zombiefreak.com

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This humourless magician, seems to have an overly serious take on zombies. In the video he talks down to all of us voicing his disdain for the zombie horror genre calling them ‘pretty bad’. He claims films like “White Zombie“, “I Walked With a Zombie” and 1974’s blaxploitation horror film “Sugar Hill” are generally considered to be the ‘best of the lot’ of Hollywood horror films about zombies. Generally? By whom? Voodoo practitioners who have no sense of humour or folks who lack the ability to suspend disbelief and enjoy something creative? I suspect the Rev Don Lewis, a practitioner of wicca, is the latter.

He’s definitely a purist when it comes to voodoo and sites that as the reason behind these ‘bad’ films calling some of them racist. No kidding. Perhaps Rev. Lewis should read the Reason magazine article from the post below to help him understand the zombie genre. Or perhaps Rev. Lewis is a zombie himself trying to mislead us so they can overtake us when we’re looking in another direction.

He also states that zombies are NOT a staple of other monsters have been. He says, “there have been few films about zombie and even fewer good ones.” Few? Here’s a sizeable list of the few on Wikipedia. There are 125 in this very incomplete list. Many of the independents and up and coming films are missing.

Personally I see some great films there:

• Night of the Living Dead (1968)
• Shaun of the Dead (2004)
• Braindead (1992)
• Zombi II (1979)
• 28 Days Later (2002)
• Re-Animator (1985)
• Cemetery Man (1994)

Those are just a few of my personal favourites.

Come now… Do your homework.

Seriously though Rev. Lewis, it is sad that you feel slighted by Hollywood’s take on zombies. However, I don’t believe that filmmakers (myself included) intend to disrespect anyone’s religious beliefs. Zombies are but another story device. A very effective one that plays to people’s deepest fears - the deepest of all being their own death and what happens afterward. Dealing with death, even through entertainment, is a spiritual experience for some people and to be told that it’s wrong to do so sounds like religious intolerance to me. Frankly, it smacks of the ideals behind the Spanish Inquisition. You’re entitled to your opinion, just don’t bash me for mine. I enjoyed the information I just didn’t appreciate the judgement.

You can learn more about Rev Lewis at the MagickTV web site.

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WARNING: If you care, there seem to be spoilers in this unrated trailer. So before you click play consider that. Although I don’t know how you can spoil a piece of shit. It’s kind of spoiled already.

This happens to be a zombie movie I’m not looking forward to. A remake of the third (Hooray for Bub!) in Romero’s original trilogy of the living dead. I know. I know. There’s Land of the Dead and the upcoming Diary of the Dead, but the first three are the iconic films.

Anyway, with B grade stars Mena Suvari and Ving Rhames leading the way this movie looks like it’s going to be a steaming bucket of zombie diarrhea. You know darn well that’s got to stink.

The “From the Director of Halloween H20” tag line at the top of the poster is enough to warn real zombie movie fans and anyone who watched H20 that this is going to be horrendous.

There’s are reasons this film won’t work. First of all it seems to break most or all of the rules established in the classic zombie films that fans have come to love. Just a few of the rules broken in this trailer are:

• Fast and Strong Zombies - Zombies are uncoordinated, a little weaker than a living person, slow and shuffling. It is by the stupidity and carelessness of the victims and often being outnumbered that leads to their demise or infection. It is never that they cannot get away. Even late films like the awesome Shaun of the Dead prove that slow zombies still work. Fast zombies can work too, like in 28 Days Later and almost in Dawn of the Dead (2004), but the story has gt to be strong enough to support it.
• Too Much Information - We don’t need to know what the cause of the zombie outbreak is. Just get on with the action for God’s sake. Sometimes less is more. A little bit of mystery adds to the tension. The fact that the characters in the film don’t know what the hell is happening gives far more substance to each role.
• Lack of Story Focus - To make a decent zombie film you don’t need stars, big effects, sexy twenty somethings or even big effects. The Hollywood teen horror film formula never makes for a great movie. Throw your money and energy at the story. It’s supposed to be about how the living react to the stress of a zombie outbreak. We get to see the true nature of folks in extreme situations. Having some underlying social message is a necessity as well. For example one of the themes in the low budget grand daddy of zombie films Night of the Living Dead (1968) was racism.

 

I’m sure the film will have other flaws that will piss off old school zombie fans like myself as well. I remember when I saw the Dawn of the Dead (2004) remake I was disappointed with that as well, but at least it appeared they tried. This one just looks like not only did they break the rules they’ve never even seen the rule book.

Don’t get me wrong. I will see this film somehow, just to see if I’m right about this. I’m hoping some of my connections come through with passes to a premiere so I don’t have to pay.

I know this is contempt prior to investigation, but I can assure you I won’t like this movie. Not one bit.

Thanks to Zombie-A-Go-Go over at Zombie Friends for the heads up on the trailer and wiki article.

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dl

Last year this Lucozade Energy ad was barred from play on Irish TV until after 9:00 pm to protect children from unsettling images of the undead having fun. Nothing could be more harmful for children than to shield then from the fact that zombies are breakdancing at the mall and will eat their brains the first chance they have.

It appears this particular energy drink rouses the average Dawn of the Dead / Dead Rising mall zombies to something more along the lines of the fast ‘infected’ we saw in 28 Days Later. I prefer sugar-free Red Bull myself or the gigantic diet Rockstar drinks, but I’m not really sure they would do anything for a zombie.

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