typhoid. the whole time your like oh julie is a huge pathetic loser, and you go oh hey Julia Child is a great fucking person, shes awesome. julia child’s is awesome, PBS THAT SHIT, her antics are mimicked extremely well. anyways yeah the movie goes on this journey of failure for one character, and fucking ballerhood with the other. The trailer makes it look good, but the overall movie is just ok, mostly just seeing meryl tear that shit up.

Moon

not new moon, for all those twilight fuck heads. i was skeptic, cause sam rockwell just looks like a schmuck, which really has nothing to do with a movie, but comeon he looks dirty. so this movie is kinda of like space odyssey but not extremely boring and stupid. this movie is pretty rad, but may get slow, so do what i did sleep at 8 wake up at 11 30 watchc this movie till 4am, itll be good then, but yes this movie is enjoyable, its got a pretty big twist dished out in the middle, which creates a mind fuck storm. but yeah watch it. im done writing for now

It’s around about 12:30am right now, i’m the only one awake, i’m ruining my body clock, i’m a little burnt, and my neck hurts. Earlier this evening (though not much earlier), Chris, Lani and I watched what was probably the best zombie-movie i’ve seen in a while: Diary Of The Dead. Between the ingenious scythe eviscerations and the uncharacteristically decent acting of most of the (predictably) token cast, the movie developed a relatively elementary yet effective commentary on the modern media… … and zombies ‘n’ shit.

Now, not really being one to squirm and frighten without a truly awesome ambiance, it would be suffice to say that the fact Chris already knew the plot alongside his determination to fidget like a man possessed, made the movie less than gut-churning. However (post-movie), after turning Lani into a zombie at the front door and subsequently closing the door behind them, it dawned upon me that I was in fact shaking in my little boots, and scared almost witless at the thought of walking back through the house to turn the lights off, so I ran. The massive black abyss of my back yard was practically filled to the brim with zombie hordes, so I flicked the lights off as quick as can be and headed upstairs to the safety of my room (i’ve got guns and knives here).

The real problem comes now: I can’t go to bed because if I do, i’ll end up having dreams about zombies. So I have to sit here either (a) until morning; or (b) until I decide I have been sufficiently distracted and will no longer need to stay awake because my mind is free from zombie-related thoughts.

…

Ok, it’s now 01:34am, i’d say i’ve been sufficiently distracted.
Gah!

I was going to hold off on seeing Paranormal Activity until it came out on DVD, but I’ve been reading a few reviews about it saying that the only way to see it is on the big screen and not to even bother when it comes out on DVD. So I decided I’d go check it out. First off, I have to agree with that statement, you need to see this on the big screen. It just won’t be the same at home.

With so many other great documentary style horror movies (The Last Broadcast, Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, Diary Of The Dead, etc) in the last tenish years, I wasn’t really sure that there was room for another, but there is. Ghost/haunting/whatever movies aren’t usually that interesting to me, but I liked this one a lot. It stayed interesting without getting too ridiculous. My only real complaint with it was the last couple seconds. I think they could have been left out for a better ending.

Rating: B

di Emanuele Di Nicola

La premessa
Se solitamente è il contenuto che conta, stavolta è impossibile non segnalare il destino distributivo del film di George A. Romero. Diary of the Dead (2007), quinto capitolo della serie degli zombie, firmato da un regista che ha più volte riscritto le regole della narrazione cinematografica (tra i ’60 e gli ’80, ma non solo), esce con due anni di ritardo in un’unica sala italiana (Nuovo Cinema L’Aquila, Roma, quartiere Pigneto).

Acquistato in Italia dalla piccola e indipendente PFA Films, opera indipendente essa stessa (come tradizione del maestro), Diary ottiene una collocazione invisibile che non permetterà a nessuno di conoscerlo. Sperando nel futuro conforto di un Dvd, allora, dobbiamo registrare l’ennesimo episodio di oscurantismo contro un monumento – oggi non più di moda, ahinoi – e sperare che Survival of the Dead (sesto capitolo dei morti viventi, in concorso a Venezia 2009) guadagni un’altra visibilità.

Il film
Telegiornali pilotati, notizie embedded, versioni ufficiali. Dall’altra parte blogger, myspace, YouTube. E’ chiaro, stavolta è il sistema dell’informazione il bersaglio degli zombie di Romero. I quali, come al solito, sono l’innesco non di un semplice horror (peraltro destabilizzante nell’escalation di tensione), ma di una più ampia riflessione sul tessuto sociale americano e – per metonimia – globale. Cosa è vero e cosa è falso di ciò che vediamo in televisione? Il film apre con questo interrogativo, presentando un servizio di telegiornale sullo strano caso di una famiglia di immigrati negli States (e sottolineo: immigrati) che si “risveglia” dopo morta… Il filmato sarà poi manipolato nella messa in onda ufficiale, per rassicurare la popolazione sull’ennesima invasione, mentre circolerà in versione integrale online, riaffermando il contenuto della “notizia”. Per semplificare, media ufficiali/nuovi media è il dualismo che innerva l’intera pellicola.

Ma la questione è più complessa di così: al centro dell’intreccio, infatti, è il solito gruppo di ragazzi che vuole girare un film e usa telecamere amatoriali per catturare il risveglio dei morti. Subito si apre la riflessione sul mezzo, quindi il secondo livello di lettura, come in Cloverfield per intenderci. Il personaggio del regista, caricando un video zombiesco sul suo myspace, afferma trionfante: “Abbiamo avuto 70mila contatti in 8 minuti!”. Ma non era la televisione che comanda la nazione? Forse è il web, dunque. Però attenzione: Diary lascia intendere chiaramente che la metastasi di notizie incontrollate, dove ognuno racconta la sua versione del fatto, può generare mostri. In ogni caso, esattamente come per il cineasta, l’indipendenza resta il timone da seguire per un’informazione sostanzialmente trasparente.

Tutte riflessioni che si inseriscono comunque in un “film di Romero”: nel senso più classico del termine, con azione sincopata, istanti di horror puro (la memorabile scena del clown e la bambina), sarcasmo sociale a palate – l’arrivo dei militari: e sulle malefatte del potere si spengono le telecamere -, deliri apocalittici. E’ la fine del mondo e il predicatore urla dalla radio: “Pentitevi! Mettetevi in ginocchio!”. Come in Zombi (Dawn of the Dead, 1978) il prete con una gamba sola avvertiva i due soldati: “Quando non ci sarà più posto all’inferno, i morti cammineranno sulla terra…”. Romero è sempre imprescindibile, se qualcuno ce lo fa vedere.

(Diary of the Dead – Regia: George A. Romero – Cast: Joshua Close, Michelle Morgan, Shawn Roberts – Durata: 95′ – Distribuzione: PFA Films)

Fonte: Cinepressa Blog

http://ticket-cinema.blogspot.com/2009/11/diary-of-dead.html

http://ticket-cinema.blogspot.com/2009/11/diary-of-dead.html
Diary of the Dead

Let this statement absorb into your mildly retarded to intelligent mind(s):  Shaun of the Dead is a perfect movie.  From second zero until end credits, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg created a masterpiece.  Name me a scene in that film that they could have cut out… yup, shut up.

Centering a film around zombies in the last ten years is a simple way to start a movie, which has become the center of much critiquing and BITCHING from fans and fuckers alike.  Yeah, I will admit that screenwriters, producers, and directors need to adjust their attention a little in the genre of horror, but how easy is it to get an idea, name, or message out into the mass populace through the invention of zombies?  Easy as a girl named Breezy (ask me later).

“Rom-zom-com” was a genre coined by Shaun of the Dead.  It’s fucking silly, but I allow it.  A romantic-zombie-comedy is something we all wish we thought of first, but alas, we didn’t.  Closest pick that could be lumped into this genre is Zombie Honeymoon, but that flick is a bummer to say the least (rent it though).

George A. Romero is a man that horror buffs tip their hats to because whether you like it or no, he brought zombie films into the mainstream and did it well.  Some of his films look a little dated – for the obvious reasons – with all the undead cinema flooding the market now, but Shaun of the Dead took the schematic of rotting men and women lumbering about and feeding on human flesh infused humor, heart, and headshots.  In my opinion Romero has been rolling down a slippery slope of guts and flesh since Land of the Dead, but after watching Diary of the Dead I got a feeling the man needs to put the camera down and start penning some screenplays or producing projects that are up his gore soaked alley.  His new picture Survival of the Dead has the potential of bringing him out of this mass grave of shitty zombie movies, which he has directed himself into, but sometimes you just gotta pass the torch and move on.  Let’s get back on topic though, shall we?

Edgar Wright is one of those writers/directors who knows what he loves and it isn’t afraid to create something that is merely an homage to those things with a little something else added to it.  His sitcom Spaced even has a subtitle track on the DVDs entitled “Homage-o-Meter” that simply references anything within the realm of film, music, literature, and a bunch of random shit because that’s what compromises majority of the show.  Genius?  A little less, but leaning more towards prophetic.

The sappy – but good kinda sappy – that is strategically placed amongst the fart jokes and disemboweling in Shaun plucks on the heart strings so well because there usually isn’t a need for it within the genre.  Your typical horror fan that forks out $6.50 for Saw 23 (currently in pre-production) doesn’t need emotional substance within the film as long as the violence grows exponentially with each severed Achilles tendon.  Yet, when Bill Nighy – playing the stepfather – “death bed” confesses how hard it’s been raising Simon Pegg, I know I started welling up the first time I saw it.  And don’t get me started about the Mexican standoff involving Shaun’s mother.  Reservoir Dogs, you have now been trumped.

We’ve all seen plenty of slashers and the such where you can pretty much wave a finger at majority of the players and figure who’ll be letting out a sigh of relief right before the end credits roll and who’ll be dirt-napping ASAP.  Now if you can actually write a decent character then flesh them out as the camera rolls on them – whether they get the axe or not – we’re at least feeling for them as they attempt to survive through three acts.  But if you watch any trailers for movies within the last 10 years, Hollywood loves to show us EVERY FUCKING THING THAT’LL HAPPEN WITHIN 93 MINUTES condensed to a two and a half minute stream of clips, especially every dumb breeder that’s gonna fall on a dick or knife in I Know What You Did Last Summer With Your Dirty Mouf .  I remember watching the Episode I trailer in ninth grade and being so pissed off because it was obvious that Qui-Gon eats it.  Once again, thank you Mr. Lucas for perverting nearly everything that was holy during my childhood.  Sorry… I get kinda angry most of the time when I go off on tangents.

Every character in Shaun fits into at least one stereotype or more, which works as long as you give them a soul.  The token black guy wouldn’t be such a disposable character in cinema, but when does the “black friend in the group” ever get more than five lines that aren’t silly or just jive.  Stereotypes and cliches in movies work – especially in genre films – because it can create a familiarity with the audience that is comforting, but the fun and talent comes when the write and/or director abuses that comfort and throws you into oncoming traffic.  Sometimes you’re taken from your idea of what is safe and sure in your life or simply lead down a path you didn’t see coming.  I wouldn’t say that Shaun is abound with twist, turns, and surprises, but when you take the idea of the “bumbling idiot” (Pegg) and give him a family, friends, wit, and then hordes of zombies to bash his way through, you start to give two shits about him.  Stir in that drama I was talking about from before and what do you get?  A damn fine character.  Now let’s throw a bucket of blood over the whole mess and you we got ourselves a right good film.  Now me personally, I just need a rack of $7.99 failure ribs from Safeway and some Simply Apple Juice, then I’m in fat kid Heaven.  Moving on.

Shaun of the Dead may not be on the highest of cinematic plains, but for a film that panders to gore-hounds, drunks/stoners, those who still think farts are funny (real Americans), and people who hate bad kissers, it’s a work of art.  It’s a movie that reminds me of why I still love all the sentimental bullshit John Hughes put out or why constantly quoting the Cohen Borthers three bowling alley burnouts never gets tired.  It brings me back to why I shielded my  five year-old eyes from Carpenter’s shape-shifting alien in the Arctic or how Landis made someones dead bestfriend the funniest aspect of London.  Simply put, it’s a movie that makes me love movies.

Do not film your own death...

I just finished watching George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead and I’m not going to lie…it was wonderful. It was probably one of the better “zombie apocalypse” films I’ve seen in a long time. It raised a lot of questions within my gray matter inside my head.

When I sat down to write this post last night…I was going to review the film and talk about the various “pluses and minuses” but decided that an overview of American culture and how it was a pretty accurate depiction of how we’re all going to die in an orgy of hot and sexy flesh eating zombies.

Mmm…Your Torso Tastes Like Fillet Mignon.

How tasty are human beings? I mean…zombies eat people, cannibals eat people, bears eat people…everything tries to eat people. Are we just inherently delicious? Haven’t you ever seen a zombie movie? Those bumbling cranium munchers run incredibly fast whenever they might get a couple hundred pounds of human meat.

Here is my “scientific conclusion” -Zombies can smell fear [just like bears] and will only come after you if you are terrified of them.

Let’s examine this…

Look at the film Shaun of the Dead – When the survivors [led by the awesome/talented Simon Pegg] are trying to blend in with the zombies [while attempting to get in to The Winchester], they act like zombies: they shuffle, they groan, they act confident in their zombie abilities. THIS COMPLETELY THROWS OFF THE ZOMBIES. This may be because zombies are stupid…or because they weren’t visibly afraid.

Another example is in the film Zombieland. Bill Murray dresses up like a zombie and runs errands in Hollywood amidst all of the zombies. He even says at one point that he plays a round of golf at a nearby country club. Oh Bill Murray…you’re a wonderful man.

How To Prepare For The Horde.

The easiest way to fend off from a zombie attack, is to have a lot of guns. This seems sort of obvious, but only because everyone’s first reaction to an impending invasion of anything, is to shoot it [this is why America has a 2nd Amendment to it's Constitution]. So stock up on pistols, flamethrowers, shotguns, assault rifles, grenades, molotov cocktails, bolt-action rifles, and rocket-propelled grenades and all the amenities that go along with each [extra ammunition, bayonets, sights, and scopes].

Also – be sure to stock up on bats, chainsaws, machetes, metal poles, axes, and other big blunt or sharp objects.

My Advice.

1. Bunker - Invest in building an underground bunker [sorry if you live near the coast...just dig yourself a grave]. Inside that bunker, keep a lot of non-perishable food [since when the electricity goes out, your food is going to spoil], keep all your weapons and ammo, and keep your family there. Make them as comfortable as they can be with hundreds of thousands of undead monsters outside waiting to snack on their tasty flesh.

2. Pray – Pray to any God and every god. It’ll help you feel better…until you’re ripped apart.

3. Wait – …pretty self explanatory. Enjoy your bunker…before you get eaten.

I hope you enjoyed that.

Cody.

Next post: Tune in tomorrow for Tunetastic Tuesday!

My Zombieland post comes a little late. So sue me.

It’s a big claim to call a zombie movie original. But Zombieland is.

Why are there no zombies in this picture?

Before The Night of the Living Dead, zombie films were about voodoo-possessed people. NOTLD, along with its sequels Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, invented the flesh-chomping brain-dead modern zombie.

Despite spawning many knock-offs (the Return of the Living Dead series is supposedly the best of these), you know it hadn’t hit the mainstream until there was a Simpsons parody.

Dial Z for Zombies, the third segment of Treehouse of Horror III (1992), is also noticeable for popularising the fallacy that zombies crave BRAINS! (which really doesn’t make sense: how would they get through the skull?)

Despite some ambitious but flawed low-budget entries, the zombie sub-genre grew stagnant until 2004’s funny and successful Shaun of the Dead.

George A. Romero (the ‘A’ stands for ‘a fucking genius’, according to Tarantino), the master of the undead, is in the middle of a comeback with a triple whammy of Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead, and the as of yet unreleased Survival of the Dead (previously Island of the Dead). He is also producing the remake of his film The Crazies. None of these have exactly been critically acclaimed, at least not on the same scale as the originals.

You see, it turns out it’s hard to make a good zombie film.

Which is what Zombieland does so well. It doesn’t bend the rules in a crazy new way, as many have tried and failed at, it just takes what tropes service the story and out-of-handedly rejects the rest.

Zombieland is very hard to pin down, especially in the zombie genre, which often makes heavy-handed political or social points to the point of their undoing. And it’s all the better for it. You feel it says something potent, about humanity maybe, but it’s not possible to articulate in terms other than the movie’s.

Seriously, don’t spoil any of this movie for yourself (and that includes checking out IMDb). I went into it without knowing much other than the title and that it was good.

I really want to see a sequel or TV show (which it was originally written as).

I give it an A+7*** out of 10. Because I can’t say no to Woody Harrelson (or Abigail Breslin – she’s a great actress with a great career ahead of her).

If, like me, you are interested in this kind of thing and are so inclined, you can download the screenplay here. Just make sure to see it first.

Paranormal Activity (2009)

However, I’m not so sure it is going to live up to the hype it’s getting.  In a sea of pretty darn good horror movies over the last few years, Paranormal Activity is really nothing too special, other than that it is an American movie and that it is coming at audiences with the same combination of realism and mystery that another little-film-that-could did ten years ago; The Blair Witch Project.  Not that the combination is particularly unique now or even ten years ago, it just appears that when it involves ghosts instead of for example zombies (Diary of the Dead or The Zombie Diaries) or Belgian serial killers (1992’s Man Bites Dog), it makes a shitload of money considering its cost and gets a ton of mainstream attention.   This movies cost about $10,000 to make and has grossed over $30 million.

I saw Paranormal Activity Friday night and found it quite compelling, which if it wasn’t the whole thing would’ve failed miserably.  The audience reactions were rumored to be quite positive, with some people screaming and pissing their pants and so forth, but the crowd around me was a little different.  In fact, given it was a packed theater and the film had previously only had limited release, I’m not too surprised.  Horror films are something you really have to want to enjoy, especially ones that require a more robust imagination like this one.  When it was in limited release the audience may have for the most part been seeking out the film because they are genre fans, but upon a wider release the casual movie-going riff-raff will see it, especially if it means showing their girlfriends that they ain’t afraid of no ghosts.  Folks actually booed the film when I saw it and I even heard comments like “I’m sorry but dude, that sucked” and “that wasn’t scawy at all!”.  These are the same pussies that will hold their bowels tightly when riding a roller-coaster, instead of throwing up their arms to accentuate the fun.  These are also the same idiots that will be seeing garbage like Saw VI in a few weeks, but I digress.

A scene from the movie

The film follows Micah and Katie, who have just moved in together.  Katie has experienced strange encounters her entire life and Micah, a laughably naive skeptic, documents their experience in their new home together.  In fact, Micah consistently antagonizes this ghostly force by shouting at it and even getting a Ouija board.  The activity itself gradually escalates as the film goes forward but there is far too much to give away, especially if you’ve found yourself enjoying movies like this in the past.

Another scene from the movie

This is well done and uses almost all of the usual tools in the horror genre effectively with one notable exception; gore.  I understand the principal behind not using gore and why they wouldn’t, but the movie does lend itself to moments where it could’ve been used very well. Nevertheless, this is still a very decent horror movie and is certainly creepy enough in flashes to recommend checking out.

My rating is 4 out of 5 stars.

Survival of the Dead (dir: George A. Romero, 2009)

Era obvio que teníamos que ir al primer pase de la nueva película de nuestro querido tito Romero, y el viernes 09/10 estábamos como un clavo en el Auditórium para el pase de las 12:15h. La espera valió la pena, aunque a medias, tal y como matizaremos a continuación.

El año pasado ya nos quedamos en el Festival de Sitges sin la presencia de George A. Romero a causa de Survival of the Dead, porque tito Romero estaba en pleno rodaje de Survival en Canadá, y aunque fue un putadón para todos, como sabíamos el motivo real del mismo, nos lo tomamos con estoicismo y resignación, con la esperanza que Survival no nos defraudara.

Survival of the Dead (dir: George A. Romero, 2009) nos cuenta una historia perfectamente enlazada con Diary of the Dead, pero nos presenta otra historia completamente distinta. Aunque Survival empieza en el mismo punto que lo deja Diary, con una pandemia a nivel mundial, con Survival volvemos un poco a los orígenes de Romero, es decir, localizaciones y escenarios más pequeños, tal y como sucedieron en La noche de los muertos vivientes y Zombi.

El grupo de militares que confiscan las armas en la auto-caravana en Diary of the Dead (2005) son el nexo de unión y el comienzo de Survival of the Dead. Aunque es un reducido grupo de soldados (4 en total, incluyendo una chica) saben arreglárselas bastante bien solos. Liderados por Sarge (Alan van Sprang), un soldado que sigue sus propias reglas de supervivencia y que está muy unido a sus hombres: Tomboy (Athena Karkanis), una mujer soldado de la cabeza hasta los pies; Francisco (Stefano di Matteo), el soldado espiritual e instintivo y Kenny (Eric Woolfe), el informático.

Una noche investigando una zona donde supuestamente hay zombies campando por sus anchas, se topan con unos que han capturado un furgón blindado. Evidentemente, los soldados y los desconocidos tienen sus diferencias, y se acaban tiroteando. Momento que vemos lo sádicos que son algunos con los zombies, bueno, mejor dicho sus cabezas. En el furgón descubrirán más de 1 millón de dólares, y un chico (Devon Bostick) que se unirá al grupo de soldados.

Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!

Es este chico quien propone al grupo de soldado dirigirse a la isla de Delaware, tras ver un anuncio de Patrick O’Flynn (Kenneth Welsh) informando a todo el mundo que quien quiera estar en un lugar tranquilo y seguro, vaya a la isla. No sin antes discutirlo, el grupo de soldados accede a ir a la isla. Lo que hasta ahora había sido una tarea fácil, la cosa se le complica a nuestros soldados, cuando al llegar al embarcadero para coger el ferry que les conducirá a la isla, se encuentran al mismo Patrick junto con un grupo de irreductibles, que les impiden el paso hacía el ferry. Pero este no será el único obstáculo, nuestros amigos, los zombies, también están en la escena.

Gracias a una buena intervención del grupo de soldados, y la iniciativa de Francisco logran hacerse con el ferry, y poner rumbo a la isla! Pero el Sr. O’Flynn se tendrá que unir al grupo de soldados, cagando leches, ya que le va de un pelo que es devorado por los zombies. En el ferry, Sarge y Patrick se van conociendo mientras que los zombies se van espabilando a salir en escena… la carne fresca, siempre es bien recibida!

Pero al llegar a la isla, descubrirán un paraíso completamente distinto al descrito por O’Flynn. Descubren una isla completamente dividida entre dos bandos rivales, los O’Flynn y los Muldoon, que están enfrentados en una guerra personal encabezada por sus jefes de familia. Los Muldoon representados por Seamus (Richard Fitzpatrick) encarnan la moral, la religión y la tradición, mientras que los O’Flynn representan la iniciativa y la forma más pragmática de sobrevivir.

Jane O'Flynn

Gracias a la mano de los Muldoon veremos zombies tratados como si fueran ganado y conservando todavía un vago recuerdo de su vida anterior. La moral de Seamus le impide deshacerse de los suyos y los mantendrá entre ellos con la vana esperanza de mantenerlos con no-vida y cuando encuentren una cura, así poder volver a disfrutar de los suyos.

Podrán nuestros clanes rivales arreglar sus diferencias para que la isla se convierta en un auténtico paraíso ¿?

Para dar respuesta a la pregunta deberéis ver la película!

Tras ver Survival of the Dead, el primer comentario que se nos viene en mente es, si Survival es realmente un film de Romero. Es decir, esta cinta de zombies dices que es de otro director y te lo crees. En cambio, te la imaginas de Romero, y la verdad es que cuesta de creerse. Aunque Survival, siga conteniendo los tópicos de su saga como la crítica social y la moraleja final, en cierta medida introducido elementos no tan característicos de Romero. Por ejemplo, ciertos toques de humor, ausentes en anteriores cintas de George, o incluso cierto abuso de la digitalización de algunos efectos, no sólo en la sangre si no en algunas escenas. Sobre todo, hay una escena con unas cabezas de zombies, que ya he mencionado anteriormente, que da mucho que desear…. Ay, Savini! Dónde andarás ¿?

Evidentemente, Romero sigue presentándonos a los zombies, tal y como nos los presentó en La noche de los muertes vivientes, pero en Survival introduce una novedad o evolución, que obviamente, no os voy a desvelar.

Carne Fresca!

Tampoco puedo deciros que Survival of the Dead sea la mejor cinta de Romero, porque sin duda alguna, es más floja que incluso Diary of the Dead, pero Survival es una cinta más de zombis del panorama actual, el problema es que Survival lleva directamente en relación un apellido de peso, Romero, el director que reinvento los zombies modernos tal y como hoy los conocemos; sin entrar en la polémica de si corren o van andando, o si de son infectados o zombis.

No obstante, para los fans de Romero, dentro de los cuales me incluyo, Survival nos gusta y nos gustará, qué remedio! No la voy a defender a capa y espada cuando tenga alguna charla con otro colega acerca de los films de Romero o de zombies, pero sin duda alguna, muchos olvidan un hecho muy destacable y loable del Sr. Romero. Este hombre con la edad que tiene todavía sigue en activo, y parece que muchos se la sopla bastante. Pero en cambio, a mí no. Este hombre estar en su casa e ir de festival en festival recogiendo premios honoríficos y concediendo entrevistas, todavía está en activo haciendo películas para el género y por y para los fans, y dudo sinceramente, que a estas alturas le venga de conseguir beneficios en una película.

Sí, muchos dirán que Survival es una mierda o una película pésima, pero a mí en cambio me gusta, y qué ¿?

Tampoco creo que a estas alturas Romero deba de estarse reinventando, me parece patético. Este hombre ya ha hecho mucho más por nosotros (los fans de los zombies) que muchos otros, y para mí, eso se merece, un aplauso.

Romero, ole tus güevos!

Zerebros: Especial George A. Romero

Como muy bien sabéis, el Festival de Cine de Sitges arrancó el pasado jueves 01/10 con la estrena de la tan esperada y anunciada Rec[2]. Nekrofilmicos, ya está desde ayer mismo, dando cobertura al festival, así que estos días no actualicemos mucho el blog, pero cuando lo hagamos será para anunciaros todas las novedades que nos trae y deparará Sitges!

Intentaremos asistir al mayor número de pases, presentaciones, maratones y pases especiales, para que disfrutéis de las reseñas que os iremos preparando! Pero esta tarde tenemos una cita ineludible, la presentación del Zerebros: Especial George A. Romero de la mano de nuestro gran amigo Doctor Chainsaw (os dejo el enlace de la entrevista que le realizamos en el pasado Salón del Cómic), y que tendrá lugar hoy (sábado 3/10) a las 18:30hrs en el espacio Brigadoon (entrada libre) y que está ubicado en el carrer Davallada, 12 – Edifici Miramar…. no confundir con Miramax! Jajajajajaj…

Se realizará un sorteo de 10 ejemplares, y también se hará una improvisada y divertida presentación del mismo. En este fanzine han participado pesos pesados del fanzine underground sobre el cine de terror y otros subgéneros, tales como Naxo Fiol (Suburbio), Diego López (El Buque Maldito),… El incondicional y transgresor dibujante Bellvi, Manu Riquelme,… el tarado mental y compañero de shootings de Naxo, Víctor Olid,… Entre muchos otros, tales como un servidor, sí, sí… habéis leído bien! Yomismamenteyomismo, reseñando Diary of the Dead, y que en breve os pondré la reseña que escribí para el fanzine. Si es que hoy en día, fichan a cualquiera! Zas!

Evidentemente, el contenido de este especial podemos decir que casi es único e irrepetible, pues además de ser extenso repaso de todas las pelis de zombies de Romero, también contiene un artículo que habla de la carrera cinematográfica del tito Romero, hay ilustraciones del mundo romeriano, y viñetas o tiras relacionados con los zombos, perdón, zombies…. no confundir con los infectados! Jajajajajaj

Starring Especial para el Zerebros George A. Romero

Esto va por tí, tito Romero!

In light of the newly released Zombieland hitting theaters today.  The Horror Lot would like to pay tribute to the man who made zombie movies possible. 

To most of us, the 1970s and the 1980s were the golden age of the horror genre in film and even literature.  This span of two decades saw the rise of horror writer Stephen King, who gave us Carrie, Salem’s Lot, Pet Semetary, and The Shining.  It also brought forth the next generation of great filmmakers who pushed the envelope of what people were willing to watch on the screen.  Ask Craven, Hooper, and Cronenberg just how great this period was for horror films.

But this period may never have risen if it wasn’t for the bold work of one man in the rural wasteland of western Pensylvania.  George A. Romero. 

After graduting from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1960, Romero worked for a short time on commericals, until one day he and some friends put in $10,000 to create their first feature length horror film, 1968’s Night of the Living Dead.  The door into the gruesome, gorified horror films to come had been opened by Romero.  Night of the Living Dead is one of the most celebrated horror films of all-time, inspiring numerous sequels–many written and directed by Romero–and redifined what a zombie is in film.

For years, zombies were believed to be the cause of voodoo and other carribbean beliefs and myths.  A great example is the 1932 film White Zombie, staring Bela Lugosi, who plays a voodoo master asked to transform a woman into a zombie through magic.  Romero changed the perception of zombies with his black and white masterpiece.  It was the first horror film to have an African American lead, played by Duane Jones, and Romero’s use of gore effects insipred a new generation of horror masters, including award-winning special effects and makeup artist Tom Savini (Dawn of the Dead, Creepshow, From Dusk till Dawn).

Scene from Romero's 1978 Dawn of the Dead

Following a string of other films, such as The Crazies and Martin, Romero returned to his Dead films with the 1978 masterpiece Dawn of the Dead.  His latest installment of the Dead series capitalized on the increase in violence and gore that had since been exploited from his original Dead film.  By 1978, Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper unleashed a new wave of violent films, such as The Last House on the Left and the Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which took what Romero started and increased the effects and violence once again.  This, in turn, pushed Romero, who with the help of a new, young special effects wizard also from Pittsburgh named Tom Savini, went ahead and made Dawn of the Dead one of the rare sequels that can be considered better than the first film. 

Scene from Diary of the Dead

Since then, Romero went on to create Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead, and recently, Diary of the Dead, combined with the previous films, has become the greatest collection of zombie films ever made.

From a horror fans standpoint, Romero’s emergence in 1968 opened the door to the great cult genre films we have today.  Night of the Living Dead became more than just a great horror film, it became the turning point for the future of the genre.  Before Romero, horror films consisted of cheap special effects giving us giant gila monsters and laughable costumes.  The genre had reached a peak, and Romero showed us there was still more to go. 

As horror movie directors go, many fans and movie-goers don’t seem to give Romero the credit he deserves.  Just because he didn’t give us iconic horror monsters like Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers or Leatherface, doesn’t mean we should take away what he has done.  Many of us look at zombie films today and laugh.  They have been turned into horror comedies, such as the newly released Zombieland.  But it is important to remember that all the gore, trance-like walking, and salacious appetite for human flesh, all come from Romero.  His vision allowed future movie directors to move away from the cheap-suited monsters that had become the basis for the genre into the relm of reality.  The idea that humans could become the monsters.  Where your own brother goes from loving you to wanting to eat you. 

Romero is the father of the golden age of horror films.  And no matter how we percieve zombies today, they are still a major part of this genre of film.  We may have turned zombies into horror comedies, but that may just mean that we once again reached a peak.  Just like in the 1960s.  The genre is waiting for its next George A. Romero. 

Watch the original 1968 trailer for Night of the Living Dead:

Diary of the Dead: maybe the first mainstream FPS horror? (It’s pre Cloverfield) Mostly filmed on 2 hand-held cameras, which surprisingly lures you right in to the action and gets the blood pumping. The atmosphere created is great, but does rely on some cheap jumps and music. It’s all a bit ‘horror 2.0′, frequently citing the ‘web, hits, bloggers, hackers, kids and how they can beat the mainstream in an emergency, which was a bit cringey. Also states people behind the camera (aimed at the media) have no limits & can’t stop filming, no matter how bad the scene in front of them gets. It’s self-referencing, with old-school broadcasts tying it in with the original film, while making a nod to resident evil (the game) as well as highlighting zombie / b-movie clichés. Above this it features the coolest deaf Aumish guy in the history of cinema! All-in it’s actually quite clever, in trying something new and modernising the franchise. It was generally poorly received so most people must be expecting a generic rehash. Much better than Land.

Score: 7/10

Night of the Living Dead

 

 

Night of the Living Dead, directed by George Romero, is a 1968 independent black-and-white zombie film. Ben (Duane Jones) and Barbra (Judith O’Dea) are the protagonists of a story about the mysterious reanimation of the recently dead, and their efforts, along with five other people, to survive the night while trapped in a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse.

George Romero completed the film on a $114,000 budget, and after a decade of cinematic re-releases, it grossed some $12 million domestically and $30 million internationally. On its release in 1968, Night of the Living Dead was strongly criticized for its explicit content, but in 1999, the Library of Congress placed it on the National Film Registry as a film deemed “historically, culturally or aesthetically important”.

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Night of the Living Dead

was cited by many as being a groundbreaking film, given its release during the Vietnam-era, due to perceived critiques of late-1960s U.S. society; a historian described it as “subversive on many levels”. Although it is not the first zombie film, Night of the Living Dead is the progenitor of the contemporary ‘zombie apocalypse’ sub-genre of horror film, and it influenced the modern pop-culture zombie archetype. Night of the Living Dead (1968), is the first of six Dead films directed by George Romero, and twice has been remade, as a film of the same name in 1990, directed by Tom Savini, and as Night of the Living Dead 3D in 2006.

 

 

 

 

 

Trivia:

• Bosco chocolate syrup was used to simulate the blood in the film.
• The zombie hand that Tom (Keith Wayne) hacks up with a kitchen knife was made of clay and filled with chocolate syrup.
• When the zombies are eating the bodies in the burnt-out truck they were actually eating roast ham covered in chocolate sauce. The filmmakers joked that it was so nausea inducing that it was almost a waste of time putting the makeup on the zombies, as they ended up looking pale and sick anyway.
• The gas pump was not bolted to the ground when the actress who played Barbra, Judith O’Dea, runs into it at the start of the film. She did it with so much force she almost tipped it over on the cameraman.
• One of the working titles for this film was “Night of Anubis”. Anubis is the god of embalming/mummifying in the ancient Egyptian (Kemetan) religion.
• One of the working titles for this film was “Night of the Flesh Eaters”. Originally, the beings attacking the characters were extraterrestrial in origin, either aliens or humans possessed by an alien pathogen, presumably covering a NASA satellite returning from Venus. Eventually, it was decided that the dead would rise and devour the living, presumably due to radiation that was carried by a NASA satellite returning from Venus.

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• Though the radiation of a detonated satellite returning from Venus is theorized to be the cause of the dead rising and attacking the living, according to the filmmakers, the actual cause is never determined.
• Columbia Pictures was the only major Hollywood studio interested in distributing this film, but eventually passed because it was in black-and-white at a time when movies had to compete with new color televisions. Ironically, Columbia did distribute the 1990 color remake. American International Pictures (AIP) considered releasing the film, but wanted George A. Romero to shoot an upbeat ending and add more of a love story subplot.
• During the filming of the cemetery sequence, shot on two separate days, an unexpected accident caused a fast change of script. The car driven by Barbara and Johnny into the cemetery was actually owned by the mother of Russell Streiner. Unfortunately, sometime between the two filming sequences, someone ran into the car and put a dent in it that would easily be visible on camera. George A. Romero rewrote the scene so the car would come to a stop by crashing into a tree.
• In the scene where Ben is nailing wooden boards to the door, small numbers can be seen on them. These were written on the backs of the boards so they could be removed and replaced in between shots, preserving continuity. Some numbers are visible because some of the boards were nailed on backwards.
• Tom Savini was originally hired by George A. Romero to do the makeup effects for this film. The two were first introduced to each other when Savini auditioned for an acting role in an earlier film that never got off the ground. Romero, remembering that Savini was also a makeup artist (he had brought his makeup portfolio to show to Romero at the audition), called Savini to the set of his horror movie. However, Savini was unable to do the effects because he was called to duty by the US Army to serve as a combat photographer in Vietnam.
• The film’s first scene, the initial cemetery attack on Barbara and Johnny, was the last filmed, in November 1967. The actors had to hold their breath to avoid visible condensation in the frosty autumn air.
• According to George A. Romero, the film was originally ten minutes longer but the distributor pressured him to cut it down.
• The word “zombie” is never used. The most common euphemism used to describe the living dead is “those things,” mostly by Cooper.
• Bill ‘Chilly Billy’ Cardille, who played the television reporter, was indeed a local Pittsburgh TV celebrity. Known as “Chilly Billy” Cardille, he hosted a horror movie program on Channel 11 and occasionally reported the news.
• S. William Hinzman and Karl Hardman, two of the original $300 investors had small roles due to a shortage of available talent. Another investor was a butcher, who provided some blood and guts.
• Actor/co-producer Karl Hardman (Harry Cooper, the father in the basement), also served as makeup artist, electronic sound effects engineer, and took the still photos used for the closing credits.
• When the writers decided to base the film on zombies, they brainstormed about what would be the most shocking thing for the zombies to do to people and decided on cannibalism.
• During production, the film’s title was still being chosen. The working title was simply “Monster Flick”.
• The character of Ben was originally supposed to be a crude but resourceful truck driver. After ‘Duane Jones (I)’ auditioned for the part, director and co-writer George A. Romero re-wrote the part to fit his performance.
• George A. Romero has readily admitted that Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls (1962) was a big influence in his making of this film.
• The main house did not have a true basement but a dirt potter’s cellar, and thus had no long staircase leading down to it. Because of this, the basement scenes were filmed in the editing studio’s cellar.
• In the 30th Anniversary Edition, the car that drops off Debbie Rochon at the medical center is driven by Marilyn Eastman (Helen Cooper) and owned by Karl Hardman (Harry Cooper).
• The music used in the film was from a Capitol/EMI Records Hi-Q stock music library, on which the copyright was in the public domain, and cost the filmmakers $1500. It was originally used in Teenagers from Outer Space (1959).
• When the movie was in its scripting stage, John A. Russo had developed an idea that was basically described as “teenagers from outer space”. This version was not filmed, but the version that was filmed uses stock music from the movie Teenagers from Outer Space (1959).
• One of the Walter Reade Organization’s publicity stunts was a $50,000 insurance policy against anyone dying from a heart attack while watching the film.
• The film’s world premiere was at the Fulton Theatre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 1 October 1968 (At 8PM, admission by invitation only). The film was met with a standing ovation.
• The only real mishap to happen during filming involved producer and actor Russell Streiner’s (Johnny’s) brother, Gary Streiner. After the scene where ‘Duane Jones (I)’ sets the chair on fire, it was Gary’s responsibility to extinguish the flames and set the chair ablaze again to preserve continuity, ensuring that smoke would be seen emanating from it near the end of the film. At one point Gary’s sleeve caught on fire and, as he ran in terror, S. William Hinzman (in full zombie makeup) tackled him to the ground and helped extinguish the flames, saving him from major injury.
• George A. Romero was the one operating the camera when S. William Hinzman (the cemetery zombie) attacks Barbara in her car by smashing the window with a rock. When Hinzman shattered the window, the rock barely missed Romero.
• Some of the groans made by S. William Hinzman when he’s wrestling with Russell Streiner in the cemetery are authentic. During the struggle, Streiner accidentally kneed Hinzman in the groin.
• The Evans City Cemetery was the cemetery used in the original version of the film, but it could not be used for the 30th anniversary edition. Before filming the new footage, a tornado had torn through the Evans City Cemetery, and ironically, it unearthed several graves.
• The Chevy truck seen in the new footage is not the same one seen in the original footage. The filmmakers for the new footage were fortunate enough to find a truck owned by a local resident that bore a near-perfect resemblance to the original truck. The owner was kind enough to let them borrow his truck for the film.
• During the filming of the new footage for the 30th anniversary edition, actor/composer Scott Vladimir Licina (Reverend John Hicks) suffered a heat stroke in the cemetery and was hospitalized for a few days.
• The house used for this film was loaned to the filmmakers by the owner, who planned to demolish it anyway, thereby ensuring that they could do whatever they wanted to the house.
• There were two trucks used in the film. The first one used in the beginning of the film would not start for the trek-to-the-gas-pump scenes and had to be replaced. Unfortunately, they forgot to break the headlights.
• While writing the script, George A. Romero and John A. Russo were trying to think of a manner in which to destroy the zombies. Marilyn Eastman joked that they could throw pies in their faces. This is obviously an inspiration for the pie fight scene in this film’s sequel, Dawn of the Dead (1978).
• Judith Ridley worked as a receptionist for Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman, which led to her getting the part in the movie.
• Assuming the movie takes place on the spring time change (according to the dialog at the beginning) after the date (December 1966) on the calendar in the house (a reasonable assumption from the condition of the body in the house), the movie begins on the night of 30 April 1967 and ends the next morning, which is May Day. However, for the sequels, Romero has treated the timeline of the Dead saga with a bit of malleability; in the movie novelization of Dawn of the Dead he notes “The stock market had plummeted way below the lowest point of the Carter administration” and refers to an upcoming election. Day of the Dead features a copy of the novel Salem’s Lot, published in 1975, after Night of the Living Dead came out; it seems peculiar that this publish still saw publication in a world where “ghouls” actually exist. Diary of the Dead takes place isochronally with Night of the Living Dead yet features modern computers. Of course, even Night of the Living Dead references technology far advanced than that available at the time of the film’s release (i.e. the Venus probe).
• The body upstairs in the house was made by director George A. Romero, who used ping-pong balls for the eyes.
• S. William Hinzman based his characteristic saunter (and, subsequently, that of each other zombie) on a film with Boris Karloff, the title of which he could not remember. In that film, Karloff played a man risen from the dead, and walks with a characteristic ungainly saunter.
• According to the George A. Romero commentary track on the Elite laserdisc and DVD version of the film, the original working print and working elements and materials for the film no longer exist – they were destroyed as a result of a flood that filled the basement where the materials were stored (which was the same basement used in the movie).
• At between 51 and 52 minutes into the film, going by the Elite laserdisc/DVD release, there is a very visible jump cut. The distributors wanted some of the “talky” bits trimmed down, so, about 6 minutes was cut from a basement scene involving the Coopers. The jump is quite clearly visible because at one point Harry is facing one direction and then immediately in the next frame, he is facing another.
• At the time of the film’s release, any work that did not include a copyright notice was assumed to be public domain. Since the film makers forgot to include this notice, the film slipped into the public domain. In was not until 1 March 1989 that a copyright notice was no longer required.
• Screenwriter John A. Russo appears as the ghoul who gets his forehead smashed by Ben with a tire iron. He also allowed himself to be set on fire for real when nobody else wanted to do the stunt.
• The Cooper family are played by a real family. Karl Hardman (husband Harry Cooper) and Marilyn Eastman (wife Helen Cooper) are real-life husband and wife. Kyra Schon (daughter Karen Cooper) is Karl’s daughter, as well as Marilyn’s step-daughter.
• This was one of the first films added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress because of naïve business practices that allowed the copyright of the film to slip into the public domain.
• The filmmakers were accused of being “Satanically-inspired” by Christian fundamentalist groups for their portrayal of the undead feeding on flesh and of the Coopers’ zombie child (Kyra Schon) attacking her mother (Marilyn Eastman).
• One of the original ideas for the script before its many revisions called for Barbara to be a very strong, charismatic character. Instead, George A. Romero and the producers loved Judith O’Dea’s portrayal as a catatonic and terrified young girl much better, and edited the script to accommodate the part. Eventually, the idea of Barbara being a strong, central character would be revisited in Tom Savini’s 1990 remake.
• The stock music that accompanies Barbara’s initial flight from the cemetery zombie had been used a year earlier, in the final episode of television’s “The Fugitive” (1963).
• As George A. Romero explains it on “The Directors: The Films of George A. Romero”, the day the final editing and voice-over dubbing was complete (4/4/1968), he and John A. Russo literally “threw” the film into the trunk of their car and drove to New York to see if anyone wanted to show it. While driving through New York on the night of April 4th, 1968, Romero and Russo heard news on the radio that Martin Luther King had been assassinated.
• The role of Ben was originally meant for Rudy Ricci. After ‘Duane Jones (I)’ had read the part, however, it was given to him, and Ricci played one of the zombies.
• In the scene where Ben moves the body upstairs to another room, we can see that its face is intact. This was in fact Kyra Schon who doubled as the upstairs body as it was felt that a mannequin would look unrealistic.
• This film is ranked at #9 on Bravo’s _”100 Scariest Movie Moments, The” (2004) (mini)_ special.

Romero revolutionized the horror film genre with Night of the Living Dead; per Almar Haflidason, of the BBC, the film represented “a new dawn in horror film-making”. The film has also effectively redefined the use of the term Zombie. Early zombie films like Victor Halperin’s White Zombie (1932) and Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked with a Zombie (1943) concerned living people enslaved by a Voodoo witch doctor; many were set in the Caribbean.

The film and its successors spawned countless imitators that borrowed elements instituted by Romero: Tombs of the Blind Dead, Zombie, Hell of the Living Dead, The Evil Dead, Night of the Comet, Return of the Living Dead, Night of the Creeps, Braindead, Children of the Living Dead, and the video game series Resident Evil (later adapted as films in 2002, 2004, and 2007), Dead Rising, and House of the Dead. Night of the Living Dead is parodied in films such as Night of the Living Bread and Shaun of the Dead, and in episodes of The Simpsons (“Treehouse of Horror III”, 1992), South Park (“Pink Eye”, 1997; “Night of the Living Homeless”, 2007) and Invader Zim (Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom, 2001;)  The word zombie is never used, but Romero’s film introduced the theme of zombies as reanimated, flesh-eating cannibals.

Night of the Living Dead ushered in the splatter film sub-genre. As one film historian points out, horror prior to Romero’s film had mostly involved rubber masks and costumes, cardboard sets, or mysterious figures lurking in the shadows. They were set in locations far removed from rural and suburban America. Romero revealed the power behind exploitation and setting horror in ordinary, unexceptional locations and offered a template for making an “effective and lucrative” film on a “minuscule budget”. Slasher films of the 1970s and 80s such as John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th (1980), and Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), for example, “owe much to the original Night of the Living Dead“.

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Hello my Freaky Darlings,

I finally watched Diary of the Dead yesterday. Hey, better late than never – right? I will also admit that until yesterday I’d never actually watched a Romero movie. In fact until recently I’d never even heard of him. I admit this with much humiliation. But in my own defence I live in Africa and no one else that I know watches horror movies. I’m a bit of the odd one out around here and everybody is always shocked when they find out I write horror. Yes, I realise that that is no excuse! I’m a horror writer after all and should be better informed about the goings on in my genre. I have therefore decided to do a more indepth study into horror novels and movies. So, if you have any suggestions about where I should start my education please let me know.

But I digress – back to Diary of the Dead.

When I first decided to watch it, I thought ‘Great! Zombies! Boring!’ I’m not a huge fan of Zombies. I find most Zombie movies to be rather ridiculous and they tend to go more towards the gross over the top blood and gore. That being said I did enjoy the Resident Evil movies, but that wasn’t because of the Zombies, it was inspite of them.

Strangely enough I quite enjoyed Diary of the Dead. I especially liked the ending and the question posed. Is the human race worth saving? I sometimes wonder about that when I watch the News or open a Newspaper and see what the latest horrendous things the human population is up to.

While I watched Diary of the Dead I also wondered why there never seem to be movies from a Zombies point of view. I mean, you have so many movies or books from a Vampires POV but never from a Zombies. The poor Zombie didn’t have a say in the matter of whether or not they’re undead. And plus who’s to say that there’s nothing going on in that brain? Hmmm….I sense a book idea in there somewhere…..

Anyway, have a horror filled day. I’m off to find another horror movie to sink my teeth into.

This happens a lot at film festivals: You intend on seeing a film (let’s say THE INVENTION OF LYING). But you go to the wrong theater. Then you figure you’ll see CREATION or GET LOW as an alternative. But since it’s too far to walk or the film’s running time is too long and timing-wise you absolutely cannot miss George Romero’s SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD…you wind up ducking in to see a Spanish/Colombian film called RABIA.

And you have no idea what the movie is about.

Because film festivals can be fun when you know how!

So, just as I sit down and settle in to accept my mystery movie fate, I tune in to a conversation about script development straight out of THE PLAYER taking place in the seats behind me. “I loved the first draft. The middle drafts lost the comedy, but it’s so hard to be funny when you’re dealing with character and structure.” “But the book is SO funny. It’s like joke, joke, joke.”

Yes, I’m sure it is. Too bad those damn characters and three act structure prevents your writer from being funny…

Finally, the film starts. Directed by Sebastián Cordero, the film also has Guillermo del Toro as a producer. However, there are so many names of producers and executive producers on this thing that I thought for sure my name was up there too for a moment.

Anyway, the film begins with a little post-coital pillow talk with a Colombian couple, José Maria and Rosa. It’s all afterglow billing and cooing until the “How many girlfriends have you had?” and “How many boyfriends have you had?” question comes up. Because José Maria, uhhh…not so much with the sense of humor. Then as he walks her to work, a couple guys in a repair shop make with the eyes and what have you. So, naturally, on the way back he beats the living crap out of them.

Make that no sense of humor and some hot button issues about “his girl”, capped with a nasty temper. Trifecta! It’s like we’ve got the Colombian version of Mark Wahlberg in FEAR.

Now, Rosa is a maid for a very well off couple living in a house so big there are literally rooms and parts of the house that people forget are there. This comes very much in handy after José Maria punches the construction foreman and accidentally kills him after the man fires him for beating up the first guy. Powder keg angry dude just can’t catch a break.

What are you going to do with a problem like José Maria? In Rosa’s case, you become pregnant and not-so-blissfully unaware that he is hiding in the rich people mansion you live in. Watching you and your charges, ever ready to pounce on a drunken relative making a pass or sexually assaulting you. Like an overprotective, getting hairier by the week and month, ghost.

To its credit, the film delivers a nice balance between the ever-present threat he poses to everyone in the house but Rosa and his own misunderstood, poverty-ridden and isolated situation. While it doesn’t entirely succeed, there is an effort to aim for the tragic versus the full-on thriller aspects of the story. And, there is a legitimate effort to steer away from simple cat and mouse suspense and thrills, in favor of a more real and humane dilemma the two protagonists face. Ultimately, however, I found it somewhat slight.

Time to bring on the zombies!

George A. Romero’s SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD picks up with some rogue military characters from his last outing, DIARY OF THE DEAD. Which is an interesting and cool idea. “Hey, I wonder what happened to those guys?” “Well, let’s make an entirely different movie where we follow THEM!”

And we do. To a place called Plum Island, Delaware dealing with its own private little zombie problem. You see, the island has been home for generations of two feuding Irish families, the O’Flynns and the Muldoons. And now the zombies have become caught in the middle of a bizarre custody battle as the O’Flynn patriarch wants to kill each one of them and the Muldoon patriarch wants to pen them up until a cure can be found.

After Muldoon gets the upper hand and kicks O’Flynn off the island (without even a hint of a tribal vote), O’Flynn posts what amounts to a travel brochure ad online to lure the living or anyone that still has Wi-Fi his way. The military group takes the bait and after some zombie aided fighting and mayhem, O’Flynn is back on his way to reclaim his island and take on Muldoon.

So what are we looking for in a Romero “Dead” film? New, fun and innovative ways to kill zombies? Check. At least one case of someone showing poor zombie survival etiquette of getting infected but not telling anyone until it’s practically too late? Check. Tons of dumbass human behavior inspiring you to root for zombie comeuppance? Check. At least one case of someone becoming a human buffet line? Check. Message about the dead being just like us only literally trapped in our daily routine and with an unappealing pallor and/or gaping wound somewhere? Big check. And, of course, it wouldn’t be complete until some disgruntled guy turns a shitload of zombies loose on everyone because he’s dying and what does he care anymore? Right?

Romero hits all of the notes he’s required by zombie law to deliver in SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD, but it’s all at the service of so much silliness. First off, if anything was more lethal than the zombie virus, it would be the dinner theater Irish brogues thrown around between the two patriarchs. And, at some point a twin is revealed so we can have the human/zombie mirror effect for reals before the entire thing devolves into a shootout at the It’s Not Okay to be a Zombie Corral.

So, as I weigh all the good versus the bad and the entertaining versus the dubious, I have to think this is a step back from DIARY OF THE DEAD. This film strikes me as being closer to LAND OF THE DEAD in that the sheen of unreality makes it difficult to either get caught up within the dread of the moment or have any connection to the central characters to inspire concern for their well being. Not a total loss as there is clearly still more than a twinkle in Romero’s eye as he maps these things out. Unfortunately, we need a lot more than that by this point.

Vagt irriterande alltså. Frågade kassörskan ifall de har Dawn of the Dead inne. “Jodå, den finns under Rysare!” ..30 min senare… “Nej men oj, det är visst VHS, my bad…” – En halvtimma fo’ nothin! Gav hyllorna fingret i tyst protest och valde på måfå ut 3 andra filmer att hyra.

Planet Terror, Diary of the Dead och The Amityville Horror.

Planet Terror och Diary of the Dead har jag sett. Planet Terror är inte jättebra men rätt rolig, Diary of the Dead är filmad med handkamera och på så sätt lite frustrerande men annars en rätt schysst film. Amityville Horror har jag inte sett men hört talas om så jag tänkte mest att det var dags och så hade jag en film till att välja iom 3 filmer 3 dygn 60 kr grejen de kört med i eviga tider.

Sitter och kollar på Simpsons samtidigt som jag flippar runt på Internet och väntar på att klockan ska bli efter nio nångång när Robin hämtat nå papper av hans farsa och vi ska kolla på filmerna. Lär ju börja med Amityville eftersom jag inte sett den.

P.s. Är det fredag imorgon?! Var tog veckan vägen?

EDIT: HAHAHAHA URSÄKTA BOOBSHOTEN! Herregud, jag såg inte hur det såg ut förrän jag vinklade skärmen rätt… So much för att ha laptopen på magen… Känner mig smutsig