¡QUÉ HORROR! 2017

Candidate #9

I AM A HERO

(October 2015)

And here's another zombie film that takes an interesting and atypical approach to its narrative.

Based on the manga by Hanazawa Kengo, Sato Shinsuke’s I Am a Hero follows struggling mangaka’s assistant Hideo (Ôizumi Yô), still waiting for his big break, much to the increasing annoyance of his girlfriend, Tekko (Katase Nana).

Will our, ahem, hero finally get his own work published and serialized, and get the girl?

Then again, it probably doesn’t matter, ‘cause, you know… zombie apocalypse.

As we well know, zombie apocalypses tend to muck up the small, trivial things the human race has usually got going on, things like plans and life…

There are dollops of thrills and black comedy and pathos here amidst the gore and the grue--and there’s a whole lotta that, so be warned--as well as a tip of the zombie hat to Romero’s Dawn of the Dead.

I Am a Hero is the perfect antidote for those all-too-relentlessly grim soap opera zombie titles out there…

(I Am a Hero OS courtesy of wwwatch.in.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2016

Candidate #3

WHY HORROR?

(October 2014)

"Horror has come a long way since it first got its hooks into me. As a devout fan, I used to feel like an outsider, but these days, I meet fans everywhere I go.
“Horror is now more popular than it’s ever been.”

--Tal Zimerman

I could be wrong and memory is f*cking with me right now, but I think this is the very first actual doc that’s made its way to ¡Qué horror! Candidacy (as opposed to the occasional faux doc that’s made the rundown).

Rob Lindsay and Nicolas Kleiman’s Why Horror? follows long-time horrorhead Tal Zimerman as he explores his life-long fascination with the genre, asking the titular question, “Why horror?” of art historians and literature experts and language professors and psychologists, as well as a host of familiar genre faces, from the old school vanguard (John Carpenter, Don Coscarelli, George Romero) to current established names (Alexandre Aja, Simon Barrett, Eli Roth, Ben Wheatley).

For any audience member who happens to be a kindred spirit to Tal, the game-changing benchmarks of a lifelong horrorhead of a certain generation--such as the socio-political horror of Romero’s original zombie trilogy, giallo, the home video boom, the self-referential metahorror of Scream, J-Horror, found footage, and the digital revolution sparking the current wave of global horror--are all touched on in the great animated section “A Way Too Brief History of Horror Cinema” (with VO from one of our all-time favorite hobbits, Elijah Wood).

There’s even the acknowledgement that, yes, Virginia, there are actually female horror fans (who make horror films too!), with appearances by the Soska sisters and Karen Lam.

For the more critically-minded horrorheads out there, or, for those who, at the very least, are curious to dig at the possible roots of their fascination with the genre, Why Horror? is an excellent and highly recommended watch that smartly encapsulates just how deeply horror is entrenched in our humanity, and how it’s really a universal language that we all know.

The question is, just how fluent are we willing to be in it?

“I like ‘smarts.’ I just like intelligent views of the world. And I am deeply committed to finding ‘smarts’ where other people don’t think to look for it. And I think horror is the perfect place.”

--Dr. Susanne Kord

European Languages, Culture and Society

University College, London, England

(Why Horror? OS courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)

DEAD SET

(Review)

“I suppose most TV is a distraction from something or another. That's kind of a theme in the show, we're kind of distracted by a lot of entertainment in this day and age, and obviously in vaguely making that point, what I've really done is create a zombie-romp that will further distract people from whatever might be more important in their lives. I've basically made the problem worse.”

-- Charlie Brooker

“I mean, you know, what is TV anyway? It’s just a big fat arrow pointing away from the problem. Especially shows like this.”

-- Joplin

So the zombie television outbreak may have been blocked on American shores with the Babylon Fields pilot not getting picked up to series, but across the Atlantic, the ravenous undead hordes have besieged the small screen via the gripping Dead Set.

It’s Day 64, 2:36pm, at the Big Brother house.

It’s an Eviction Night and the studio’s going just a bit madder than it usually is.

And wouldn’t you know it, but what initially seems to be rioting and random acts of violence--news coverage of which threatens to preempt the show, much to the annoyance of producer Patrick Goad--turns out to be a full-fledged zombie plague.

Featuring the recently discovered genus of the running zombie--first seen in Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead redux, whose deadheads in turn took a cue from the Rage-infected of Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later--and employing a handheld camera aesthetic courtesy of DP Tat Radcliffe, Dead Set is the unholy marriage of two media trends that have, for the most part, outstayed their welcome on the pop culture landscape: reality television and the zombie movie.

What at first sounds like a gimmicky conceit though--what happens to the isolated and insulated Big Brother housemates should a zombie outbreak occur?--turns out to be a particularly vicious and feral specimen in the still alarmingly burgeoning ranks of zombie cinema.

For that, we have to thank comic writer Charlie Brooker and director Yann Demange, for not shying away from giving us all the oozy, gory bits any self-respecting zombie movie should have.

Also upping the tension is the skillful slicing of editor Chris Wyatt, who takes Radcliffe’s shots and employs the frenetic cutting employed by Chris Gill in 28 Days Later and its sequel, to excellent effect.

(Demange, Radcliffe, and Wyatt had all previously worked together on Secret Diary of a Callgirl.)

There’s also an effective cast here, which includes Jaime Winstone, daughter of Ray, who’s also seen in Olly Blackburn’s Donkey Punch, Muay Thai champ-turned-actor Warren Brown, and Adam Deacon (who’d previously worked with Winstone on Menhaj Huda’s Kidulthood).

But the truly unforgettable one onscreen is undoubtedly Andy Nyman, who was the annoyingly endearing Gordon in Christopher Smith’s Severance, and who plays “hard-nosed, ambitious and shouty” Patrick.

If nothing else, Patrick will go down as the most excruciatingly irritating character ever to grace a zombie movie. (You know the one; the character you just can’t wait to get chomped on, the one whose death scene you’ll be cheering wildly.)

Ultimately, Dead Set is an absorbing (and quite welcome) entry amongst the more recent zombie romps, which makes a number of nods to Romero’s original Dead trilogy, from lines, to a climactic death scene (blood and guts galore!).

And not only does it pump up the grue quotient to ridiculous heights, it also takes a bloody swipe at the inanity of reality television and those who choose to partake in it, with former Big Brother housemates and presenter Davina McCall along for the ride.

It’s a thrilling and gory look at the collision of catastrophe and entertainment, where the idea of reality television as goldfish bowl is taken to its bleakest extreme.

There’s also a nasty bit of fire extinguisher work reminiscent of Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible, so what’s not to like, really?

“I’m not even saying there is a God. But if there is, maybe all this is happening because He… or She… or It… is judging our culture, and spiting us accordingly.”

“Yeah, but why be such a c*nt about it?”

(Originally aired on E4 October last year, all 5 episodes of Dead Set are available on DVD.)

Parting shot: Incidentally, Chris Wyatt also edited Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book, Shane Meadows’ This Is England, and E. Elias Merhige’s Shadow of the Vampire.

Additionally, reviews of Severance, as well as a whole host of zombie films, may be found in the Iguana Archive.

(Dead Set DVD cover art courtesy of dvdactive.com; images courtesy of e4.com.)

AMERICAN ZOMBIE
(Review)

“They go by different names: decedents, the non-living community, revenants, the living dead, zombies. But, whatever they are, they are real.”


One of the most atypical—and most effective—of cinema’s recent zombie entries has to be Grace Lee’s faux documentary, American Zombie.
Tracking the lives of four “revenants” in a world where the living dead exist and take the bus just like everybody else, American Zombie is one of the most imaginative takes on the subject matter I’ve seen, and humbly follows in the hallowed footsteps of Romero’s brand of undead social commentary.

Here, zombies stand in for anyone who’s been marginalized, abused, and disabused, the disenfranchised and alienated of society, regardless of race, creed, or colour.
All we really want, after all, is to understand and accept who we are, and be embraced for that; to love and to be loved.
That goes for zombies too.

“We’ve made three classifications that define the revenant population.
“The first classification is the feral zombie, which are beings that seem to function without reason.
“Second is low-functioning zombies. These are beings that have limited mental capacity, but they’re perfectly capable of caring for themselves.
“And the third is high-functioning zombies. These beings have vast portions of their mental facilities intact, and it’s not unusual for them to pass as humans.”


The parallels with the real world are plain to see, from people living with a potentially catastrophic, communicable disease, to an abused labour force without rights or privileges, to “an untapped market for spiritual enlightenment.”
I have seen zombies, my friends, and in American Zombie, the zombies are us.

The “high-functioning” cross-section Lee chooses to people her documentary with include Ivan (Austin Basis), a convenience store clerk who puts out a ‘zine called American Zombie; Judy (Suzy Nakamura), a customer relations rep for Healthful Bounty, an organic food company; Lisa (Jane Edith Wilson), a would-be artiste/florist (specialization: funeral arrangements) who has no memory of her former life and death; and Joel (Al Vicente), founder of ZAG, the Zombie Advocacy Group (“We’re here. We’re dead. Get used to it.”), who pronounces his name “Yo-El.”
It’s through their stories that Lee moves the audience over a gamut of emotions, a more varied palette of feeling than that offered by many a one-tone horror movie.


And yes, American Zombie is a horror movie, though not the sort with buckets of fake blood and rubber entrails.
Here is, at the risk of setting off the pretention alarm, the horror of existence: the horror of loneliness, and rejection, and aimlessness, and prejudice, and injustice.
It’s the horror of being invisible, of being treated—for whatever reason—as a second-class citizen, without the right to rent property, or to vote, or to marry.

“Jesus loves zombies. Jesus was the original zombie.
“I’m sure, you know, some really strict theologian would have some problems with that, but, but I say it, you know, I say it to kind of, wake the zombies up. You know, to let the zombies know that, ‘Hey, you’re not alone. You know, Jesus has been through the same thing.’”


Lest I’m making American Zombie sound, heh, deathly serious, let me assure you, there’s a healthy streak of humour here too, thus, that gamut of emotions I mentioned earlier.
The mere set-up alone allows for an amusing laugh or three: real life documentarian Grace Lee—who’s tackled weighty subject matter like military prostitution and sweatshop workers’ rights—plays herself in a documentary about zombies (which sort of reminds me of Werner Herzog appearing as himself in Zak Penn’s Incident at Loch Ness).
Tell me that doesn’t sound funny.


The beauty of American Zombie though, is that, as funny as it is, it also succeeds in drawing out some of the sad truths of who we are, not just as a society, but as thinking, feeling individuals as well.
This is what any good documentary should do. The fact that Lee achieves this in a fake documentary, with a premise that sounds as patently ridiculous as this one does… well…
“Triumph” is the word, people.
It’s a piece like this that makes me glad zombies are still living it up on the silver screen.

“We can’t pretend they don’t exist. They exist. They deserve our attention. It’s not a disease, it’s not a disability. It’s a new population, a population that deserves our respect and social services.”

(American Zombie OS courtesy of impawards.com and images courtesy of americanzombiemovie.com.)

DIARY OF THE DEAD
(Review)

“Jason always wanted to be a documentary filmmaker. But for his senior class project, he decided to try to make a horror film. That’s what he was shooting on that first night. The night when… everything changed.”
-- Debra

There were a number of recent horror movies (most from 2007) that chose to utilize the shakycam aesthetic popularized by The Blair Witch Project. Some of these, in turn, seemed to have drawn inspiration from the same spot in the collective unconscious, using the DIY doc approach to address some of the issues and anxieties we, as a media-driven society, face in this age of cell phone cameras and YouTube.
One of those films was George Romero’s fifth cinematic journey to the zombie-ridden world he created four decades ago, Diary of the Dead.

Diary chronicles the first days and nights of this new age where the dead are no longer content to stay still once they’ve stopped breathing. We view this radical and very sudden change through the eyes (and lenses) of a group of students from “the Pitt,” the University of Pittsburgh, who are in the woods shooting a horror movie entitled The Death of Death.
When the fit hits the shan though, the horror movie becomes all too real.

Now, first off, despite its low budget, I do think Diary is a far more ambitious entry in Romero’s Dead series than his previous Land of the Dead. It’s also arguably more of a horror movie for the YouTube generation than another recent shakycam horror film, Matt Reeves’ Cloverfield.
However, that’s only because Diary is far less subtle in its approach.
That, for me, is one of the biggest problems of Diary: the social commentary is so heavy-handed, these kids make Michael Moore look like the Sultan of Subtle. Of course, to be fair, what we’re supposed to be seeing in Diary is a senior film student’s project, The Death of Death, so maybe the clumsy, elephantine manner in which the points are made is part of Romero’s overall scheme.
But the truth is, this isn’t actually Jason Creed’s The Death of Death that we’re watching, is it? It’s George Romero’s Diary of the Dead.

Now, when I look back at Night of the Living Dead, the social commentary is present, but it isn’t shoved down your throat. There are gut punches, certainly, particularly in the film’s final moments, but these moments aren’t accompanied by a voice-over and stock footage that belabour the point till it feels like Romero is bludgeoning me with his thoughts on why the human race may not deserve to be saved from its own largely self-propelled destruction.
And I haven’t seen either Romero’s Dawn nor Day in a yonk’s age, but I don’t recall them being as blatant and bullish as this.

There’s also the matter of Romero’s swipes at some of the other zombie-come-latelies. Yes, I do realize it is his party, but when he repeatedly makes reference to the speed at which dead things are supposed to move, and whether any dead person will come back to re-animated life or only those that have been bitten beforehand, I just have the distinct urge to yell, Yes, we get it! Now get on with the movie!
There are also the not entirely successful post-modern, self-referential touches, such as when Tony (Land of the Dead’s Shawn Roberts) refers to The Death of Death as a “Stupid f*cking mummy movie,” while their professor, Andrew Maxwell (Scott Wentworth, from TV’s Kung Fu: The Legend Continues), quickly adds, “With an underlying thread of social satire.”
Romero is, of course, referring to his own zombie movies, and though I imagine it was meant to be self-deprecating, it doesn’t quite play like Romero taking the piss out of himself. Instead, it comes off as an arm-waving tactic, drawing attention to this very film, which, if you hadn’t yet figured out, isn’t meant to be just another stupid f*cking zombie movie.

My biggest problem though, the one I feel is the key to why I quickly felt a certain distance from the actions on-screen, is the less than satisfactory performances from the cast.
Sadly, the most obvious culprits in this case are Josh Close (who plays Jason Creed, and is the main documenter of the action) and Michelle Morgan (who plays Jason’s girlfriend, Debra Moynihan). Not only are they the most prominent characters in the group, but since Jason is the driving force behind The Death of Death, he is basically the eye through which we are viewing the film.
And, to put it bluntly, Jason is a d!ck.
Jason’s character is so singularly off-putting and irritatingly fixated, that even when I get his point, I end up not giving a rat’s a$$ because he’s so distinctly unlikeable. And Close—who appeared in The Exorcism of Emily Rose and the straight-to-DVD feature The Plague—does nothing whatsoever to make the character seem sympathetic. (You can’t really admire a guy who holds his self-appointed responsibility as a “shooter” to be more important than actually lending a helping hand to a friend who’s being accosted by a flesh-hungry zombie. This happens more than once, people.)

I get the climactic debate, about chronicling and disseminating the truth, against self-preservation, but Close’s Jason doesn’t seem at all convincing in this pivotal moment (just one of several that he flubs), his words hollow and without any genuine conviction.
Morgan doesn’t help much either, her Debra never really coming across as an actual person. Debra’s occasional professions of love for Jason may just as well be Morgan reading off items on a grocery list.
Or lines from a script.
And tragically, that’s what most of the cast sound like, as if they’re spouting lines that aren’t really theirs to begin with.
I’m honestly not sure how closely Romero stuck to his script, or, if like Cloverfield, there was a fair amount of improv that went on in Diary. Because if there was, then I guess it boils down to the acting talent of the cast.
None of them seem natural, which of course, just draws attention to the fact that this is a fiction, and not a document of an actual occurrence, thus compromising the film’s basic integrity. I mean, if Cloverfield succeeded in making me buy the notion of a giant monster ravaging New York City, then I’d like to think convincing me of a zombie epidemic would be easier, right?
As it is, I can at the very least, look back at Land of the Dead and say, Hey, at least Romero had actors in it.

I wanted to like this, truly I did, and I take no pleasure in the negative vibe this review is oozing. To be honest, I don’t hate Diary; that would be for far less ambitious and lazy films (like, say, Steve Miner’s Day of the Dead redux).
Diary, like all the other Romero Dead films, is saying something. Something important.
I just wish he’d said it in a softer, and more convincing tone.

Parting shot: Reviews of Romero’s Land of the Dead and Miner’s Day of the Dead, can be found in the Archive, along with other recent zombie cinema entries, 28 Weeks Later, Plane Dead, and Boy Eats Girl.
The article “Revelations (Getting at the Truths of Apocalypse Cinema)”—which discusses Zack Synder’s Dawn of the Dead remake and Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later—can also be found in the Archive.

(Diary of the Dead OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com; images courtesy of fangoria.com.)

DAY OF THE DEAD (2008)
(Review)

Welcome to Leadville, Colorado, on the day the dead start to walk the Earth.
A remake of George Romero’s third installment in his Dead series, this is a straight-to-DVD feature starring American Beauty’s Mena Suvari as Sarah Bowman, born and raised in Leadville, and back as part of a supposed military exercise that quickly turns into a tour of zombie Hell.
Sadly—and much like the surprisingly rapid decay and decomposition of newly-turned zombies—the film itself likewise quickly degenerates into a tour of low budget horror Hell.

First of all, we really didn’t need remakes to Romero’s originals. That’s a given.
But, however unnecessary the remakes may have been, it’s to the credit of directors Tom Savini and Zack Snyder (who gave us 1990‘s colour redux of Night of the Living Dead and 2004‘s adrenalized zombies in the revisited Dawn of the Dead) that the first two were actually well-made and ultimately, excellent additions to the ranks of zombie cinema.
This Day though, is frankly a terrible mess.
Brought to us by Steve Miner—who directed the second and third parts of the Friday the 13th franchise, as well as Halloween H20—the Day of the Dead remake should really just have stayed dead, or at the very least, spent a little more time in deep freeze while another draft of the script was cranked out, and another, more capable director chosen for the unenviable task of walking in Romero’s shadow.

To begin with, why the script by Jeffrey Reddick (who co-wrote Final Destination) chooses to favour a youngish cast is a mystery, as this feels like nothing so much as part teen horror flick, part kids dressing up to play soldier.
Now, just to be clear, I actually thought Suvari was passably effective here; save for some rather screamy bits, she passes muster, as does Stark Sands (Conor McNamara, in Nip/Tuck’s “2026” flashforward episode), who brings a curious pathos to his role of Bud. (If you’ve seen Romero’s original, you’ll get an idea what ultimately happens to Bud, based solely on his name.)
The script though, doesn’t really treat their characters with any real respect. But while Suvari and Sands attempt to make the most of what little is given them, the other performers aren’t so skilled or lucky.
Joan of Arcadia’s Michael Welch (as Sarah’s younger brother, Trevor) and other Nip/Tucker AnnaLynne McCord (as his girlfriend Nina) are vaguely ridiculous, as is Torchwood‘s Matt Rippy (as CDC doc, Logan). Nick Cannon meanwhile, as Salazar, is merely amusing, but not in a good way.
It’s also telling that the two older members of the cast, Ian McNeice (as Paul, the local DJ; you’ll recall McNeice as Robert Drudge, the police surgeon in From Hell) and Ving Rhames (who plays Capt. Rhodes, the brother mentioned by Rhames’ character in Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead), are given ultimately thankless roles here. Rhames, in particular, is made to look like quite the fool in his final onscreen moments in Day.

Why the script chooses to forego the claustrophobic setting of the original Day is also another mystery, instead opting to show us the disaster that befalls Leadville, when the film’s budget clearly can’t afford to.
And while there is an anti-military swipe towards film’s end, it’s piddling compared to the socio-cultural commentary Romero manages to squeeze in amidst the gore of his originals.
Also, for those of you who took issue with the running zombies from Dawn, well, you’ll ab-so-frakkin’-lute-ly abhor Miner’s Day zombies, who not only leap, they also actually spider climb across ceilings.
I kept on waiting for them to go all Yamikazi on Suvari’s a$$, but sadly, they didn’t.
And while some of the gore effects are adequate, there’s also some rather dodgy CGI and visual effects in here, particularly when we get some zombie BBQ on the menu.

Miner’s horror record had been spotty before this—Friday the 13th Part II was the last time Crystal Lake was any fun, but his Part III and Halloween H20 were not particularly good. (Though the on-screen pairing of mother and daughter Scream Queens Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee Curtis in H20 was admittedly a great and knowing nod.)
Now he’s touched a third classic horror franchise and left behind an odious reek, like an alley cat marking its territory.
The man should stop while he’s behind…
And the remakes of Romero should stop too.

(Day of the Dead OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)

reVIEW (31) 
LAND OF THE DEAD
In preparation for the upcoming Diary of the Dead, here’s a look back at George Romero’s Land of the Dead.

In 1968, then 28-year old George Romero shot a little black-and-white movie in Pittsburgh, and in the process, not only gave birth to the zombie film as we know it, but also became the Father of the Horror Film as Social Commentary. That movie was the original Night of the Living Dead.
Nearly four decades later, and Romero has returned for a fourth zombie outing in the Land of the Dead, ushering us back into the world whose rules he pretty much wrote in Night, Dawn of the Dead (1978), and Day of the Dead (1985).
Here, Riley (Simon Baker, TV’s The Guardian and The Ring Two) and Cholo (John Leguizamo) are mercenaries on the cusp of retirement, about to pack in the supply raids and zombie shooting for new lives, while Kaufman (Dennis Hopper) is the big man of Fiddler’s Green, an exclusive community for the powerful and influential, surrounded by the hordes of have-nots huddled around its skyscraping, climate-controlled glory. And in the ruins of suburbia, the walking dead seem to be regaining a semblance of sentience…

Navigating this simmering cauldron of societal unease with the confidence of a well-traveled journeyman, Romero once again tells a tale of survival horror which is far more than just flesh-chomping and head-exploding grue.
In the wake of modern civilization’s fall, trod upon remorselessly by the shuffling feet of the living dead, Romero posits the emergence of three discreet societies: Fiddler’s Green, the co-opted, jury-rigged society for the privileged few; the urban squalor of the sprawl, a more organic community, growing fungus-like in the leavings and detritus of the Green, the masses scrambling for warmth and protection through osmosis; and the living dead of suburbia, finally waking from their long sleep of apathy.

It is by the clash and grind of these societies that the tale of Land of the Dead is told, a tale of individuals trying to make some sort of sense of the world they find themselves in, of the hand Fate has dealt them.
Riley wants out, Cholo wants in, while Kaufman, the author of much of the misery and injustice we witness in Land of the Dead, sees the Green as his God-given right, by virtue of his having taken it and molded it into what it is; very American attitude, that.
Paradoxically, Kaufman even turns the milling masses into a mirror image of the walking dead, taking the “bread and circuses” maxim and giving them vice and entertainment, keeping them oblivious to the inherent wrongness of the situation.

Ironically, it is the dead of suburbia, cruelly stripped of their cognition and humanity, who first begin to stir themselves into concerted action, finally tiring of the abuse heaped upon them by the bands of the quick who repeatedly invade their territory to steal food, medicine, and supplies. (Admittedly, all of this is now useless to the dead, but it is, after all, the principle of the thing, and the flagrant disregard the quick have for them, that becomes the bloody bone of contention here.)
In the sprawl, it is only agitators like Mulligan (Bruce McFee) who try to stir up the flames of revolution, while the masses are kept occupied by gambling and bloodsport (just as the zombies are, initially, fixated by the fireworks displays of Riley’s “sky flowers”; this, in itself, a chilling echo of man’s own inherent tendency to stare, fixated, at gaudy displays of hollow “entertainment,” while his world crumbles and decays around him).

Admittedly, Romero does what he does best in Land of the Dead; manage to pack all of that (and more) into a movie that is ostensibly about flesh-eating zombies. Somehow though, there was still a part of me that wondered why he chose to return to territory he’d already charted so well in the past.
Yes, in the wake of the success of 28 Days Later, the Dawn of the Dead remake and Shaun of the Dead, zombies are once again part of the horror du jour landscape, but Romero is so much more than the zombie guy.
As I recall, Monkey Shines was a tense, nasty little shocker, and all that had was a psychotic monkey. Nope, no shambling, hungry undead there.
Of course, what did he choose as a follow-up but yet another zombie movie, Diary of the Dead.
Strangely enough though, given my tainted approval of Land of the Dead, I’m actually anticipating Diary, as it appears to be Romero’s return to independent filmmaking, and he seems very excited about the work.
And hey, if George Romero is excited about something, then any self-respecting horror geek would be excited about it too.

Parting shot: Asia Argento (daughter of legendary Italian director Dario Argento; who starred opposite Vin Diesel in XXX and headlines the highly anticipated La Terza Madre) is Slack, the nominal love interest here.
Also, appearing in zombie cameos are long-time Romero collaborator and special make-up effects guru Tom Savini, as well as Shaun of the Dead duo, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright.

Parting shot 2: A review of The Ring Two can be found in the Archive.

(Land of the Dead OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

(The above is an altered version of the review originally titled “Dead Like Me.”)

REVELATIONS

(Getting at the Truths of Apocalypse Cinema)

The man coughing violently in a darkened theater, spewing unseen plague into the cool air. A rain of fiery meteors falling from a blood red sky. The ravenous zombie pounding at the bolted door. The finger hovering over the red button.
Just a handful of images from the gallery of apocalypse cinema, the collective term used to encompass films chronicling end of the world scenarios, with civilization in dire jeopardy from threats natural and man-made, extraterrestrial and supernatural, biological and mechanical.

Apocalypse cinema has always been, more often than not, profitable at the box office, as if movie-going audiences yearn to witness the destruction of society from one safe remove, as if we are all, every single one of us, willing—and eager—voyeurs to ruination.
David J. Skal, in his excellent book The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, observes, "Cataclysmic junctures in history usually stir up strong images in the collective mind..." And cinema is one of the repositories of these images.

From the atomic monster films of the 50's—produced in the wake of the bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—where irradiated creatures grew to gargantuan size and went on real estate rampages from the United States to Japan, through the Irwin Allen disaster movies of the 70's, through the peak of zombie cinema (the late 70's to early 80's), all the way up to pre-millennial films like Armageddon and Deep Impact, the threat of our society's destruction has been a staple of cinema for a long time now.
One would think though, that after the calendar hit January 1 2000, that the millennium fever that always strikes at that sort of pivotal transition, would pass, and we'd be free from visions of the screaming populace of ruined cities, at least for a while.
Apparently not so.

It's only 2004, and we've already seen a remake of George Romero's classic Dawn of the Dead, and Roland Emmerich's latest CGI-popcorn offering, The Day After Tomorrow, while last year gave us The Core, Eli Roth's Cabin Fever and the year before that, Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later.
Now, within the confines of apocalypse cinema, I will cop to a preference for the flesh-eating zombies overrun the world scenario (and its variations) as opposed to the global disaster scenario of The Core and The Day After Tomorrow.
While zombies walking the streets is a very visceral, in-your-face threat, the CGI-generated catastrophes of films like Tomorrow seem a bit impersonal to me. (So much so that some movies of this persuasion feel compelled to pile sequence after sequence of "characterization" on our laps, till we're all but gnashing our teeth in aggravated boredom, waiting for the final ten minutes of eye-popping CGI devastation. See: Deep Impact.)
Additionally, in movies like this, you seem to have to be a brainy scientist to stand a chance of survival. (Either that, or be Bruce Willis.) If you're a regular schmoe who doesn't know anything about meterology or geology or some other -ology, you may as well just lie down and wait for the tsunami/asteroid/red hot magma to put you out of your misery.
I prefer films that give sedentary writer guys like me a fair shake.
Thus, my three films of choice for this article: Cabin Fever, 28 Days Later, and this year's remake of Dawn of the Dead.


“You look a little peaked…”

Though the effects of the flesh-eating virus in Cabin Fever are, for the length of the film, confined to a contained area (a remote cabin and the surrounding woods), it’s the first title on our list since it captures societal breakdown on a microcosmic level, as the bonds that hold a group of friends together decay and fester, much like their infected flesh does.

Directed by David Lynch protégé Eli Roth, Cabin Fever is a low-budget surprise, by turns funny and disturbing. It is also an interesting variation on the zombie film, where the infected should, by all rights, become objects of compassion and sympathy, but instead, become objects of revulsion, pariahs to their friends and lovers.
Part The Evil Dead, part Outbreak, part 28 Days Later, Cabin Fever deals out the proceedings with dollops of very black humor, and very visceral, unnerving shots of tainted blood spraying and gouting every which way. (There are also a number of shudder-worthy sequences here that are hard to forget: the leg-shaving scene is probably tops on that list.)

But above and beyond the gut shock, is the ugly, brutal reality of how friends can turn on each other when it becomes every man for himself, how tenuous the bonds of society and community can be when faced with the cold, inhuman workings of a highly infectious disease.
In the end, it is the onscreen corrosion of these interpersonal dynamics that is the lasting impression of Cabin Fever that remains alongside the blood and grue, an insightful and excellent metaphor for the disease of egocentrism, which is perhaps the greatest enemy of the societal body.


“Sorry about The Beach…”

Almost as if in abject apology for the Leo-starrer (adapted from the Alex Garland novel and directed by Danny Boyle of Trainspotting fame), director and writer teamed up again for 28 Days Later (directed by Boyle from a script written directly for the screen by Garland).
Another post-millennial variation on the zombie film, 28 Days Later begins with a prologue set in the Cambridge Primate Research Centre, where some animal activists unwittingly let loose a virus—called, appropriately enough, “Rage”—which causes the infected to go into a constant state of mindless, uncontrolled violence. Once infected by tainted blood or saliva, a person ceases being a person, and becomes nothing more than a wild, vicious beast; perhaps, the beast that lies in wait in all of us, free of the imposed restraints of ethics and morals and rational thought.
We then jump four weeks ahead—thus, the title—when Jim (Cillian Murphy) awakes in hospital (he was in an accident before the outbreak began), to find it empty and ransacked. (The scenes of Jim walking through a deserted London are far more haunting than Tom Cruise in an empty Times Square in Vanilla Sky.)

Thus, we are not witness to the actual breakdown of society, but rather—like Jim—suddenly thrust into some horrible New World (Dis)Order, where there is apparently no government, no police, no army, and a church is no longer a sanctuary.
So who do we turn to when all structures fail? We turn to one another.
Garland manages to avoid the clichés of this sort of film, where strangers are thrust upon one another in a bid to survive. He manages to write people; flawed, yes, but not necessarily good, not necessarily evil. (Some though, perhaps just horny and misguided.) It is a minor triumph of the film that we are not asked to endure the whiny self-important complainer whom the audience is just waiting to get offed in the next reel.
Reprisals and turn-arounds however, are sudden and brutal, and that mood is helped tremendously by the occasionally rapidfire, staccato editing of Chris Gill, working with excellent footage shot by Anthony Dod Mantle.

Generally a rather nihilistic film, 28 Days Later seems to say that in the face of such calamity, the tendency will be for little pockets of madness to bloom, merely echoing the insane society that’s just been eradicated. Garland seems to say that, in the end, man is his own worst enemy. (At least with the infected, there is no pretense of culture and civilization, while indulging in one’s basest desires.)
Which is not to say the film is all doom and gloom. There are surprisingly somber and melancholy notes struck in this dirge: Jim’s discovery of his parents’ fates; choral music playing during the taxi ride through the devastated and deserted city.
There is a strain of hope, however fleeting and ephemeral, that runs throughout the film, carrying us along with it, doing its best to raise us above the detritus and leavings of a society perhaps better off dead.


Dead Again

From the precious few moments of Ana’s (Sarah Polley) last night of normalcy, to her escape from a suburbia rapidly descending into chaos, to the quick-cut opening title montage set to Johnny Cash’s Revelations-tinged “The Man Comes Around” (with the credit letters scattering like blood in a high wind), it is immediately established that this is a slicker version of the original 1979 Dawn of the Dead.
What is also instantly obvious is that director Zack Snyder and his team seem to have taken a page from the rushing, rabid hordes of 28 Days Later; gone are the shambling, lethargic zombies of the original Dead trilogy. What we have here are strangely energetic and limber zombies, as if fresh from an aerobics class taught by an undead—though still horribly hyper—Richard Simmons.

What we also have here, in light of this article, is a curious paradox: What is possibly the most visceral and graphic of the three films we’re taking a look at, is also the most entertaining. “Entertaining” in that it pretty much sticks to audience expectations of what this sort of movie is supposed to deliver. (And yes, here we are asked to endure the whiny self-important complainer who we’re just waiting to get offed in the next reel. There is also the macho alpha male whom we at first hate, then find ourselves rooting for by film’s end.)

As with George Romero’s original vision, the exact reason for the zombie epidemic is left unstated (though the religious/supernatural reason is given a boost here by a televangelist who utters one of the best taglines in cinema history: “When there is no more room in Hell, the Dead will walk the earth”), and the mall setting—of which much has been said in the past by the more critically-minded of us gorehounds—is also left intact.
And although we do catch glimpses of societal breakdown, what we are more privy to here is the attempted rebuilding of society. Crossroads Mall becomes the stage for this new community, the idea of mall-as-Heaven, where everything you might possibly want can be found, an air-conditioned Paradise isolated from the Hell of Zombieville outside.
But what eventually comes to the fore is the fact that this is merely just another state of living death, mall-as-Limbo. (Though the indictment against mall culture is still present, it is perhaps not as overt as in the original.)
Again, as to be expected, the Paradise-turned-Limbo comes to an end, and the survivors are forced to flee once more, in the hopes of finding a more permanent surcease from the insatiable dead.

The 1979 original is considered a classic of horror cinema, described by David J. Skal as a “razor-edged social satire” and “an indelible image of consumerism gone mad.” Given that Snyder’s remake doesn’t add anything significant to the equation—and in some instances, actually mutes the anti-mall culture statement—it could very well be leveled with the accusation of being “unnecessary, but well-made,” as was the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead.
Quite possibly. But at least it’s well-made.
And there is a cameo by special make-up effects guru Tom Savini (who directed the 1990 Night). And can anyone honestly say they’ve seen the brilliant Sarah Polley in a role like this before, kicking zombie butt?! I think not!

Last words

So at the end of it all, why are we fascinated by these films of death and destruction? Is it only here that we can secretly and comfortably acknowledge our own mortality, accepting the presence of the ever-hovering shadow on the doors of our own existence? Is it that we wish to witness societal breakdown, wondering how we would react in that situation, whether it would bring out the best, or worst, in us? Or is it because we delight in seeing others' misery? (Better them than us...)
Perhaps the answer lies in the term itself. The word "apocalypse," after all, contrary to popular belief, does not mean the end of the world. It comes from the Greek, apokalypsis, literally, "uncovering" or "revelation." (A synonym for "apocalypse" is "disclosure.") Perhaps we are fascinated by these films because we see truths in them, about ourselves, and the nature of our existence.
Or do we just bloody like being scared out of our wits?
Maybe it's a combination of all of these reasons, and quite possibly, even more, unknown to anyone except God and our private, most secret selves.

Parting shot: Due to the graphic nature of these films, those easily repulsed, or with weak stomachs and hearts, should probably not even consider watching them. You have been warned.

(Cabin Fever, 28 Days Later, and Dawn of the Dead OS’s courtesy of impawards.com.)

(The above is a slightly altered version of an article previously published in 2004.)

BOY EATS GIRL (Review)

The misguided love of a mother (Deirdre O’Kane) for her son Nathan (David Leon) causes a zombie outbreak in the suburbs of Dublin, even as Nathan is doing his best to profess his love for his long-time friend Jessica (Samantha Mumba, who was in the horrid remake of The Time Machine).
Yes, in the tradition of Shaun of the Dead, Boy Eats Girl is another zom-rom-com, though sadly, it doesn’t quite have the bite of its much funnier predecessor.

The I Was A Teen-Age Zombie gambit isn’t firing on all cylinders here, as the hilarious bits aren’t all that hilarious, and the grue doesn’t really start flying till the all-out gorefest towards film’s end.
So it isn’t a laughing-in-stitches comedy and it isn’t a gorehound’s wet dream either. Nor is the romance part of the equation sparkling with originality.
Even as a teen film Boy Eats Girl doesn’t really achieve anything distinctive. The usual teen archetypes are represented, as are the well-meaning though reviled teacher types, but these aren’t really characters so much as they are stereotypes: the Slut, the Bully, the Sleazebag. There’s the Best Friend Who Wants to Be Something More, the Best Female Friend Who Is Actually The Object of Desire, and the Sidekicks.
There seems to be no effort whatsoever on the part of the script to actually mold these types into characters. They may as well be zombies for all the individuality they show.

All in all, this is a lukewarm entry in the burgeoning genre of zombie cinema, which is a shame. Just as George Romero takes aim at culture and society in his Dead films, Boy Eats Girl director Stephen Bradley and scriptwriter Derek Landy could have taken the opportunity to take some digs at the educational system and the insular, stratified society that is high school, but instead go for the bland, low road, in a particularly ho-hum fashion. Horror is always so much better when it’s about something more than just the monster and the screaming victim; comedy, when it’s making you think, as well as laugh.

If Boy Eats Girl had at least been as funny as Shaun of the Dead, then it may have been worth watching, with or without any satirical content. But it isn’t.
And no amount of post-28 Days Later no-longer-lethargic zombies can change that.

(Boy Eats Girl DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com.)