Zombieland: Double Tap

Image credit: Odeon

It seems like an eternity since I went to the movies! I think It Chapter II might have been the last and that was only because I had a cheap promo ticket thing. There has just been nothing on, a real movie drought, but it looks like November is when we can expect a little rain. I started off this cinematic wet-season with Zombieland: Double Tap.

Families can be hard to keep together. More so in the face of an ever-present zombie hoard. After Columbus (Jessie Eisenberg), Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Wichita (Emma Stone), and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) move into the abandoned White House, tensions start to rise as Little Rock yearns to be around survivors her own age, Columbus and Wichita have couples issues, and Tallahassee starts to get the nomadic itch. And the outside world is just as tense, with a new type of zombie emerging; one that’s smarter, faster, and harder to kill. Bring it on!

This metafictive little gem is a whole lot of fun. It adheres to the same style and humour of the first film, but with a refreshing twist of new narratives, character development, and relatable themes. The funniest thing about the movie is how the central conflict stems from these everyday dramas that each and every one of us goes through, and it’s made more epic by the fact that these normalities are trying to be achieved in a totally un-normal world. Who would think to make a coming-of-age/grown ups growing up film set against a dystopian, zombie-apocalypse background? Ruben Fleischer, Dave Callaham, Rhett Reese, and Paul Wernick!

Image credit: Hypebeast

The same cutting humour and dialogue from the first movie is still the real hero of this film, being delivered with perfect timing and performance from the cast. Between Eisenberg’s speedy and intelligent monologues and Harrelson’s brutish and hilarious bouts of rhyming, it’s nothing but happy fun times ahead.

Snaps definitely go to the makeup and effects department for their delightfully gross and stomach-churning achievements in zombie gore.

Zombieland: Double Tap really is more of the same thing as Zombieland and there’s nothing wrong with that! If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it!

Director: Ruben Fleischer, 2019

Cast: Jessie Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Woody Harrelson, Abigail Breslin, Zoe Deutch, Avan Jogia, Rosario Dawson, Luke Wilson, Thomas Middleditch, and Bill Murray

Dawn of the Dead

Image credit: Reel Rundown

I put off watching horror flicks and zombie movies in particular for a long time because a) I used to get scared quite easily and b) the gore factor. Having watched quite a few scary movies now I can say that I’ve grown out of this phase and so am now unafraid of familiarizing myself with the classic –and not so classic- zombie flicks. After all, the zombie is the ‘it’ monster when it comes to horror.

Last night’s movie was Zack Snyder’s remake of George Romero’s 1978 film Dawn of the Dead. The film depicts the bizarre outbreak of radiation that is reanimating the dead and turning them into cannibalistic corpses. Fast as jungle cats and just as vicious, they overrun the streets of Milwaukee forcing Ana (Sarah Polley) and a group of survivors to hole up in a shopping mall until they are either rescued or come up with an escape plan.

One of the best things about monster movies –and zombies in particular- is the underlying allegorical message or social threat that they represent. Zombies –I’ve always felt- are particularly brilliant means of depicting the inevitable breakdown of society, as the horde outside bays for blood and the group inside begins to tear itself apart under the strain. Once holed up with a bunch of strangers social etiquette and your sense of good will toward men goes completely out the window and part of the fun of watching zombie movies is reveling in the fact that the arrogant dickhead characters are bound to get eaten.

That was a nice part about Dawn of the Dead actually. Naturally it had a bunch of white guys with superiority complexes that turned them into total assholes and I couldn’t wait to see them taken down a peg –or several- and thrown into the belly of the beast, but the film actually took one of these characters and gave him a pretty interesting redemption story: saving his soul –so to speak- before the end. I found this particularly nice because one thing about horror movies and zombie flicks in particular is that they don’t have a long runtime and often feature a central core of characters that don’t get a back story because everyone’s suddenly thrown into the apocalyptic deep end. Some movies do a good job of dropping hints and showing without telling who these characters are –or were before- and it’s good when they do because it makes it a little easier to form some sort of attachment to them. Snyder’s film though not entirely reaching the critical point of emotional attachment managed to succeed in bringing just enough life and depth to its characters so audiences could be upset or peeved when they eventually bit the dust.

Image credit: Moviemovie

The zombies themselves are actually quite frightening: blood soaked, decomposing, and mindless, though when they get their sights on food they are scary A F moving with impressive speed and snarling like jungle cats.

As far as zombie flicks go Dawn of the Dead is pretty typical with a story and setting that doesn’t leave a lot of room for experimentation. However, the performances are solid, the monsters are sufficiently scary, and by the final shot you feel like the punching bag of a heavyweight champ.

Starring: Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jack Weber, Mekhi Phifer, Ty Burell, Michael Kelly, Kevin Zegers, Lindy Booth, Jayne Eastwood, Boyd Banks, Inna Korobokina, R. D. Reid, Kim Poirier, and Matt Frewer

King of the Zombies [PG]

When a government plane on a secret mission gets caught in a storm, the pilot and two passengers latch onto a radio broadcast coming from a remote island. They make an emergency crash landing right in the middle of a private graveyard where a creepy mansion sits in the middle. Living in the mansion is a reclusive European doctor and the crash-landed trio soon discover that there’s more strangeness on the island than just the doctor’s behaviour. There are zombies! 

Within the traditional vein of zombie movies, before the subgenre went all viral and Romero-esque, King of the Zombies is actually quite a fine little movie, although it has to be said that the ending is pretty damned anti-climactic. But for the most part, the performances are solid, the characters are likable, and there’s a nice undercurrent story running parallel to the zombie one, which brings a good level of complexity to the movie making it a solid little B-grade cult horror. 

As I mentioned, the story of this film is good because there are two central plots running on top of one another that brings this nice level of complexity to the flick. On the surface it’s a fun zombie movie with the simple and recognisable, but enjoyable plot of the central trio crash landing on a strange island filled with zombies. Then underneath that we have this story of political intrigue, which makes this movie a bit of a fusion between supernatural horror and political thriller, though admittedly the political story is not as strong as the dominating zombie plot. With the two plots intertwining, a certain amount of reality is brought to an otherwise fun and unbelievable flick and the simplicity of it just works to create a nice fusion film. 

We’ve also go this fun group of characters, which ultimately do adhere to horror movie tropes that have become clichés, but still makes for an enjoyable experience. We’ve got the strapping American leader and hero, the only one to not at some point become captive of the other side. Then we have the, supposedly, Irish pilot and wingman who’s hot-headed and ready to spring into action. Finally, we have the black servant who provides the movie with all the comic relief and is admittedly the best thing about the film. The black supporting characters also too, are the key providers of information dumps and conveying plot developments to the audience so they prove to be significant characters. 

Everyone gave good, invested performances, but the standout is Mantan Moreland who plays Jeff the trio’s leader’s servant. Bringing a humour and lightness to the movie with his jazzy dialogue, Mantan delivers a performance that is both funny and quite admirable in its relentless investment in the comic relief stereotype because ultimately he is the victim of much racial attack here in terms of class and ethnicity. Being automatically the underdog, of course everyone in the audience falls in love with him, he’s the character to root for. 

Starring Dick Purcell, Joan Woodbury, Henry Victor, John Archer, Patricia Stacey, Guy Usher, Marguerite Whitten, Leigh Whipper, Madam Sul-Te-Wan, James Davis, and Laurence Criner, King of the Zombies, whilst having a rather weak title, is a film that stands as a solid little cult horror and a good fusion flick. Filled with action, horror, suspense, drama, and political thrills, I quite enjoyed it. 

28 Days Later [MA]

Within 28 days of a powerful rage virus being unleashed, England has become an empty and burnt out husk of a country. Transmitted through a drop of blood, whether by a bite, through the mouth, etc, the virus locks those infected in a permanent state of murderous rage. Jim, a car crash victim, wakes up from a coma to find the country in this state. He is soon amongst a group of survivors who aim to travel to Manchester in the hope of finding salvation. But along the road, they discover that starvation, the deadly virus, and the murderous Infected are not the only things that threaten them. 

Not to be confused with the American sequel, which admittedly I have not seen but harbour strong doubts as to whether it is any good (I saw what they did with Death at a Funeral), this British post-apocalyptic flick is pretty damned impressive! A montage of high-speed camera direction as well as a multitude of those classic sudden shocks as well as dealing with some pretty confronting themes about humanity, 28 Days Later is a horror movie that stands up within the canon and if you’re a fan of the genre, I would definitely recommend it! 

Within 28 days of a powerful rage virus being unleashed, England has become an empty and burnt out husk of a country. Transmitted through a drop of blood, whether by a bite, through the mouth, etc, the virus locks those infected in a permanent state of murderous rage. Jim, a car crash victim, wakes up from a coma to find the country in this state. He is soon amongst a group of survivors who aim to travel to Manchester in the hope of finding salvation. But along the road, they discover that starvation, the deadly virus, and the murderous Infected are not the only things that threaten them. 

I would go as far to say that not since George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead have we seen a movie that delivers the main meat of its thrills and frights through the actual questions it raises regarding the nature of humanity. Where we saw the breakdown of social order and the nuclear family in Night of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later goes one step further and explores the frightening ideas that, as humans, we are not as evolved as we think we are. I don’t want to give too much away for fear of spoiling the brunt of the movie, but some of the themes that get picked apart in this film are really eye opening and it’s these that make the movie really scary. 

What I think really makes this movie stand out as a horror flick as that it travels along a recognisable subgenre track, but really cannot be classed as being part of that subgenre. I’m referring to the fact that many people, for fair and arguable reasons, class this movie as a zombie flick, but it really isn’t! True, it’s set within a post-apocalyptic world and it does look very much like a zombie movie, but the Infected are not zombies! They are still very much alive, just in a state of extreme rage that completely eradicates their capacity for rational thought and judgement. This actually, I think, makes them more frightening because they are still incredibly fast, more so really because they’re running on the adrenaline mode of fight and thus the chase scenes actually make for good thrills. 

A shout out has to go to Danny Boyle who also directed Trainspotting. The guy has an incredible talent for shooting in a very indirect and off-centre way, which makes this stand out as a film alone. There is absolutely no symmetry within the mise en scene, the Infected attacks are depicted in really hurried and fleeting snippets (almost handheld, documentary style), and the blurry out-of-focus lens look is used to brilliant effect! 

Starring Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Noah Huntely, Brendan Gleeson, Megan Burns, Luke Mably, Stuart McQuarrie, Ricci Harnett, Leo Bill, Junior Laniyan, Ray Panthaki, and Christopher Eccleston, 28 Days Later is a really impressive movie: confronting and compelling at the same time. Filled with survival, drama, dystopia, horror, action, and even romance, I thoroughly enjoyed it. And it’s not all darkness and destruction and heavy-handed scenes either! There are some really beautifully shot sequences that alleviate the threat of prowling rage creatures that want to disembowel you! It’s a goooood movie!

Dead Men Walk [PG]

The pure and good-hearted Dr. Lloyd Clayton has put his evil twin brother Elwyn in his grave, but the nightmare of Elwyn’s evil is far from over. Rising from his coffin each night as a vampire, servant of the Devil with a purpose to strengthen his life by stealing the lives of others, Elwyn vows to strip Lloyd of everything that he holds in dear in revenge for ending his mortal life. Soon Lloyd’s niece Gayle becomes ill and grows steadily weaker and weaker. With the help of Gayle’s fiancé, Lloyd determines to find the missing body of Elwyn and burn it so that the town may no longer be threatened by his evil. 

Yes, we’re back into the old B-grade horror movies that make up my obscure ’50 classics’ box set and which, undoubtedly, nobody has ever heard of or determined to see. It seems to me that the reason behind this is for the fact that many of these movies, aside from the odd one being a gem and the odd one being a massive hunk of crumbling mudcake, practically all the movies in this box set are predictable, generic horror flicks. Dead Men Walk is no exception. Whilst there is nothing inherently awful about this movie, it’s really generic and predictable in practically every step of the way, although the ending was a bit of a hot spark I have to say. 

The pure and good-hearted Dr. Lloyd Clayton has put his evil twin brother Elwyn in his grave, but the nightmare of Elwyn’s evil is far from over. Rising from his coffin each night as a vampire, servant of the Devil with a purpose to strengthen his life by stealing the lives of others, Elwyn vows to strip Lloyd of everything that he holds in dear in revenge for ending his mortal life. Soon Lloyd’s niece Gayle becomes ill and grows steadily weaker and weaker. With the help of Gayle’s fiancé, Lloyd determines to find the missing body of Elwyn and burn it so that the town may no longer be threatened by his evil. 

To get the mundane out of the way first and foremost, predictability is the major flaw of this movie. This is not to say that it’s bad, just a tad… boring. We’ve got the undead, we’ve got two heroes working together to try and riddle the mystery out, we’ve got the one insightful character that is disregarded as crazy, and the central ‘tension’ comes in the form of a predictable mob riot complete with torches and small-town hicks with hats. I mean what’s to say that has not been said before? 

To lighten up this review though, I will draw attention to the film’s soundtrack and give that a little bit of applause. Whilst I’m not entirely convinced that it really worked with the film, in inspiring the right sort of thrills and suspense, it was a nice little theatrical accompaniment that actually put me in mind of the earlier Disney movies that had orchestral music filling each moment of silence it seemed. I greatly appreciated that. 

Starring George Zucco, Mary Carlisle, Nedrick Young, Dwight Frye, Fern Emmett, Robert Strange, Hal Price, and Sam Flint, Dead Men Walk is a mildly entertaining film that was just brought down by its predictability making it boring. Filled with drama, suspense, and romance, it’s ok. That’s all I can really say for it, it’s ok. It’s not brilliant and I don’t think that I would watch again any time soon, but it’s ok. 

Revolt of the Zombies [PG]

After WW1, a group representing the Allies is sent to Cambodia to stop the efforts of Count Mazovia to create an outbreak of further war through creation of a zombie army by means of ancient mystical practices. Amongst those in the group who travel through the jungle of Angkor despite many perils is Armand who has his own agenda and desire for obtaining the coveted ancient voodoo magic. 

So it seems that the zombie subgenre really didn’t get perfected until zombies were made into these flesh-eating threats that lumbered towards their victims at the speed of mud. Whilst this movie honours the traditional idea of what a zombie is: a mindless mass of human-shaped flesh, its fails to deliver a fright factor. The story is pretty lame and simultaneously a little confusing, the performances are wooden, and all in all it’s just not a very good film. 

After WW1, a group representing the Allies is sent to Cambodia to stop the efforts of Count Mazovia to create an outbreak of further war through creation of a zombie army by means of ancient mystical practices. Amongst those in the group who travel through the jungle of Angkor despite many perils is Armand who has his own agenda and desire for obtaining the coveted ancient voodoo magic. 

To be fair, the quality, in particular the sound quality of this movie wasn’t very good and this could be a fair contributing factor to the lack of any entertainment that I found within it. I seriously had to have my TV on maximum volume and still couldn’t work out what people were saying. For a start, the screenplay is pretty predictable: raw and amateurish. It just felt really boring and generic: all the exposition was in the right place, there were bits of clichéd poeticism, philosophy, and declarations of love, there were solid attempts at tension creation that felt flatter than the film that forms on cooling soup, and the only bit of special effects that came into the mix were over-screen images of eyes, which incidentally were Karloff’s eyes as used in White Zombie. I suppose it can be argued that there is some clever cinematic allusion or inside joke in there, but whatever it tried to achieve, it failed to get a grasp on. 

The performances are all pretty terrible, wooden and unfeeling with no chemistry between characters happening at all! And when drama does finally happen and people’s faces change or they even go for broke and tackle a gesture like the hand to the mouth in shock, it all becomes overdone and is very much reminiscent of the over-exaggerated actions in silent films such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. 

Starring Dorothy Stone, Dean Jagger, Roy D’Arcy, Robert Noland, George Cleveland, E. Alyn Warren, Carl Stockdale, William Crowell, Teru Shimada, and Adolph Milar, Revolt of the Zombies is a pretty boring and generic flick filled with not much substance at all aside from the odd bit of ‘drama’, tension, or romance. Yeah, it’s pretty terrible and if you go your entire life without seeing it, you’re not missing out on anything! 

White Zombie [PG]

A Haitian plantation owner invites a couple of mutual acquaintances to wed at his home, hoping he can profess his love for Madeleine and lure her away from her fiancé Neil. When this fails he turns to the help of a mysterious mill owner and voodoo practitioner who reanimates the bodies of the deceased and uses them as slaves in his mill. Madeleine is transformed into an emotionless zombie, but there is still hope. Neil contacts a missionary who has studied Haitian superstitions extensively and informs him that his bride’s state is just one of sleeping death and there is still a chance to restore her heart and soul. 

If that one ‘Literature and the Screen’ lecture on zombies serves me correctly, this movie is actually one of the very first zombie flicks that sparked the horror genre’s fascination with the phenomenon. The whole viral take on the theme didn’t appear until years later in cinema so originally, zombies were just the mindless, emotionless shells of dead humans that had been bewitched or ‘magicked’ to walk again. What a journey we’ve had! 

A Haitian plantation owner invites a couple of mutual acquaintances to wed at his home, hoping he can profess his love for Madeleine and lure her away from her fiancé Neil. When this fails he turns to the help of a mysterious mill owner and voodoo practitioner who reanimates the bodies of the deceased and uses them as slaves in his mill. Madeleine is transformed into an emotionless zombie, but there is still hope. Neil contacts a missionary who has studied Haitian superstitions extensively and informs him that his bride’s state is just one of sleeping death and there is still a chance to restore her heart and soul. 

Whilst there really isn’t all that much going on in terms of story, White Zombie still sits as a horror flick with gravitas within cinematic history. As I mentioned before, it’s one of the first films that featured zombies and brought them into the eyes of the horror-movie loving public. The genre’s fascination with zombies was thus spawned like a devil child and it’s interesting to think about its evolution from magic to science to viruses and then apocalypses. Warm Bodies, although adhering to the brain-devouring side of the zombie spectrum pays a bit of an homage to this movie I believe, in its idea that zombies can regain heart, soul, and warmth. 

Bela Lugosi, who had only the previous year captivated audiences with his ability to turn on that hypnotic stare in Dracula, reprises said entrancing stare in this flick. So much so that his eyes appear in more scenes than the rest of him! 

The performances are all pretty good: the romantic leads are lovely together, Neil’s breakdown after Madeleine’s death is a bit dramatic but nonetheless effective, and the missionary works well in providing the slightly comic professor type. 

Starring Madge Bellamy, Joseph Cawthorn, Robert Freezer, John Harron, and Brandon Hurst, White Zombie is an eerie little movie that doesn’t so much deliver the thrills of a modern zombie picture or even the classics like those of George Romero, but still has to be thanked for its contribution to the zombie movie canon and the horror genre. Filled with action, romance, voodoo, drama, horror, and comedy, it’s a fine little film. The zombie movie has come a long way from these primitive days of the 1930s, but as clichéd as the saying is, from little things big things grow. 

The Evil Dead [R]

A group of teenage friends travel to a remote cabin in the woods for a holiday. Once there, they discover a strange looking book and a tape-recorded translation that claims it’s the Necronomicon: the Book of the Dead. After they listen to the tape, which also includes eerie incantations, the trip turns deadly as whatever fatal horror the book has unleashed comes to the cabin and possesses its inhabitants, zombifying them one by one. Soon there is one left and the struggle is on to live throughout the rest of the night without dying gruesomely or going insane. 

This is the debut film from writer/director Sam Raimi and is a true exhibition of the ‘movie nerd’ success story. Leading the horror genre onto a new frontier, The Evil Dead is really a horror movie for the sake of being a horror movie. Although influential and terrifying back in its day, which was 1982 for those are interested, a modern movie watcher cannot sit through this without yelling at the stupidity of its characters and laughing at its ridiculousness. Having said that there are still obvious reasons why this movie is such an iconic one in horror movie history, not mentioning its immodest boast of being ‘the ultimate experience in gruelling terror’. 

A group of teenage friends travel to a remote cabin in the woods for a holiday. Once there, they discover a strange looking book and a tape-recorded translation that claims it’s the Necronomicon: the Book of the Dead. After they listen to the tape, which also includes eerie incantations, the trip turns deadly as whatever fatal horror the book has unleashed comes to the cabin and possesses its inhabitants, zombifying them one by one. Soon there is one left and the struggle is on to live throughout the rest of the night without dying gruesomely or going insane. 

Before we go into what’s actually pretty cool and good about this movie, let’s first get all the badness out of the way… 

As far as a story goes, there isn’t one. Even The Texas Chainsaw Massacre had a more convincing story than this. Essentially it’s about a bunch of teenagers who go to a cabin that is in a haunted wood, pretty much playing to all the staples and horror genre clichés. The minimal cast of 5 people proves to be rather painful as there are absolutely no good performances to boast of and there is no character development or establishment. It’s just one big gore fest. 

Having said this, because some of the scenes are so bad and so clichéd, you have to wonder whether it’s written that deliberately. A red light went off for me when trees practically raped the first victim… yeah you read that right. Raimi pulls out all stops for the gore side of the ‘story’ with some pretty impressive achievements in makeup, very expressive and stimulating to-the-ground and fast moving camera direction, and even a stint of coloured tapioca and claymation (admittedly this is where the movie gets kind of ridiculous, but it’s still compelling). 

The camera direction is without a doubt the star of the show, getting audiences hooked right from the get-go with fast-moving tracking shots, intense close-ups, down-to-the-ground angles, and even some spooky upside down and round-the-room shots. 

Starring Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Richard DeManincor, Betsy Baker, and Theresa Tilly, The Evil Dead is definitely a stamp in horror movie history. Filled with gore, creepy camera shots, suspense, icky surprises, and gore, it’s not a film that’s for everyone, but fans and supporters of the genre will probably appreciate its cult status and what it did for the genre. 

Night of the Living Dead [M]

Brother and sister, Johnny and Barbra, are visiting their father’s grave. Whilst there they are attacked by a walking dead man: Johnny is killed and Barbra ends up terrified into catatonics, holed up in an empty farmhouse with a rational black man who has witnessed a similar attack. They discover another group of people in the farmhouse and through radio and television broadcasts, are able to piece together what is happening: the newly dead are rising from their graves to feed on human flesh. As the group of ghouls surrounding the house continue to amass, hope of rescue grows fainter and the cold and brutal reality of their plight begins to sink into the fugitives, soon growing into a panic that proves just as dangerous a threat as the hungry ghouls. 

It may look like a low-budget B horror movie: clumsily made in fuzzy black and white with an over exaggerated soundtrack, but George A. Romero’s 1968 zombie movie proves to still hold its shock appeal and leave audiences stunned into silence after the end credits. 

Brother and sister, Johnny and Barbra, are visiting their father’s grave. Whilst there they are attacked by a walking dead man: Johnny is killed and Barbra ends up terrified into catatonics, holed up in an empty farmhouse with a rational black man who has witnessed a similar attack. They discover another group of people in the farmhouse and through radio and television broadcasts, are able to piece together what is happening: the newly dead are rising from their graves to feed on human flesh. As the group of ghouls surrounding the house continue to amass, hope of rescue grows fainter and the cold and brutal reality of their plight begins to sink into the fugitives, soon growing into a panic that proves just as dangerous a threat as the hungry ghouls. 

Night of the Living Dead raised the bar in the genre of horror, setting a new score when it comes to zombie movies. I believe, when it comes to zombie movies, you’re limited with what you can do in terms of story and creativity. Our undead ghouls in Night of the Living Dead are a bit dated and rather unscary, although some of them had their moments especially when they’re eating bits of recently deceased people. The true terror of this movie doesn’t come in the form of ghouls or zombies, but in the happenings of the farmhouse. This is no zombie apocalypse movie where those few living gallantly team up and follow the brave and rational leader! No sir, our leading heroes are threatened by more than just undead ghouls. Romero, in a somewhat darkly funny way considering the genre, depicts the evils and the threats of racism, the fear of the mob, the alpha male mentality, and the breakdown of the nuclear family. As attempts to work together break down within the farmhouse, the true message of the movie becomes clear: good does not always triumph. This very well could have been a rare, or maybe even the first, horror film to not have closure or a happy ending. The cause of the walking dead epidemic is only hinted at, but never confirmed, and the heroes are hit with cruel twists of fate, bad luck, and plan backfires, eventually leaving them and the audience with nothing but the horror of despair. 

Although on a visual level, this movie doesn’t look like much, indeed it reminds one of really bad B-grade horror movies such as Ed Wood might indulge audiences in, it nonetheless still has the power to render audiences speechless; not terrify but merely stun into silence. 

Starring Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman, Keith Wayne, and Judith Ridley, Night of the Living Dead is an important movie in terms of genre. It may not have moved mountains or taken a huge step in terms of special effects, makeup, or even cinematic technique, but the story and what Romero shows you on camera speaks for itself and the film still retains a stunning power with audiences. 

Filled with zombies, violence, gore, drama, suspense, and murder, it’s not scary on a visual level, indeed it’s not really ‘scary’ at all, but it does have some shock appeal that can still affect a modern audience.    

Warm Bodies [M]

R is your typical lonely youth: he’s cute, shy, and a little socially awkward… Oh yeah, he’s also dead. A typical day for R consists of wandering aimlessly around the zombie-riddled airport where he lives, bumping into people and occasionally groaning. But one day he sees Julie: a living, breathing, human, and rather than see her as dinner, he falls in love with her. Saving her from a pack attack, R keeps her hidden in his world and soon she begins to warm to him. As each day goes by and R falls deeper and deeper in love, life and feeling begins to creep back into his cold body, slowly changing him from a Corpse back into a human. 

From a tertiary glance, this is not the type of movie that I would go and see. After the explosion of Twilight and that new genre of supernatural romances that are filmed with minimal colours and in a very gritty and dirty and lightless way, a zombie romance is the last thing I would want to see. But I went with a friend and actually ended up really loving this film! 

R is your typical lonely youth: he’s cute, shy, and a little socially awkward… Oh yeah, he’s also dead. A typical day for R consists of wandering aimlessly around the zombie-riddled airport where he lives, bumping into people and occasionally groaning. But one day he sees Julie: a living, breathing, human, and rather than see her as dinner, he falls in love with her. Saving her from a pack attack, R keeps her hidden in his world and soon she begins to warm to him. As each day goes by and R falls deeper and deeper in love, life and feeling begins to creep back into his cold body, slowly changing him from a Corpse back into a human. 

By some infallible and unidentifiable law, there is not a lot you can do with zombies. The whole idea doesn’t exactly leave itself open to a plethora of cinematic opportunities. But Warm Bodies, based on the book by Isaac Marion, is a wonderfully fresh, funny, and genuinely really good movie! 

The story itself is wonderful: this zombie is already different to the rest of the pack and the voice-over narration of Nicholas Hoult beautifully blends with his performance as R. Zombie boy meets living girl and so much of the film’s comedy comes in the form of R’s social awkwardness in wooing and courting Julie. The whole romance is really very touching and your heart just melts when you see R try so hard to make an impression: it’s all very genuine too, the fact that R can’t really speak coherently doesn’t play an essential role in the comedy of that awkwardness at all. 

Running parallel to the romance between R and Julie is the chain of events that their amour sets in motion: the reawakening of life in the Corpse community. As more and more Corpses begin to feel human again, the Bonies (skeletons that are too far gone to change) wage a war against the humans and it falls to the Corpses to choose a side. Through this side-story, we get a great serving of action and gore, which very nicely contrasts against the comedy and drama that comes with the love story. 

Starring Nicholas Hoult, who delivers a great performance, he’s really cute and wholly memorable as R, Teresa Palmer, Analeigh Tipton, Rob Corddry, Dave Franco, Cory Hardict, and John Malkovich, Warm Bodies is a brilliantly clever story and a wonderfully quirky and greatly enjoyable film. Filled with horror, gore, action, drama, romance, and comedy, I absolutely loved it and will be adding it to the collection when the DVD comes out… for sure! 

Zombieland [MA]

Nerdy and scared-of-everything college student Columbus has survived the plague that has transformed mankind into flesh-eating zombies. But the fall of humanity has left him alone and unfulfilled. So he goes on the road to his hometown to try and find his family. Along the way he meets the gun-toting, twinkie-loving, and scared-of-absolutely-nothing Tallahassee and two sisters, Wichita and Little Rock, who have also survived, and together they face their most horrifying challenge yet: surviving each other’s company. 

What a bizarre film this is. The entire thing is really just a cross-country trip with the added drama of being chased by zombies and having a showdown in an abandoned amusement park. To be truthful, it wasn’t a bad or un-entertaining movie, but I wouldn’t say that it’s “the funniest comedy since The Hangover” which the back of the cover claims it to be. Look, at the end of the day, I would say that this film is not bad and it’s worth having a look at, especially if you have a hard-on for mindless violence and bloodshed, but it’s really not all that. 

Nerdy and scared-of-everything college student Columbus has survived the plague that has transformed mankind into flesh-eating zombies. But the fall of humanity has left him alone and unfulfilled. So he goes on the road to his hometown to try and find his family. Along the way he meets the gun-toting, twinkie-loving, and scared-of-absolutely-nothing Tallahassee as well as two sisters, Wichita and Little Rock who have also survived the plague, and together they face their most horrifying challenge: surviving each other’s company. 

Yeah, ultimately, this movie was nothing more than a cross-country trip embarked upon by completely different characters who have zombies chasing after them. 

By no means being a great cinematic phenomenon, the film does harbour some intriguing and slightly intellectual and funny moments, mainly manifesting themselves in the form of Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson’s performances. The complete character clash really works in this film, and I do also like the fact that a more meaningful and family oriented story comes in play against the violence and gore. 

It has to also be said here that it was interesting to see zombies actually have some life in them: seriously, these creatures were unlike the slow-moving and mindless masses that we saw in Shaun of the Dead, but desperately starving and ravenous, fast-moving, dead people with blood all over their faces and flesh in their teeth. It was actually rather intriguing and added some more fear to the whole thing as these creatures could actually keep up and outrun their prey. I liked it. 

Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, and Bill Murray, Zombieland was a weird, but not entirely unfunny movie filled with violence, horror, zombies, guns, romance, and family. If you like the actors and don’t mind the occasional bit of weird and “what-the-fuck”, then this movie might be one to consider having a look at.

Nut up or shut up

Shaun of the Dead [MA]

Life is going nowhere for Shaun. He spends all his time at his favourite pub, the Winchester, with his freeloading best mate Ed, he has a shaky relationship with his mum and his stepdad, and he neglects his girlfriend Liz. For Shaun it’s going to take something major to get him to turn his life around…like the Dead returning to life to feast on the living. 

I do like Simon Pegg, I think he’s a good actor, but it has to be said that the movies he writes as well as stars in are the real gems of his career. The cover of Shaun of the Dead says that it’s “a romantic comedy…with zombies”. Says it all really. This movie is, without a doubt, one of the most hysterical, original, edgy, and clever comedies to grace our screens.

Life is going nowhere for Shaun. He spends all his time at his favourite pub, the Winchester, with his freeloading best mate, Ed, he has a shaky relationship with his mum and his stepdad, and he neglects his girlfriend Liz. For Shaun, it’s going to take something major to get him to take action and turn his life around… something like the Dead returning to life to feast on the living. 

I’m usually not one for the gory and violent comedy, but what’s great about Shaun of the Dead is that the violence and gore is only an ingredient to making the film and not something that keeps the film moving forward. The bigger picture, and indeed the central humour of the film, is Shaun having epiphanies about his life and its lack of direction and his taking action to prove to Liz, her friends, and himself, that he can change and achieve something. 

Shaun of the Dead is a wonderfully original film that can appeal to any audience because there are so many different elements to it. There is the obvious horror and gore element that will appeal to all bloodnuts in the audience. Then there is the romance, albeit somewhat awkward and unconventional that will appeal to all romantics, hopeless or otherwise. On top of both these elements you have wonderful displays of drama, suspense, terror, and really clever comedic moments. One of my personal favourite scenes is towards the climax of the film where the central trio are brutally bludgeoning a zombie. Each violent blow is done in time to Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now and the action just looks as fun and natural as a pillow fight. It’s bloody brilliant! 

Starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Bill Nighy, Dylan Moran, Kate Ashfield, Lucy Davis, Peter Serafinowicz, and featuring familiar faces such as Martin Freeman and Tamsin Greig, Shaun of the Dead is a brilliant film packed with action, violence, cannibalism, romance, blood, horror, and comedy. It’s literally a bloody fantastic film!