A. Zombie Reviews: Day of the Dead: Bloodline (2018) By A. Zombie
Rated: R (Contains: bloody violence, gore, adult language, nudity, and sexual violence)
Cast: Johnathon Schaech, Sophie Skelton, Jeff Gum, Marcus Vanco, and Shari Watson
Language: English
Let’s address the elephant in the underground bunker right off the bat. Yes, this movie has the same name and basic premise as the Romero movie. That’s pretty much all they have in common, though. When it comes to all these tired reimaginings of cult classics, this may very well be my least favorite. The writers took the bare minimum from the original, enough to call this mess an homage or whatever, and ran with their own bizarre plot dripping in misogyny.
The plot, at a glance:
The zombie apocalypse takes the world by surprise. Caught up in the chaos is Zoe, a young med school student with a focus on epidemiology. To make matters worse, when the dead rise, Zoe is in the middle of fighting off attempted rape from Max, a man with unique blood and a sick obsession. Fast-forward five years, Zoe survives and Max is long gone, but not forgotten. The bunker Zoe calls home serves as a military outpost and scientific research station. In other words, humanity’s last chance to find a cure. If a more mundane epidemic doesn’t take them out, first. A sick girl may be Patient Zero of a new infection. Luckily there’s still medication locked away at Zoe’s nearby medical school. Miguel, the jerk in charge, agrees to the trip. The scouting team recover the medication, and unfortunately, Max, as well. The rapist’s blood kept him in a half-zombie state after the attack. He tracks Zoe through the compound. Despite their history, she saves him to maybe create a cure. Through the testing phase, Max harasses Zoe. Stress and lack of time after Miguel finds out leads her to agree to an ill-considered plan to get fresh rotter blood to test against Max’s. Undead swarm the bunker. Max breaks free. Zoe has to choose between keeping Max alive for her tests or ending his murder spree. For the sake of humanity, she makes the right decision.
The rape sub plot is the most infuriating piece of screenwriting this year. How? How does one look at the Bub character and think, “You know what his backstory is missing, bro?” “Family and friends?” “Psht. Nah, man. A sweet young woman to rape.” Frankly, it’s an insult to the work put into creating that character. They’re only saved from Romero fans grabbing pitchforks because they changed the character’s name. The guy is still styled after Bub post-turning, so they’re not hiding it very well, either. In typical fashion, once the rape idea is introduced, Zoe then relives the moment countless times. Max speaks to her as a zombie, claiming her as his. At one point she has to draw his blood and calls herself his property in order to make him comply. In what universe does someone take a beloved, if flawed, movie and turn it into a story about how not even death can stop a rapist from getting what he wants? This one. This crappy universe wins the prize for being simply the worst.
Sometimes the acting saves a bad script, though nothing’s saving this one from what I mentioned above. In this case, the performances are not where they’ll find praise for the movie. Few of the actors deliver a steady performance the entire film. In a few scenes, they sound like they barely remember the script. As for the content of what the characters say? It’s some of the most Captain Obvious filler dialog taken straight from someone’s first-time horror script. “This is a thing you are seeing with you own eyes, let me repeat exactly what’s happening with no new information.” That’s what I hear, instead of what I’m sure someone thought was witty dialog.
Maybe the makeup stands apart from everything else this year and they can use that for bragging rights! Yeah. Not really. Max’s makeup is disturbing, but the mouth effect loses impact after about the millionth time he roars. We can’t ignore the jet-speed blood spatter effects. They’re beyond ridiculous. In the opening scene we’re expected to believe all these people are full of pressurized blood capable of shooting halfway across a football field. The one zombie which stuck in my mind is the first, and the makeup is subtly perfect. The rest blur together in a wash of blood. At least the fake blood itself was high quality and super believable.
Just face it, this was a bad idea. It’s one thing to want to make your own zombie film, tons of people have and I’ve enjoyed each for its own merit in the end. But to force this kind of garbage onto a known, respected franchise is absurd. Play in your own sand box, don’t crap in someone else’s, let alone that of a dead man. I’m giving this film one and a half desiccated eyeballs out of five. Pass on it and go take a walk in a park, instead.
Zombie Reviews . . . The Z Effect (2017) By A. Zombie
Rated: NR (Contains adult language, violence)
Starring: Michael Navas, Scott Schlueter, Steffie Grote, Douglas Wilcox II, Charles Gordy Swalm, and Cali De La Rosa
Language: English
Sometimes, just sometimes, a bunch of people need to band together to shoot a zombie movie. No rhyme. No reason. Just the unrelenting want to add to the genre in a small way. Which is why it feels like there’s more and more micro budget films flooding the streaming market. Camera technology put this burden in our eager, capable hands. Mankind will ride this idea into the ground and back again. Got no money? Doesn’t matter. Apparently zombie films practically make themselves these days. The Z Effect takes the mico budget idea and does its best to stretch the limits of what they can do on-screen.
Without warning, the dead return to attack the living. Missing not one beat, Mike and Scott band together to stay alive in the face of so many horrors. It’d be easier to go on if Scott knew whether his girlfriend Natalie survived the initial undead wave. Nevertheless, there’s nothing they can do about being separated. Scott can either move on, or get bit by one of the numerous adolescent zombies who keep tripping him up morally as they search for supplies and a viable car. Along the way, Mike and Scott encounter a few zombies whose backstory we learn in vignettes. There’s also two other survivor groups nearby, but one doesn’t play well with others. Especially when those others happen to shoot two of their members because they’re loudly harassing a zombie woman. Everything changes when Terrance, from the good group, tries to boost Mike and Scott’s car. They talk things out and decide to pool resources, which includes a guaranteed roof over their heads and more living people to talk to. Lo and behold, Natalie’s living with the good group, along with half a dozen others. There’s not much time to bask in their reunion. When the Crazies find Mike and Scott a few days later, they hatch a plan to get revenge for their fallen bros.
The greatest enemy in this film is the editing. It’s choppy. It’s confusing. In order to artificially complicate the plot, the editor decided to tell the end of each vignette first, then go back to fill in some of the gaps. This leads to things like wondering if they’ve misused an insert clip of a hand holding a gun in some scenes, or trying to figure out if Scott’s having flashbacks compared to vivid nightmares. Thanks to this “edgy” editing style, it’s hard to figure out which zombie is which, and even harder to recognize those zombies when they come back to face the heroes. The whole point of presenting the film this way was to be able to tell those zombies’ stories around the hero’s plot in self-contained bursts, but they lose focus once the human drama outweighs the dead drama and the hyper-stylized editing system winds up killing the tension leading into the final fight.
Technically, the film shows its budget big time. The digital effects are as basic as one can get. Zombie makeup consists of artfully splattered fake blood, with little more attention brought to the clothes—which were probably made in bulk by just slashing random holes in thrift garments and dousing them in blood. Also pretty sure the sound was caught on one boom mic or the camera’s mic because for in-car scenes, you can only really hear whoever is closest to camera. Thank goodness for subtitles and the shining few actors animated enough to sell their lines despite shoddy sound recording.
Like many of the films I nabbed recently, this one delivers as best as it’s able to with what was available. If effort could win prizes, they’d have a shot. That’s not really how this goes, though. In the grand scheme, The Z Effect, even with the catchy song at the end, only gets one dismembered hand out of five.
Zombie Reviews . . . Dead Inside (2006) By A. Zombie
Rated: NR (Contains violence, gore, adult language)
Starring: Tyler Austin, Cynthia Gerber, Madison Ranne, Noah Wisniewski, and Tommy Walters
Language: English
One never knows what to expect when grabbing something Troma distributed. Given the blurb, it seemed like it’d be okay. Different, at the very least. It’s different, all right. I’m still not one-hundred percent sure what I just watched, but it surely isn’t what the synopsis promised.
The lying, fabricated, fibtastic blurb from Troma’s site reads:
When a group of survivors take refuge in a friend’s home to protect themselves from the Zombie Apocalypse, they must learn to confront and destroy not only the evil lurking on the outside, but also the menace that stalks them from within!
First false statement: Friend’s home. The only people who know each other were involved in a murder, and technically only one of the three knows the truth. Secondly, they learn nothing over the course of their imprisonment in Katrina and Danny’s home. Lastly, the maniac in question settled their score a year before the apocalypse and it’s only brought up at the very end to justify yet another gratuitous death.
Alright, so the copy writer gave the plot an extreme glow-up. What’s the movie actually about? [Spoilers below]
A year prior to the world going to the dead, Jill’s guy calls it quits in the middle of a crowded diner—with patrons randomly quoting other genre films as the scene unfolds. It’s not such a good idea because Jill’s not quite right in the head, seeing monsters everywhere she looks. This woman also just happens to have a serial killer’s shrine to her now-ex. Jill takes her revenge, with the guy’s kid in the house. Fast-forward a year. Danny’s mother Katrina has moved on after the murder. Gerry fills an essential gap in their lives. But just like her former husband, this one dies under mysterious circumstances after something eats their babysitter. The mourning family isn’t alone for long. Albert, a stranger, rushes in the front door having just witnessed his father being attacked by the dead on the road. Elsewhere, Jill’s going through undead hell with her lover. She makes it out of their home in one piece, sans lover and pet, only to find a zombie in her car. Jill run and runs and runs, eventually landing at Katrina’s—at first the editing makes it look like they’re neighbors, though. Outside, an officer naps in his car, awakened only when crap hits the zombie fan. He flips his lid and makes a run for shelter—Katrina’s house, of course. From there out, the group tries to make the best of it. Officer Dearborn’s courage flatlines, triggering their safe haven’s eventual downfall. Jill is bitten on a supply run. On her death bed she admits the truth to Danny about his father’s murder. He shoots her and here come the zombies. Albert and Katrina do their best to survive on the run, but she doesn’t make it. The boy and Albert continue on, meeting another pair of survivors making the best of the apocalypse along the way. Just when things look bleakest, Danny and Albert are saved.
On paper, it’s good. In practice, it’s a mess. The editing obscures the plot unnecessarily during the introduction phase. Dialog is cringe-worthy eighty percent of the time thanks to Officer Bigot’s constant gay jokes just to poke Albert. Jill’s story is so convoluted that we need a series of flashbacks just to have any hope of figuring out who this woman is. The makeup is another Greasepaint and Dirt Special, with little to no time spent on each zombie. It’s like they painted a tarp and made each actor roll for five seconds, then shoved them on set without another glance. Even the sound mix is presented as something spliced together in an old garage with dollar store headphones.
Save yourselves. Don’t be the guy on Troma’s site simultaneously praising and hating this film. There’s no need for brand loyalty when they put out stuff like this and then think people should pay them to see it. If it were edited better, I may be more forgiving. As-is, this is the worst film I’ve reviewed to date. It doesn’t even get a rating. It gets my eternal regret.
Rated: NR (Contains adult language, violence, gore)
Starring: Steve Hudgins, P.J. Woodside, Grey Hurt, Randy Hardesty, and Cindy Maples
Language: English
When I grabbed the movie, someone mislabeled this 2010 film as a 2016 release, so I’ve had to marinate on what I saw for a little longer before delivering a final verdict. Six years, believe it or not, makes a difference when debating these ultra-low budget films. A current iPhone in place of whatever they used here would’ve greatly increased the film’s quality . . . and maybe spared more cash for makeup. We’ll get to that in a moment. First, the story.
A fiery object falls from the sky, landing in the front yard of home in a small Midwestern town. The curious family calls Uncle Brad, with his university connections, to investigate. He burns himself on the frigid bucket holding the mystery lump, but has no other issues driving it away . . . for a few miles. Brad makes it to the hospital, but no further. From there, chaos invades their quiet town. A sickness spreads through bodily fluids—and given half the town’s proclivity for cheating, it takes no time at all for things to get out of hand.
It’s not a very original story. So how’d they punch it up? By presenting the entire plot backwards. Each citizen in town who turns zombie gets their own death vignette, starting with poor Joe. Joe’s girl is cheating on him and her sister has the hots for him, but he’s just so loyal to his gal. He’s also a pretty good neighbor, bringing Johnny his truck after finding it on the roadside with mystery stains—he, no joke, asks an obviously ill Johnny if the red stuff on the truck is blood, so be prepared for some interesting dialog choices throughout the film. As the story winds back to the outbreak’s origin, we’re taken on some misadventures with the locals. Brace yourselves for quite a bit of lowbrow humor sprinkled throughout. Any time a man gears up for a joke, assume it’s insulting on fifteen different levels. Just so it’s not completely predictable, the plot does wrap back around to the present for an epilogue of sorts. Format wise, it’s not bad. But the writing itself is . . . not award-winning. It’s an easy script for a small-ish group to shoot in a reasonable amount of time. Could it be better? Definitely. Could it be worse? I’ve survived far worse indie films than this and decided they weren’t even worth writing about, so it has that going for it.
What the film doesn’t have is any makeup. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. The makeup present is just super subtle. With a few exceptions, the zombies rely on fake blood and movements to sell the gag. Within those zombies, only a handful really stand out as astounding creature actors. Playing dead is harder than it looks; kudos to anyone shuffling the good shuffle under all that makeup. There’s no real standard look or movement style. It’s like they let the actors do their own thing most likely just to save time, which leads to some amusing bits. Unfortunately, the camera angle sometimes obscures what’s going on and only half an undead performance makes it on-screen. I suspect this is due to space issues shooting inside real locations and not sets with cut-outs to position cameras “inside” walls for better angles. Paired with whatever they filmed with, it makes some scenes the very definition of “uhm . . . that’s creatively shot.”
Overall, I get what they wanted to do, but the script and budget just didn’t do the concept justice. Hell is Full gets one and a half mangled mandibles out of five.
Zombie Reviews . . . Clash of the Dead By A. Zombie
Rated: NR (Contains adult language, violence, gore)
Starring: Ray Panthaki, Robert Bladen, Wendy Glenn, Ben Shafik, and Eva Solveig
Language: Engligh
Found footage films are not my bag. Just getting that out here as a reminder. The camera movements jerk too much and my rotting brain can’t keep up with the action. Good news, the action in this movie is so slow, the POV movements don’t obscure anything of note. That’s also the bad news.
What are they trying to do in this film? Here’s a quick summary:
There’s money to be made from war documentaries even a century after peace talks ended. It’s not a lot of money, but it’s there. The trick is to make old stories shine anew, and maybe stage a few “surprises” for the hosts to stumble upon to up the ratings—it’s only fraud if one is caught doing something like, oh, making a UFO fly over a well-known wonder of the world. Aiming to cash in, Marcus takes a film crew to the Somme with the goal of digging into some of the more obscure myths. Their expert, Brian isn’t so sure that’s the right path, but he and the others get wrapped up in the moment when they stumble across a chained and submerged soldier’s body bearing a totem said to revive the dead. When darkness falls, the crew unwinds with a little soccer to recreate the fabled No Man’s Zone soccer game during an early WWI Christmas Truce. Another team joins them on the field, but these guys are only after a warm meal. The undead soldiers attack the film crew. Four make it into a tunnel system for safety. Only two make it back out with a possible plan to put the dead back in the ground—they have to bury the body they disturbed. Unfortunately, the dead are all about thwarting that plan.
As straight forward as this seems, it’s a mess. Due to half the cast being behind the camera, it takes most of the film to figure out who’s who, and only then it’s thanks to process of elimination as they keel over. What could be quick action beats to drive tension up is wasted on characters squabbling over past events in a failed attempt to ground the characters in what’s to be an unreasonable situation. Why waste time to ground these characters in the first place? They’re stereotypes, of course, so the dialog has to make them stand out some way or we’ve got nothing invested in these people as their doom shuffles out of Delville Wood. Spoiler: It doesn’t work. This is like watching an army of NPC die in a game.
But it’s a game with decent graphics. The camera work is actually quite beautiful during the earlier parts. All those establishing shots in the woods make for some of the best cinematography I’ve personally witnessed in a found footage horror film. That all ends once the undead enter the picture. Slowly the cameras, our narrators essentially, fail. It takes the notion of unreliable narrator to another level, forcing us to wonder if the first contact moments are real. On the downside, the animation used to establish the camera failures are cheesy, obscure the fights almost completely, and there’s one sequence which may actually be so choppy with the lighting it can harm viewers with epilepsy. We miss the jump scares nine times out of ten due to the cameras jerking around. When they stay still, though, it completely kills the magic.
Why does the magic die? The zombies. They’re awful. Shoddy makeup makes them impossible to take seriously as a threat. Costuming for the old dead is okay, and likely where the focus went during pre-production for costumes/makeup. When one of the film crew is finally shown as a zombie, it’s downright laughable. Guy looks like he smashed his face in a makeup pallet called “DIY Zombie” and the primary color in it is “Old Bruise Yellow.” What could be a great kick-to-the-gut moment dissolves into chortling and hanging onto the couch for support.
Sometimes we see filmmakers trying to do the thing, only they fall short. With a little more money and time, they may have produced something worth a second viewing. As it stands, I’m giving Clash of the Dead two and a half soggy skeletons out of five.
Zombie Reviews . . . Birth of the Living Dead By A. Zombie
Rated: NR (Contains adult language, gore, brief nudity)
Starring: George A. Romero, Gale Anne Hurd, Elvis Mitchell, Mark Harris, Christopher Cruz
Language: English
There’s days when one wants to sink into something comforting. Short a stack of fresh ribs, I went looking for the zombie classic and stumbled across this 2013 documentary. Birth of the Living Dead is a made-with-love documentary delving into Night of the Living Dead, its director, and the lasting cultural changes ushered in by this most unusual film.
The documentary itself is edited for peak attention-grabbing. What could’ve been an hour and change of people chatting on black backgrounds is mixed up with a metric ton of clips from NotLD, other zombie films and shows, and at the end there’s footage from a comic-con interview with the late Bill Hintzman. One of the stand-out moments is the segment where they check in with an instructor who teaches literacy through film and his subsequent discussion with the kids about the film’s impact on a generation so far removed from the political maelstrom which birthed it. Not to mention fresh reactions to the cult hit are always entertaining. How many times have you introduced NotLD to new people and waited for them to yell about the gas scene? That’s the kind of excitement this documentary captures. Yes, they’re talking about a film from 1968, but so much of what it says speaks to the uphill battle we’re fighting yet again.
Guests interviewed range from top television producers to novelists and film critics, all of whom share a deep appreciation for Romero’s work. However, the interview with Romero himself is what steals the show, here. He’s having a grand ol’ time. His interview isn’t really an interview so much as a hangout session with a bunch of other filmmakers to shoot the breeze and, oh, the topic of his film just happens to come up while cameras are rolling. There’s countless instances of gut-bursting laughter from off-screen crew when Romero lets a zinger fly. And while yes it makes one smile, there’s always that tug when the laughter fades—we won’t get any more of these gems again. George’s levity in his segments is probably one of the best gifts he left behind. Without the razor wit, all this war/death/zombie talk can get too serious.
This documentary also gives fans a look at exactly how difficult it was to make the film happen at all. Romero isn’t afraid to admit he didn’t think they’d finish the film. There’s no shame behind those glasses when he declares he’d never, ever take up playing a zombie because the real guts used in NotLD were flat-out disgusting. We learn cast doubled as crew and equipment suppliers all in the name of Getting It Done. By far the best did-you-know story details how they finally “paid” for the sound mix; but the most noteworthy tidbit for curious filmmakers is how easily NotLD fell into the public domain because someone failed to put one thing on the title card. Yes, most of the stories are ones we’ve heard before, but this is a nice compilation of them and the editing mixes it up with insight from others who make a living in the horror genre.
The most detailed part of this documentary pokes at the cultural and racial questions raised by NotLD. Casting Duane Jones was easy because he was the best for the role of Ben, but Romero himself admits he never, ever went into the filmmaking process after hiring Jones with the intention to use his race as part of the story. Which, honestly, probably makes a lot of fans sit back and say, “What? You didn’t mean for this to be one of the best statements on the racial divide in that era?” Lest you think they just blow by the topic, other interviews dig into how Ben’s bravery and heart-rending fate affected young black men who at the time had no character like him to look to in the media. Representation matters, even if the folks pulling the strings aren’t as clued in to the significance as they should be. Art is subjective, after all, and in this case a large portion of the audience sees equality in the production’s lack of rewrite to fit the cast.
If you’re like me, frozen to the core this winter and looking for a way to warm your heart, take a look at Birth of the Living Dead. I give it four and a half mangled faces out of five.
Rated: TV-MA (Contains nudity, adult language, sexual situations)
Language: English
Starring: Lucy Watters, Gina Piersanti. Adam David Thompson, and Shane West
A mysterious virus spreads across America. It starts out as a simple rash, but eventually the infected become angry, ravenous creatures set to fill a hunger which can never be sated. Ann and Jason thumb their noses at the government’s suggestion that they stay put and instead take off into the woods where Jason grew up to wait it out. If only surviving were as easy as taking off when things get bad. Their foraging skills aren’t enough. Desperation pushes Jason to venture on a one-way mission to get food and medicine. Ann is left alone in the woods with a baby . . . and then by herself completely not long after. Eventually she manages to work out a system to keep herself alive. Time passes. She avoids the insatiable, diseased creatures slowly roaming away from the cities while making daring dashes into abandoned houses to find food. That’s when Ann finds Chris and his stepdaughter, Olivia. The trio start off wary survivors banding together just to stay alive, but tangled emotions and the monsters have a way of turning strangers into family—a really dysfunctional one.
I went into this film expecting more of the same zombie stuff that’s been done before across the genre, especially since low-budget films like this tend to only have the capacity to tell exactly one story. Boy was I surprised once the movie found its footing. First off, Ann is the survivor from the family, not Jason who’s marginally more skilled at outdoor survival. She’s all-in when it comes to doing what’s necessary, including smearing god knows what on herself to mask her scent while on trips to find food. There’s very few moments where the writing made it feel like, “This woman would be a mess and die without her man and child.” Which is refreshing. We know those moments exist, it’s human nature to mourn and fall into depression in the face of so much adversity, but they flit by quick enough to keep the story rolling along. That being said, failing to focus on Ann’s mental anguish doesn’t mean there’s no emotional impact from her losses. That final scene with the baby is gut-wrenching for any parent to endure.
Where things go sideways in this film is when the dynamic between Olivia and Ann is fully flushed out going into the final act. Honestly, the whole emotional twist here leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Everything about this film is solid, except the stepfather fetishism. It’s creepy and unhealthy. Not to mention completely unnecessary. There’s countless ways for the women to fall out with each other which doesn’t demand a love triangle where there shouldn’t be one. Can we stop doing this, writers? It’s not titillating. It’s just gross. Women don’t need sexual rivals in order to find each other’s company problematic—this is one trope I wish would die in a fire already.
Adam David Thomspon as Chris in HERE ALONE. Cinematographer: Adam McDaid
The infected aren’t on-screen much. They’re brought in sparingly because the story is about Ann, not the outbreak. That being said, these zombies are some tough mothers. They’re quick, jittery, ready to eat anything fleshy which lands in their path. The makeup is pretty basic, but well done. These zombies are, for the most part, intact so there’s not a load of gore to dress them up. Primarily it’s all mottled skin, black veins, and whatever blood came from their last meal. Simple. Effective. The zombie makeup didn’t break their budget, but despite that it doesn’t look like something a harried mother slapped on their kid after school because of course Halloween is on a Tuesday—yes, I’ve seen films with makeup that bad. The extras brought in to play the dead are energetic, adding their unique spin on zombie movements which seriously helps raise the tension in the final scenes.
Here Alone starts off a little slow, builds at about the same speed, then rams a car into your knees and takes off toward the ending before you’re sure what’s actually happening. Yet there’s a huge misstep with how the women in the film interact which cannot be overlooked—we must do better as writers to strangle these tropes pitting women against each other, their mental well-being, and their own safety in order to secure a man. That being said, as much as I’d like to give this a higher rating, Here Alone gets three and a half gnawed-on femurs out of five.
The rape sub plot is the most infuriating piece of screenwriting this year. How? How does one look at the Bub character and think, “You know what his backstory is missing, bro?” “Family and friends?” “Psht. Nah, man. A sweet young woman to rape.” Frankly, it’s an insult to the work put into creating that character. They’re only saved from Romero fans grabbing pitchforks because they changed the character’s name. The guy is still styled after Bub post-turning, so they’re not hiding it very well, either. In typical fashion, once the rape idea is introduced, Zoe then relives the moment countless times. Max speaks to her as a zombie, claiming her as his. At one point she has to draw his blood and calls herself his property in order to make him comply. In what universe does someone take a beloved, if flawed, movie and turn it into a story about how not even death can stop a rapist from getting what he wants? This one. This crappy universe wins the prize for being simply the worst.
Sometimes the acting saves a bad script, though nothing’s saving this one from what I mentioned above. In this case, the performances are not where they’ll find praise for the movie. Few of the actors deliver a steady performance the entire film. In a few scenes, they sound like they barely remember the script. As for the content of what the characters say? It’s some of the most Captain Obvious filler dialog taken straight from someone’s first-time horror script. “This is a thing you are seeing with you own eyes, let me repeat exactly what’s happening with no new information.” That’s what I hear, instead of what I’m sure someone thought was witty dialog.
Maybe the makeup stands apart from everything else this year and they can use that for bragging rights! Yeah. Not really. Max’s makeup is disturbing, but the mouth effect loses impact after about the millionth time he roars. We can’t ignore the jet-speed blood spatter effects. They’re beyond ridiculous. In the opening scene we’re expected to believe all these people are full of pressurized blood capable of shooting halfway across a football field. The one zombie which stuck in my mind is the first, and the makeup is subtly perfect. The rest blur together in a wash of blood. At least the fake blood itself was high quality and super believable.
Without warning, the dead return to attack the living. Missing not one beat, Mike and Scott band together to stay alive in the face of so many horrors. It’d be easier to go on if Scott knew whether his girlfriend Natalie survived the initial undead wave. Nevertheless, there’s nothing they can do about being separated. Scott can either move on, or get bit by one of the numerous adolescent zombies who keep tripping him up morally as they search for supplies and a viable car. Along the way, Mike and Scott encounter a few zombies whose backstory we learn in vignettes. There’s also two other survivor groups nearby, but one doesn’t play well with others. Especially when those others happen to shoot two of their members because they’re loudly harassing a zombie woman. Everything changes when Terrance, from the good group, tries to boost Mike and Scott’s car. They talk things out and decide to pool resources, which includes a guaranteed roof over their heads and more living people to talk to. Lo and behold, Natalie’s living with the good group, along with half a dozen others. There’s not much time to bask in their reunion. When the Crazies find Mike and Scott a few days later, they hatch a plan to get revenge for their fallen bros.
Technically, the film shows its budget big time. The digital effects are as basic as one can get. Zombie makeup consists of artfully splattered fake blood, with little more attention brought to the clothes—which were probably made in bulk by just slashing random holes in thrift garments and dousing them in blood. Also pretty sure the sound was caught on one boom mic or the camera’s mic because for in-car scenes, you can only really hear whoever is closest to camera. Thank goodness for subtitles and the shining few actors animated enough to sell their lines despite shoddy sound recording.
A year prior to the world going to the dead, Jill’s guy calls it quits in the middle of a crowded diner—with patrons randomly quoting other genre films as the scene unfolds. It’s not such a good idea because Jill’s not quite right in the head, seeing monsters everywhere she looks. This woman also just happens to have a serial killer’s shrine to her now-ex. Jill takes her revenge, with the guy’s kid in the house. Fast-forward a year. Danny’s mother Katrina has moved on after the murder. Gerry fills an essential gap in their lives. But just like her former husband, this one dies under mysterious circumstances after something eats their babysitter. The mourning family isn’t alone for long. Albert, a stranger, rushes in the front door having just witnessed his father being attacked by the dead on the road. Elsewhere, Jill’s going through undead hell with her lover. She makes it out of their home in one piece, sans lover and pet, only to find a zombie in her car. Jill run and runs and runs, eventually landing at Katrina’s—at first the editing makes it look like they’re neighbors, though. Outside, an officer naps in his car, awakened only when crap hits the zombie fan. He flips his lid and makes a run for shelter—Katrina’s house, of course. From there out, the group tries to make the best of it. Officer Dearborn’s courage flatlines, triggering their safe haven’s eventual downfall. Jill is bitten on a supply run. On her death bed she admits the truth to Danny about his father’s murder. He shoots her and here come the zombies. Albert and Katrina do their best to survive on the run, but she doesn’t make it. The boy and Albert continue on, meeting another pair of survivors making the best of the apocalypse along the way. Just when things look bleakest, Danny and Albert are saved.
A fiery object falls from the sky, landing in the front yard of home in a small Midwestern town. The curious family calls Uncle Brad, with his university connections, to investigate. He burns himself on the frigid bucket holding the mystery lump, but has no other issues driving it away . . . for a few miles. Brad makes it to the hospital, but no further. From there, chaos invades their quiet town. A sickness spreads through bodily fluids—and given half the town’s proclivity for cheating, it takes no time at all for things to get out of hand.
There’s money to be made from war documentaries even a century after peace talks ended. It’s not a lot of money, but it’s there. The trick is to make old stories shine anew, and maybe stage a few “surprises” for the hosts to stumble upon to up the ratings—it’s only fraud if one is caught doing something like, oh, making a UFO fly over a well-known wonder of the world. Aiming to cash in, Marcus takes a film crew to the Somme with the goal of digging into some of the more obscure myths. Their expert, Brian isn’t so sure that’s the right path, but he and the others get wrapped up in the moment when they stumble across a chained and submerged soldier’s body bearing a totem said to revive the dead. When darkness falls, the crew unwinds with a little soccer to recreate the fabled No Man’s Zone soccer game during an early WWI Christmas Truce. Another team joins them on the field, but these guys are only after a warm meal. The undead soldiers attack the film crew. Four make it into a tunnel system for safety. Only two make it back out with a possible plan to put the dead back in the ground—they have to bury the body they disturbed. Unfortunately, the dead are all about thwarting that plan.
But it’s a game with decent graphics. The camera work is actually quite beautiful during the earlier parts. All those establishing shots in the woods make for some of the best cinematography I’ve personally witnessed in a found footage horror film. That all ends once the undead enter the picture. Slowly the cameras, our narrators essentially, fail. It takes the notion of unreliable narrator to another level, forcing us to wonder if the first contact moments are real. On the downside, the animation used to establish the camera failures are cheesy, obscure the fights almost completely, and there’s one sequence which may actually be so choppy with the lighting it can harm viewers with epilepsy. We miss the jump scares nine times out of ten due to the cameras jerking around. When they stay still, though, it completely kills the magic.
The documentary itself is edited for peak attention-grabbing. What could’ve been an hour and change of people chatting on black backgrounds is mixed up with a metric ton of clips from NotLD, other zombie films and shows, and at the end there’s footage from a comic-con interview with the late Bill Hintzman. One of the stand-out moments is the segment where they check in with an instructor who teaches literacy through film and his subsequent discussion with the kids about the film’s impact on a generation so far removed from the political maelstrom which birthed it. Not to mention fresh reactions to the cult hit are always entertaining. How many times have you introduced NotLD to new people and waited for them to yell about the gas scene? That’s the kind of excitement this documentary captures. Yes, they’re talking about a film from 1968, but so much of what it says speaks to the uphill battle we’re fighting yet again.
This documentary also gives fans a look at exactly how difficult it was to make the film happen at all. Romero isn’t afraid to admit he didn’t think they’d finish the film. There’s no shame behind those glasses when he declares he’d never, ever take up playing a zombie because the real guts used in NotLD were flat-out disgusting. We learn cast doubled as crew and equipment suppliers all in the name of Getting It Done. By far the best did-you-know story details how they finally “paid” for the sound mix; but the most noteworthy tidbit for curious filmmakers is how easily NotLD fell into the public domain because someone failed to put one thing on the title card. Yes, most of the stories are ones we’ve heard before, but this is a nice compilation of them and the editing mixes it up with insight from others who make a living in the horror genre.
