¡QUÉ HORROR! 2017

Candidate #12

SEOUL-YEOK

(SEOUL STATION)
(April 2016)

Yeon Sang-ho's animated prequel to Busanhaeng (Train to Busan) actually plays better than its live-action sequel, and that’s probably all down to the fact that it’s a more atypical zombie cinema viewing experience than Busanhaeng.

Why is that, you may ask?

To wit:

A: Animated zombies are far more uncommon than live-action ones.

B: Unlike Busanhaeng, we don’t really see your usual zombie cinema character types here.

C: The social commentary is far more satisfactorily evident, with some barbed rants against country and government. And the class divide is likewise more overt here.

It should be noted though that there are some rather cruel and vicious moments in this one, some moments having nothing at all to do with the zombies…

If that all still sounds like your cup of (zombie) tea, then take heed: ¡Qué horror! strongly approves Seoul-yeok!

(Seoul Station UK quad courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2017

Candidate #8

THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS

(August 2016)

Now here's a zombie film that very consciously takes some relatively unfamiliar routes in its narrative, and that kind of zombie film is definitely worthy of some ¡Qué horror! love.

Mike Carey--yes, that Mike Carey--adapts his own novel, The Girl with All the Gifts, and helps (heh) gift us with a title that should settle in nicely in the annals of zombie cinema.

Now, in lieu of getting all spoiler-y, let’s take a look at some of the film’s other personnel:

Director Colm McCarthy first landed in ¡Qué horror! territory in the 2011 rundown, with his feature debut, Outcast. Now he’s back in the running with his sophomore feature.

(He’s apparently been keeping busy on the telly front. And speaking of, he’s set to direct the Krypton Pilot for SyFy--yes, that Krypton--so that should be something!)

Composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer, who positively killed on the score for the late and very much lamented Utopia, slays once again here.

(He also worked on the first series of Humans, though sadly, he didn’t score the second.)

And that cast!

Not only do we have Paddy Considine and Gemma Arterton, we’ve also got Glenn Close!

Glenn! Close!

And the feature debut of Sennia Nanua isn’t too shabby neither!

So, if you feel like supporting atypical zombie fare (and you really really should!), then by all means, pay The Girl with All the Gifts a visit!

Parting Shot:

While Carey is possibly better known in the comics world for his work on Lucifer or Hellblazer, as far as I’m concerned, his magnum opus in graphic literature is definitely The Unwritten.

(The Girl with All the Gifts UK quad courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com; novel blurb OS courtesy of orbitbooks.net.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2017

Candidate #6

BUSANHAENG
(TRAIN TO BUSAN)

(May 2016)

I'll say it right up front: if you watch a lot of zombie cinema, then you’ve seen this movie before.

Yes, they’re speaking in Korean, and sure, we’re on a speeding train, but you’ve got the Sudden Outbreak, the Initially Unlikely Hero, the Somewhat Obnoxious Guy Who May or May Not Prove to Be Heroic After All, the Characters Who Will Need Extra Protection (in this case, we have a Child and an Expectant Mother), and yes, of course we have the A$$hole.

And believe you me, the specimen we have here, played by Kim Eui-sung is like, Lord Emperor A$$hole.

Despite the familiarity of the character types and the beats though--there are a number of Sacrifices here, both of the Voluntary, and definitely Not Voluntary type, as well as Moments of Pathos, where the music swells and we’re moved to reach for a box of tissues--it cannot be denied that Yeon Sang-ho’s Busanhaeng is an effective entry in zombie cinema, and as such, worthy of some ¡Qué horror! love.

(Unless of course, you’re a Slow Zombie loyalist, in which case, do not apply; Busanhaeng sports adrenalized, occasionally contortionist zombies.)

Thus, given where the film positions itself on the narrative spectrum, there is also no significant Romero sociopolitical subtext here, the biggest takeaway perhaps being this tried and tested law in zombie cinema: no matter how bad things get, there’s always going to be an a$$hole who’ll make things even worse…

(Busanhaeng quad courtesy of twitter.com.)

¡Qué horror! 2013

Candidate #12

THE BATTERY

(October 2012)

“Just say it, man.”

“Say what?”

“Say it! Say it! Say it! Say the ‘Z’ word!”

So the zombie apocalypse has again come to the movies.

This time, what we’re looking at in Jeremy Gardner’s The Battery is basically a two-character piece, as we join ex-baseball players Ben (Gardner, who also wrote the screenplay) and Mickey (Adam Cronheim), as they constantly stay on the move in their day-to-day struggle to stay alive in a world where the hungry dead just keep on keepin’ on.

So while that may sound like the most generic description of a zombie movie ever, rest assured that The Battery doesn’t quite play out the way your average deadhead flick does.

Plus, it’s got Larry Fessenden in a minor (but nonetheless pivotal role).

And it features tracks by Wise Blood, El Cantador, The Parlor, and Rock Plaza Central, to name some, so it’s also one of the best-sounding entries in zombie cinema I’ve seen. (Props for the crazy use of Rock Plaza Central’s “Anthem for the Already Defeated.”

As I said when I talked about Les Revenants and In The Flesh, if The Walking Dead isn’t quite giving you what you want from your zombies, then you might want to check this one out.

(The Battery OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡Qué horror! 2013

Candidate #11

LES REVENANTS

(THE RETURNED)
(November 2012)

I mentioned Robin Campillo’s Les Revenants (They Came Back) ‘round these parts before in passing.

Allow me now to expound on that film further…

Unleashed in 2004--about a year and a half after Danny Boyle and Alex Garland gave us 28 Days Later, and just two months after A) Zack Snyder managed to get the brilliant Sarah Polley in a zombie movie and inadvertently ignited the slow vs. fast zombie debate with his impressive debut, the Dawn of the Dead remake, and B) Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost kicked off their Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy with Shaun of the Dead--Campillo’s Les Revenants emerged in the very early days of what would eventually develop into an unlikely revival of zombie cinema.

Even back then, Les Revenants felt, at least to me, like a breath of fresh air, a radically different approach to the idea of the dead returning to walk the earth.

Here, in a narrative co-written by Campillo with Brigitte Tijou, there were no rotting, shambling corpses intent on ripping into warm human flesh. Instead, there were the recently deceased (within the past decade), who suddenly appear, whole and seemingly unharmed, wanting only to return to the lives they’d been rudely evicted from by their deaths.

Here, Campillo focused on the living as well, those left behind, who now have to suddenly adjust to the reality that what they might have prayed for--the return of their departed loved ones--had, quite unbelievably, come to pass.

Flash forward to November of last year, and in the eight and a half years since Les Revenants, zombies had moved into the mainstream and become the monster du jour of horror, with an American zombie cable television show perennially breaking ratings records with seeming impunity.

Zombie, you’ve come a long way, baby…

It’s into this strange new world that Canal+’s television adaptation of Les Revenants emerges, and once again, we’re given an atypical depiction of the zombie phenomenon, one needed now more than ever, with so many bland and derivative entries in zombie cinema littering the sidewalks and the cineplexes.

Expanded into an eight-episode first season (with a second season that’s expected to debut early next year), the TV version of Les Revenants employs the same subtle creep and dread of Campillo’s original, eschewing a portion of the art house ambiguity of the film for some more traditional drama of the serialized sort, as well as some more overtly supernatural goings-on (though the exact nature of those aren’t really explained either).

And though the TV show’s narrative does not really follow the film’s (save for the central conceit of the dead returning and how that event impacts on the living), there is one major cast member carry-over: Frédéric Pierrot, playing different characters in either iteration, of course.   

The last time I put a TV series into the ¡Qué horror! milieu was Dead Set. But just as that show rightly deserved its ¡Qué horror! spot, so does this one. (Just imagine you’re watching an 8-hour long movie, with a sequel waiting in the wings…)

Plus, Mogwai scored the damned thing, so hey, one more reason to check it out!

Parting Shot 1: It should be noted that AbbottVision and FremantleMedia Enterprises have purchased the English-language remake rights, and intend to produce a show under the title, They Came Back, so I’d advise you to hunt down the French original before then.

This show should not be confused with ABC’s mid-season title, Resurrection, which is based on the novel, The Returned, by Jason Mott. (Though honestly, Mott’s novel, to be released in August, has a central conceit that’s pretty much the one in Campillo’s original. As Publisher’s Weekly puts it, “A family gets caught up in a worldwide event in which loved ones return from the dead exactly as they last were in life.” Hurm.)

Parting Shot 2: Also, if the atypical zombie’s your thing, then you should check out the 3 episode BBC show In The Flesh, which might have gotten this ¡Qué horror! slot, but it’s particularly less “horror” than Les Revenants, so…

Still, it’s worth your while, if you want more from your zombies than AMC’s The Walking Dead can give you…

(Les Revenants OS' courtesy of impawards.com; They Came Back DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com; Les Revenants OST sleeve art courtesy of amazon.co.uk.)

A Rundown of the 13 (plus) Best Horror Movies I've Seen in the Past Year
[9 of 13]

JUAN DE LOS MUERTOS

(JUAN OF THE DEAD)

(September 2011)

I think the last time I encountered a horror-comedy that worked this well was, appropriately enough, Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead.

Alejandro Brugués’ Juan de los Muertos sees the zombie apocalypse explode on the streets of Havana. It’s rude and satirical and funny and yes, actually moving in a couple of spots. It also says a lot about living in a country that’s so distant and removed from the First World Western living experience that it may as well be on another planet instead of 228 miles away from Miami.

It’s also got a killer end title sequence, some nods to Jaws, [REC], and Braindead/Dead Alive (to name a few), and a noteworthy use of the Sex Pistols. And, like ¡Qué Horror! 2012 candidate, Kalevet, Juan de los Muertos is touted as the first horror movie from its country of origin (though strictly speaking, this is a co-production between Cuba, Mexico, and Spain, and, unlike Kalevet, there's a whole lot of funny here).

You really shouldn’t need any more recommendation than that…

(Juan de los Muertos OS courtesy of cineol.net.)

¡Qué horror! 2012

Candidate # 27

[REC]³ GÉNESIS

(March 2012)

  

While I’ve long been a self-avowed Jaume Balagueró slut, I’ve never been too keen on Paco Plaza’s Romasanta, so I really went in to the original [REC] on the strength of Balagueró’s past work.

Thus, when word first broke that Filmax would be wrapping up the [REC] saga with two films, I greeted the news with mixed emotions. On the one hand, I’d be getting double the action. But that realization was offset by the fact that the [REC] co-directors were splitting up, so Plaza would handle the third installment, Génesis, and Balagueró would take on the fourth and final chapter, Apocalypse; I was stoked to see that Balagueró would close the saga, but to get there, we’d have to cross Plaza’s Génesis first…

So I held my breath, hoped for the best.

And what do you know? I enjoyed this a hell of a lot better than Romasanta.

Imago Mortis’ Leticia Dolera and Diego Martín are Clara and Koldo, a young couple whose wedding reception becomes the scene of a full-on bloodbath, as one of the guests happens to have a connection to events that played offscreen in the original [REC].

Now, though not as somber and nerve-wrackingly straight-faced as the first two [REC] films, and foregoing the shakycam found footage approach at a certain point of its running time, Génesis is still a good entry, not just in the [REC] saga, but also in the annals of zombie cinema. (And yes, I know they’re not “zombies” per se, but this saga is nonetheless firmly ensconced in that section of horror cinema.)

Though I will go on the record as saying I still think the first two [REC] films are significantly better, Génesis still packs a potent emotional gutpunch, and has some stand-out moments of onscreen goreletting that shouldn’t disappoint.

And with that out of the way…

Onto Apocalypse…

([REC]³ Génesis OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡Qué horror! 2012

Candidate # 22

JUAN DE LOS MUERTOS

(JUAN OF THE DEAD)

(September 2011)

I think the last time I encountered a horror-comedy that worked this well was, appropriately enough, Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead.

Alejandro Brugués’ Juan de los Muertos sees the zombie apocalypse explode on the streets of Havana. It’s rude and satirical and funny and yes, actually moving in a couple of spots. It also says a lot about living in a country that’s so distant and removed from the First World Western living experience that it may as well be on another planet instead of 228 miles away from Miami.

It’s also got a killer end title sequence, some nods to Jaws, [REC], and Braindead/Dead Alive (to name a few), and a noteworthy use of the Sex Pistols. And, like fellow ¡Qué Horror! 2012 candidate, Kalevet, Juan de los Muertos is touted as the first horror movie from its country of origin (though strictly speaking, this is a co-production between Cuba, Mexico, and Spain, and, unlike Kalevet, there's a whole lot of funny here).

You really shouldn’t need any more recommendation than that…

(Juan de los Muertos OS courtesy of cineol.net.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2012
Candidate # 5

MUTANTS
(January 2009)


Since this is ¡Qué Horror! it should be fairly obvious that director David Morley’s titular mutants are not at all like Professor Xavier’s Gifted Youngsters.
In this one, we are thrust into what is nowadays a seemingly commonplace scenario: the middle of a zombie apocalypse.
Of the running, infected variety, these “zombies” are wild and beastial. And though that may sound rather common as well, it should be noted that there’s a strong streak of body horror in Mutants, as one of its principal characters undergoes horrific bodily decay as the infection spreads throughout the unfortunate’s system.


(Mutants OS’ courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2011
Candidate # 23

RAMMBOCK
(SIEGE OF THE DEAD)
(January 2010)


The undead hordes have trudged onto German soil.
Brought to us by director Marvin Kren, from a screenplay written by Benjamin Hessler, Rammbock (alternately known internationally as Siege of the Dead and Berlin Undead) is purportedly the first German zombie film* and if only for the distinction, it’s worth checking out.
At a brief 59 minute running time, it’s approximately as long as an episode of The Walking Dead and plays out much better than some of the TV adaptation’s episodes.

* As opposed to films like Død Snø or Outpost, which feature Nazi zombies, but were Norwegian and British productions, respectively. (Reviews of both may be found shambling about in the Archive.)

(Rammbock US OS courtesy of impawards.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.)