Forkboy's short but sweet zombie movie reviews, Part 2.

Forkboy

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Tue Feb-17-09 09:32 PM
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Forkboy's short but sweet zombie movie reviews, Part 2.

Edited on Tue Feb-17-09 09:39 PM by Forkboy

Yet another batch of brain chomping fun!

Zombie Diaries

The story is broken up into three parts, The Outbreak, which follows a documentary crew as they try to get news regarding the virus in the English countryside, where they see the zombies themselves. The second chapter, The Scavengers, follows three people around a month later as they try to find supplies. The last chapter, The Survivors, follows a group of people who have set up camp on a farm. Then the end circles back to the opening scenes of the movie.
All in all this is a pretty decent flick. The last 10 minutes didn't work for me, but the rest of the movie was strong enough to make up for it (and others may like the end more than I did). The effects are pretty good as well, and the zombies (for the most part) look like dead and decaying people and not the exaggerated look that even the Romero movies use (too much latex, dudes). Not a perfect movie, but a "realistic" and solid entry.
Final Score - 7.5

Quarantine

A remake of the Spanish movie Rec, Quarantine follows a news team (this plot device is going to get old soon) as they follow a team of L.A. firefighters on the night shift. Responding to a call they find themselves in a building where an infection is spreading, turning people into zombies. Before they can get out the government locks them down, and they have to survive in a building full of infected people.
I actually liked this better than Rec, which has a different storyline and cause behind everything that was kind of silly. For a mainstream movie this had a decent amount of gore, and despite a slow start the tension builds nicely throughout the film. The zombies aren't the Romero kind, but they were cool enough. Some cliched ideas, but nicely executed.
Final Score - 7.5

Zombie Wars

Ok, so there's these two groups 50 years after the zombie outbreak. Zombies and people. And they have a war. Well, not really a war. More like a minor dust up in the woods somewhere.
The humans are led by to two Slab McBeefchests that make Adrian Zmed look like an Oscar winner as they fight to recapture females slaves held by the zombies. The slaves have been under the zombies control since birth, but they have great hair and teeth, so I'm guessing that the zombies provided some basic amenities like toothpaste.
Speaking of the zombies, they act like drunken rednecks, and in fact the movie might have been a step up if they had been. When zombies don't help a movie you know something went way wrong. This movie makes the Sci-Fi Channel original movies look like Citizen Kane. Only a copious amount of headshots earn it any points at all.
Final Score - 2

Night of the Living Dead (Original)

Ah, after the unintentional horror of Zombie Wars we're back to the real deal. Romero's first film still packs as a punch as we watch a group of people struggle to survive sheltered in a small country home as the dead come back to life. Some really good performances from Duane Jones as Ben and Karl Hardman as the bully/coward Harry Cooper really lend an air of genuine tension between the two and their different ideas on how to survive.
Somewhat gory for it's time, it seems tame compared to the ones to follow, but a tremendous story makes up for that in spades. Gritty and socially aware of it's times (the closing images of zombies being lynched is still striking), Night is still a masterpiece of horror.
Final Score - 9

Night of the Living Dead (Remake)

I'll never understand why people try to remake great movies instead of improving a bad one, but there you go. And here we go, as FX meister Tom Savini attempts to tackle Romero's original, to mixed results. Usually, when a special effects guy steps behind the camera you get a movie with good effects and average everything else (see The Fly 2 by Sean Cunningham and Pumpkinhead by Stan Winston), and this is no exception. None of the characters are as good in this as they are in the original, though Tony Todd as Ben does pretty good. I love Tom Towles, but he never came close to capturing the paranoid, nervous intensity that Karl Hardman did in the original. Towles is just a grumpy bastard. They also couldn't resist turning the timid Barbara from the original into an uberbabe who doles out the harshness.
Considering that Savini was the director you would at least expect some quality effects, but the blood and guts are kept to a surprising minimum, and his directorial skills are workmanlike at best.
The story is still a solid one, and despite the ham-handed delivery this is still a decent movie, but it could have been much better.
Final Score - 6

Shaun of the Dead

An instant classic. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's take on the zombie genre is a flat out perfect mix of laughs and blood and...romance? Filled with inside jokes (a shopclerk named Landis, a restaraunt named Fulci's, etc) it's clear that Pegg and Frost know and love the genre. The comedy is hilarious, the effects bloody, and we actually give a shit about the characters (even it's just to see David get munched). And the fact that people were still looking for weed after the apocalypse fills me with hope. :)
Final Score - 9.5

Resident Evil:Apocalypse

Sigh. What are we going to do with Hollywood? I don't know how they can make a movie that features a chaingun and bazooka wielding creature named Nemesis and have it still suck, but they pulled it off. I mean, the first one was no Oscar winner or anything, but it was a fun little popcorn movie. This one was so silly I would have choked on my popcorn, had I been eating it.
As I watched the action all kinds of questions went through my head. Lets take the church scene, for instance. Our spunky heroes and heroines are in the middle aisle of a church fighting off a creature, when all of a sudden Mila comes blasting through the huge stained glass window that's about two stories up. She then ejects herself off the cycle, propelling it to the creature, then shoots the cycle at the perfect moment to explode it, taking said creature with it. It sounds cool, but all I was thinking was, "Who made the handy ramp outside?" and "How did she know she wouldn't just land on her friends?" and "What the hell is the matter with Hollywood?"
All show and no go, a slick and vapid movie.
Final Score - 3.5

Zombie Holocaust

At the height of the zombie and cannibal movie craze, what could be a bigger hit than zombies AND cannibals? An attempt to cash in on the success of both Zombi and Cannibal Holocaust, this movie doesn't match up to either one, though it certainly has it's fun moments for fans of Italian horror (not to mention a lovely Alexandra Delli Colli). Plenty of gore (I loved the outboard motor to the zombie's head scene), but all the eating comes from the cannibals. The zombies seem bored as the cannibals had all the fun. Not as zombieriffic as Zombi, and not nearly packing the visceral (and downright uncomfortable) punch of Cannibal Holocaust, it's nonetheless a fun/bad movie.
Final Score - 6

28 Weeks Later

I didn't love the first one but felt it was a decent take on the zombie genre that sadly fell apart in the final act (for me, at least). I was hoping this one would up the ante, but instead they seemed to go the opposite direction. Even though we know there will be another outbreak there was never a sense of impending disaster that really struck home with me. They zombies never felt like much of threat at all.
Robert Carlyle is a great actor, but he doesn't have much to work with here. The second half of the film is him looking mean with contacts lenses in, and why is he so smart that he can follow his daughter around anyways? Bah.
Two scenes earn this movie an extra point. The firebomb scene, and the helicopter scene, both of which I enjoyed tremendously.
Final Score - 5

Undead

I don't even know where to start with this movie. Meteorites land in an Australian town, turning people who come into contact with them into zombies. From there nothing in this movie is what you would expect. A group of survivors end up in Marion's home, played by Mungo McKay (no, really, his name is Mungo), and he's either the worst actor I've ever seen or the best actor I've ever seen...I can't decide. Anyways, ole Marion seems to know more about what's going on.
Did I mention there's aliens in this? No? Well, there's aliens in this. And they enclose the town in a giant wall in order to stop the plague. They "abduct" people to save them, which leads to one hot damn amazing shot as thousands of abducted people float in suspended animation above the clouds at night. Makes flying tough, as this movie shows. :)
This movie is sort of like Buckeroo Banzai with zombies (not as good as BB, but it has that same out there feel). Mungo is hilarious as Marion to me, but that may just be me and my oddness.
This movie is either madness or brilliance. Maybe both.
Final Score - 7.5

I still have some zombie flicks to watch, so maybe I'll do a part 3 before too long. :)

Link to part 1
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=210x25191