It's hard to reconcile the Zack Snyder who made "Dawn of the Dead" with the Zack Snyder who gave us the "Justice League" #SnyderCut, the "Watchmen" adaptation that stuck too close to the source material, and the "300" and "Sucker Punch" movies that were more about style than substance.That's not to suggest Snyder's 2004 adaptation of George Romero's 1978 picture of the same name isn't stylish. The first 12 minutes of his career serve as an opening volley, featuring one of the finest opening title sequences in genre history. This beginning provides a good dynamic antidote to the picture to which "Dawn of the Dead" is sometimes compared: Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later," owing to the appearance of so-called "fast" zombies.
The remainder of "Dawn of the Dead" never quite reaches the heights of its opening sequence, 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 (something that Snyder would again risk when tackling Alan Moore and the whole DC world), but by forsaking Romero's social criticism, Snyder was able to carve out his own niche in the cinematic zombie realm.
And it's a corner he'll be returning to in 2021 with "Army of the Dead," which will be streaming on Netflix.
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.
He decides to aid after colliding with a small group of survivors who are fast running out of supplies. A surprise attack by the flesh-eating Flesh Eaters forces them to run, putting the Hunter's skills to the test.
Zombie Hunter seems to be entertainingly nasty B-Movie fodder — after all, who doesn't want to witness Danny Trejo combat swarms of zombies in slow motion? Director K. King looks to be striving for a Machete/Planet Terror grindhouse retro vibe, so we're looking forward to seeing how it pans out. The marketing team has done an excellent job with the sleek poster.
#NowWatching "Zombie Hunter Movie Review" from @DeckerShado! https://t.co/cNZGAbVhPI #moviereview #movies
— Sluts and Guts (@sluts_guts) June 15, 2022
Lupita Nyong'o, who usually excels in dramatic roles, wowed audiences with the 2014 film Little Monsters. It would seem, however, that she is really enjoying herself in her part as a kindergarten teacher whose class is on a field trip when they encounter a zombie outbreak. After starring in Jordan Peele's critically acclaimed horror film "Us," the actress returned to the genre in 2019 with a much lower profile film. The movie premiered this year.
But she is definitely up to the challenge. According to the official press materials, the movie is "dedicated to all the kindergarten teachers who inspire kids to learn, give them confidence, and keep them from being eaten by zombies." Yes, that pretty much says it all. Josh Gad plays an annoying, famous child entertainer, and Alexander England plays a snobby, washed-up musician who is taking his nephew on a field trip and is in love (or maybe just lust) with Lupita Nyong'o.
So, what you get is a strange mix of horror and romantic comedy that makes both genres more interesting.
Since then, zombies haven't stopped. (Some can run.) In cinema, zombies have appeared in discovered footage ([REC]), rom-coms (Warm Bodies), and grindhouse throwbacks (Planet Terror).
Meanwhile, in reaction to Romero's works, a global subgenre arose.
Lucio Fulci, a prominent figure in Italian horror, continued with the concept in his sequel Zombi (also known as Zombi) and later in his experimental and wildly surreal "Gates of Hell" trilogy.
Fans of Romero's work, like directors Dan O'Bannon, Fred Dekker, and Stuart Gordon, built on what he had started. They messed with the genre's rules and tried out new ideas for what a zombie movie could be. After that, zombies lost popularity very quickly.
The undead had become a mainstay of horror movies, but now they only show up in sequels (like Return of the Living Dead and Zombie) and cheap B-movies (like My Boyfriend's Back, Cemetery Man, and Dead Alive).To what other places might we turn next? The concept of Haitian voodoo zombies was first popularized in Hollywood with the release of White Zombie, the first full-length "zombie" horror film. This was a good many years before George A. Romero's modern-day zombie movies.
White Zombie is a public domain mainstay in just about every cheapo zombie film bundle. You can watch its 67-minute length on YouTube if you wish. Bela Lugosi, fresh off Dracula and Universal's go-to horror talent, portrays a witch doctor titled "Murder" since the company had yet to find subtlety.
Lugosi, playing the role of Svengali, utilizes a variety of potions and powders to transform a young woman into a zombie before her wedding. It's fairly dry and wooden stuff, but he's trying to break her will so that a terrible plantation owner can have his way with her. As was to be anticipated, Lugosi stands out as the only bright spot; nonetheless, every great story had a humble beginning. Since "White Zombie" was so successful, Hollywood has made several more voodoo zombie movies, the vast majority of which are now available to the public without any restrictions.
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, directed and co-written by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, is the better half of their Grindhouse double feature. The story revolves on a go-go dancer, a botched bioweapon, and the transformation of the residents of a tiny Texas hamlet into shuffling, pustulous monsters. The explosive tongue of Planet Terror is firmly planted in its rotting cheek as it embraces its B-movie roots with missing reels, poor editing, and hammy overdubbed dialogue.
It builds to a crazily entertaining conclusion in which Rose McGowan's protagonist, Cherry Darling, gets her amputated leg replaced with a machine gun. I'm going to consume your brains and absorb your information.
Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, being a Troma film, offers a few tropes. It will be really filthy. There will be violence. It will have no limitations and no aesthetic sensibility. The fundamental question with each Troma film is, "Is it boring?" In this case, the answer is "absolutely not."
For a musical promoted as a "zom-com," the social satire of consumer culture is surprisingly subtle. Why, though, are you watching a film about zombie chickens invading a KFC-like restaurant built over a Native American cemetery? Do not believe so. Accepting the violence, scatological humor, and lousy production values as part of the entertainment is vital to enjoying a Troma film, as is a respect for the mindless plot.
So, Poultrygeist is just 103 minutes of bloody, gross, and rude madness.Despite the fact that zombie films have been around for longer than 80 years (White Zombie was released in 1932, and I Walked With a Zombie was released in 1943), it is generally acknowledged that the zombie subgenre as it is known today did not emerge until 1968, when George A. Romero released Night of the Living Dead.
Night, an indie film with a budget little over six figures, captivated viewers with its unsettling story, horrific violence, progressive casting, societal criticism, and, of course, its iconic hordes of gaunt, ravenous zombies. Romero, the undisputed master of the zombie genre, produced five additional films in the Dead series, the greatest of which are reviewed here.
Despite its influence, it took some time for Night of the Living Dead to simmer and gain significance in the public's psyche before a wave of famous American zombie films appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Shock Waves may have been the first of all the "Nazi zombie" pictures, coming out soon before Dawn of the Dead, which dramatically increased the popularity of zombies as horror foes.
The movie is about a group of shipwrecked people who end up on an uncharted island where a Nazi experiment has turned the crew of a sunken SS submarine into zombies. In the same year that he made fun of Princess Leia in Star Wars: A New Hope, Hammer Horror legend Peter Cushing shows up as an SS Commander who looks out of place and confused. It doesn't seem likely.
There have been, by my amateur reckoning, at least 16 Nazi zombie movies since this point—certainly more than one may realize—which makes this one quite notable at least for combining the portmanteau of great cinematic villains first.
Shock Waves is ultimately responsible for films like the Dead Snow trilogy.
It's not easy to create a fresh perspective on the zombie film, but Colm McCarthy's The Girl With All The Gifts, based on Mike Carey's novel, succeeds while also giving some enjoyable genre thrills.
In this instance, the zombie state is caused by a fungal infection reminiscent of The Last of Us, which has transformed the majority of the people into "hungries." The tale centres on Melanie, a young girl who is getting an unorthodox education in a highly guarded institution from Helen, played by Gemma Arterton.
Melanie, a so-called "second-generation" hungry, can think and feel, and the simple fact that she exists may be the most important factor in determining the course of future events. She still craves eating human flesh.
This bloodbath incorporates elements of the Draugr, a legendary Nordic zombie famed for its fierce loyalty to guarding its treasure hoard, with the traditional zombie formula, making for a very original take on the horror genre. In Dead Snow, these draugr are really former SS zombie troops that terrorized a Norwegian village, stole their belongings, and were either killed or driven into the snowy mountains by the townspeople. Either they are killed or chased into the mountains by the people.
Dead Snow deserves credit for his ingenuity here. It's funny, gory, and satisfyingly brutal, with elements of Evil Dead and "teen sex/slasher" flicks. Furthermore, Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead is a sequel, so fans can anticipate more of the same.
The history of a film might be more fascinating than the film itself, and this is the case with The Dead Next Door. Sam Raimi used the money from Evil Dead II to bankroll its development, allowing his friend J. R. Bookwalter to achieve his concept of a low-budget zombie epic. The whole film seems to have been redubbed in post-production, and for some reason, Raimi is credited as an executive producer under the alias "The Master Cylinder," while Evil Dead's Bruce Campbell serves as the voiceover for not one, but two characters. Because of this, The Dead Next Door exudes a dreamy surrealism, and that's before we even get to the fact that it was filmed completely on Super 8 rather than 32 mm film.
The Dead Next Door, then, offers something unique even in this genre: A grainy, low-budget zombie action-drama with cringe-inducing amateur acting performances and surprising professionalism thrown in for good measure.
An "elite team" of zombie exterminators discovers a cult committed to the worship of the undead, but you're watching this for the gore, not the story. The Dead Next Door, made for no other purpose than to try out gore effects and realistic decapitations, often like a low-budget attempt to duplicate Peter Jackson's insane bloodletting in Dead Alive, only with gags so blatant that they're frightening. "Who, after all, is this Dr. Savini guy?" Can I address you as "Officer Raimi"? Carpenter, Commander?They are all there in a zombie picture that seems like it was never intended for anybody other than the director's family. Nonetheless, there is an unsettling appeal to this degree of poor familiarity.
It's incredible to see how popular zombie movies have become. For a long time, monsters were largely found in Voodoo mythology, radioactive humanoids, and the classic iconography of E.C. comics. Zombies were not always the cannibalistic, flesh-hungry undead we've come to know and love.
Cemetery Man (also known as Dellamorte Dellamore) is a weird, hallucinogenic journey directed by Dario Argento's student Michele Soavi, who presents the undead as more of an inconvenience than a dangerous threat. In Cemetery Man, a cinematic version of the comic book series Dylan Dog, Everett portrays Francesco Dellamorte, a misanthropic gravedigger who would rather be among the dead than with living people. Why wouldn't he, you could ask? Living people are jerks for propagating the lie that he is infertile.
But there's a catch: the deceased won't remain buried in his cemetery. Dellamorte falls head over heels when he meets a lovely widow (Falchi) at her husband's funeral, romances her in the gloomy corridors of his ossuary, and before you know it, they're naked and steaming it up on top of her dead husband's grave. That's just the beginning of the strangeness.