It's hard to think of "Dawn of the Dead" director Zack Snyder as the same person who made the "Justice League" #SnyderCut, the far-too-faithful "Watchmen" adaptation, and the "300" and "Sucker Punch" movies where style was more important than plot.Which is not to argue that Snyder's 2004 adaptation of the 1978 picture of the same name by George Romero lacks style. The initial 12 minutes constitute an opening volley for his career, featuring one of the greatest opening title sequences in the history of the genre. This introduction provides a good kinetic counterpoint to the film that "Dawn of the Dead" is sometimes likened to: Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later," mostly owing to the presence of "fast" zombies.
The remainder of "Dawn of the Dead" never quite matches the intensity of the first few minutes, but the writing by future "Guardians of the Galaxy" director James Gunn keeps things fascinating throughout. It should be emphasized that replicating a classic was a formula for catastrophe (a fate Snyder would again face when tackling Alan Moore's work and the whole DC world), but by forsaking Romero's social criticism, Snyder was able to carve out his own part of the cinematic zombie cosmos.
With "Army of the Dead" on Netflix in 2021, he plans to return to this corner.
The narrative takes place in a dystopian future in which a weird street drug known as "Natas" has transformed the people into zombies. We follow one man as he hunts down Flesh Eaters for joy and atonement, as well as to escape his own past, as the tale continues.
After crashing into a small group of survivors who are running out of supplies, he decides to help them. But the Flesh Eaters attack them out of the blue, putting the Hunter's skills to the test.
Zombie Hunter sounds like fun B-Movie fodder — who doesn't want to watch Danny Trejo fight zombies in slow-motion? Director K. King is trying for a Machete/Planet Terror grindhouse flavor, so we're interested. The marketing team's poster is elegant.
Lupita Nyong'o, who is known for playing sad characters, plays a happier one in Little Monsters. She may be taking her kindergarten class on a field trip when a zombie outbreak happens, but it looks like she's having a great time. This was the actress's second horror movie of 2019. Her first was Jordan Peele's "Us," which is better known.
But I'm certain she can manage it. According to the official press materials, the film is "dedicated to all kindergarten teachers who encourage children to study, instill confidence in them, and rescue them from being devoured by zombies." And I believe that's about all. In "Little Monsters," Alexander England plays an effete, has-been musician who falls in love (or maybe lust) with Lupita Nyong'o, while Josh Gad plays an obnoxious, recognized child performer.
As a result, you wind up with an odd combination of horror and romantic comedy that amps up the excitement of both genres.
Since then, there hasn't been a stop to the zombie outbreak. (Some of them have even learned how to run.) The most famous example is The Walking Dead on TV, but zombies have also been in found footage movies ([REC]), romantic comedies ([REC]), and homages to grindhouse movies (Warm Bodies) (Planet Terror).
At the same time, a new genre was established thanks to Romero's writings and swiftly went global.
Legendary Italian horror filmmaker Lucio Fulci went with the concept, first in his sequel Zombi (also known as Zombi) and later in his experimental and radically bizarre "Gates of Hell" trilogy.
Fans of Romero's work who expanded upon his foundation—directors Dan O'Bannon, Fred Dekker, and Stuart Gordon, for example—came along and messed with the genre's constructions, exploring and expanding what a zombie movie might be. The popularity of zombies thereafter rapidly declined.
The undead no longer roamed the earth, with the exception of recurring horror sequels (Return of the Living Dead, Zombie) and low-budget scare films (My Boyfriend's Back, Cemetery Man, and Dead Alive).Is there somewhere else to begin? White Zombie was the first movie to popularize the idea of Haitian voodoo zombies. This was decades before the classic George Romero ghoul.
Since it is now in the public domain, you may watch White Zombie for free or at a very minimal fee on almost any zombie film anthology. The whole 67-minute film is available for viewing on YouTube. Bela Lugosi, fresh off his success as Dracula and enjoying his status as one of Universal's top horror actors, portrays a witch doctor whose name is a direct translation of the word "murder." The reason behind this is because the studio had yet to learn the value of subtlety at this point in time, which would take a few more years.
The Svengali-like Lugosi uses his various concoctions and powders to turn a betrothed young woman into a zombie in order to bind her to the will of a cruel plantation owner, and... well, it's fairly dry, wooden stuff. Predictably, the finest part is Bela Lugosi, but I guess you had to start somewhere. White Zombie was followed by a number of other Hollywood voodoo zombie films, the most of which are now freely accessible online.
Of course, the film had an impact on Rob Zombie's musical career. Some "best zombie movie" lists include it prominently, but let's face it: in 2016, this isn't a movie that most people would like. This object is ranked fifty on the list almost exclusively because of its historical significance.
Planet Terror is the better half of Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse double-bill with Quentin Tarantino, which tells the tale of a go-go dancer, a bioweapon gone wrong, and Texan peasants transformed into shuffling, pustulous creatures. Planet Terror has its exploding tongue firmly entrenched in its rotten cheek, leaning heavily towards its B-movie heritage with missing reels, rough editing, and hammy overdubbed dialogue.
Its over-the-top gore and oozing effects are revolting, and it builds to a ridiculously hilarious ending in which Rose McGowan's hero Cherry Darling's severed leg is replaced with a machine gun. I'm going to consume your brains and learn all you know.
Night of the Chicken Dead seems to have some of the things that are usually in a Troma movie. It will be a bunch of trash. It'll get quite bloody. There will be no limits or care for how things look. Like every other Troma movie, the real question is whether you find it boring or not. In this case, the right answer is "absolutely not."
It's billed as a "zom-com musical," and it's even a little bit witty in its social satire of consumer society — you know, in an obvious kind of way. But does it really explain why you're seeing a movie about zombie chickens that come to life in a KFC-style restaurant that was constructed on top of an old Native American burial ground? It didn't seem likely to me. When you see a movie made by Troma, you should be prepared to enjoy some thoughtless narrative along with the gore, scatological comedy, and cheap production qualities that come along with it.
Poultrygeist, as a consequence, is merely 103 minutes of filthy, nasty, raunchy lunacy.
Although there have been zombie films for more than 80 years (White Zombie was produced in 1932 and I Walked With a Zombie was published in 1943), it is widely agreed that the zombie subgenre as it is known today did not exist until 1968, when George A. Romero released Night of the Living Dead.
Night was an indie picture with a budget that was just barely over six figures. It captivated spectators with its cryptic narrative, stunning gore, progressive casting, and social criticism, as well as, of course, the memorable hordes of the gaunt, ravenous undead. Romero, who has been called the "godfather of zombies," went on to direct five additional films in the Dead series. The most notable of these films are discussed in this book, and they are Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead.
After Night of the Living Dead had time to percolate and gather clout in the public's mind, a slew of influential American zombie films emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Even if Night of the Living Dead had a major impact on popular culture, this is the case. Shock Waves is sometimes cited as the first example of the subgenre of films known as "Nazi zombie flicks." This was before Dawn of the Dead significantly increased the popularity of zombies as horror villains. Before the release of Dawn of the Dead, this was available.
The film follows a party of wayward boaters who get up on a mystery island where a submerged SS submarine has released its undead crew as a Nazi experiment. In the same year that he sneered at Princess Leia in Star Wars: A New Hope, Hammer Horror star Peter Cushing plays a poorly miscast and befuddled-looking SS commander. A New Hope? Impossible!
By my amateur calculation, there have been at least 16 Nazi zombie movies since this point—certainly more than one may realize—making this one noteworthy, if only for being the first to combine the portmanteau of famous cinematic villains.
The critical and commercial success of movies like the Dead Snow trilogy may be traced back to Shock Waves.
It's not easy to develop a new take on the zombie picture, but Colm McCarthy's The Girl With All The Gifts, based on a book by Mike Carey, succeeds in doing so while also providing some satisfying genre thrills.
The Last of Us-like fungal infection has transformed most of the populace into 'hungries' The plot centers on Melanie, who is taught by Gemma Arterton's instructor Helen in a heavily-armed institution.
Melanie, a'second-generation' hungry, still craves human flesh but is capable of thinking and feeling – and her very existence may hold the key to the future.
This gore-fest gives the classic zombie a unique Scandinavian blog twist by including characteristics of the Draugr, an undead monster from Scandinavian legend that is known for its ferocious devotion to the protection of its treasure hoard. In the case of Dead Snow, these draugr happen to be former SS troopers who harassed a Norwegian hamlet and robbed their things, only to be done in or driven into the frigid mountains by the locals themselves. In the end, the villagers either kill them or pursue them into the mountains.
This definitely earns marks for Dead Snow in the category of creativity. It is also an extremely amusing, nasty, and satisfyingly violent movie with aspects of Evil Dead and "teen sex/slasher" films interspersed throughout. Overall, the movie is quite entertaining. And if you like it, the original story continues in the sequel titled Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead.
The narrative behind The Dead Next Door is one of those examples that may be more intriguing than the picture itself: Sam Raimi produced it using a share of the earnings from Evil Dead II to enable pal J. R. Bookwalter to direct the low-budget zombie epic of his dreams. For some reason, Raimi is listed as an executive producer under the moniker "The Master Cylinder," while Evil Dead's Bruce Campbell doubles as a voiceover for not one, but two characters, since the whole picture seems to have been redubbed in post-production. This, predictably, gives The Dead Next Door an aura of dreamlike unreality, and that's before we even consider that the picture was SHOT ENTIRELY ON SUPER 8, rather than 32 mm film.
Therefore, what you have in The Dead Next Door is something that cannot be found in other works of the same genre: A grainy, low-budget zombie action-drama that has a blend of amateur acting performances that make you grimace and surprising moments of professionalism all at the same time.
You're not watching this film for the plot; you're watching it for the gore. The Dead Next Door sometimes resembles a low-budget attempt to imitate Peter Jackson's insane bloodletting in Dead Alive, but with gags so blatant that they're frightening. Who is this Dr. Savini character, anyway? May I address you as "Officer Raimi"? Commander Carpenter?
They're all in a zombie movie that looks and feels like it was produced only for the director's family. Even still, there's a certain allure to that type of messy intimacy.
Zombie flicks' popular rise is remarkable. For decades, the monsters existed only in Voodoo legend, radioactive humanoids, and E.C. comics. When zombies were deployed, they weren't the cannibalistic, flesh-hungry beasts we know today.
Cemetery Man, directed by Dario Argento protégé Michele Soavi, depicts the living dead as a nuisance rather than a danger. Cemetery Man is based on the comic strip Dylan Dog and stars Everett as a misanthropic gravedigger. Why not? Living scum propagate accusations he's impotent.
But there is a catch: the dead person won't stay in the cemetery where he was buried. Dellamorte falls in love with Falchi, a beautiful woman he meets at the funeral of her husband. After getting to know each other in the dark hallways of his ossuary, they make out on her husband's grave. From here on out, things get stranger.