Yeah,
call the cops.
When the dead walk,
you gotta call the cops
One of the greatest aspects of a film having no copyright is the fact that anyone call sell or use its licence to remake or re-imagine how they like.
No, nope that’s wrong. I meant worst aspects because you end up with rubbish like this.
It starts of with the opening driving sequence from the original film which it transpires is being played on a TV. In this version George Romero’s classic exist and is being played on every single TV you see.
At first you feel like it’s a cheeky nod to the original, even at one point Barb (yep not Barbara. we’re being meta) walks past a TV playing it and has an existential experience.
By this point the film is starting to grate on you and where you once thought something was clever or at least a nice little nod to something you now think is overdone and quite frankly showing a better film in a bad film doesn’t make the bad film better.
Barb and her brother are driving to their aunts funeral. We learn that Barb is the favourite with their mother and Johnny was always the unwanted one.
So naturally he doesn’t want to be there because well, his mother doesn’t want him to be there and he’s ok with that to the point that he’ll take any excuse to bugger off like being attacked and bitten on the neck.
It is a dick move and it is done to set up one of the most cringe worthy scenes later on.
Me I always say I’ll see if I’m free and then never get back to the person hoping that they’ll forget or at least remember only when it is too late to change plans.
So naturally Barb is more than a bit miffed which gets worse when she is attacked by her mother and does a running act herself.
Ending up in the nearest town she sees a naked man (complete with clothing to hide his blushes) eating a man who asks for help so Barb buggers off and runs into local funeral director Gerald Tovar, Jr played by Sid Haig.
Finally this film is looking up.
So she abandons him too, you’ll find she does that a lot so it must be in her families genes and tries to phone her brother where (remember the cringer worthy scene I mentioned) she gets a text message saying…
“Coming 4 U Barb”
I appreciate that they are trying something new but just no to Zombie texting. I don’t care if you are turning, if you can type that you can bloody well type message properly.
You have 140 characters and didn’t come close to using all of them so there is no excuse for text speak.
Anyway she is saved by Ben (played by a white person which seems to piss off a lot of people for no good reason) and taken to a farm where she wants to phone the police to say Zombies attacked her.
For some reason she gets pissy at the person who’s just saved her life and the person who’s offering her sanctuary because they don’t believe the dead have risen and want her to watch what she says with the police so that they don’t think she’s crazy and boot her out the door and because they grow weed but they do have a point about telling the police that there are Zombies.
I know in films we see what most of the others characters don’t so when a woman comes in saying the dead have risen and no-one believes her we’re supposed to think what idiots because we know it’s true.
Yet see it from their point of view, imagine a random woman came up to you saying she’d been attacked by the undead, your first reaction would be to wonder what drugs she’s on.
I’ve never subscribed to the view that those who don’t immediately believe such a far fetch tale in films are the idiots or in the wrong for not doing so.
There’s no reason to believe such a tale. I always think the fault is with the person asking for help.
Why would anyone run up to strangers saying the undead have risen and expect these randoms you don’t know to believe you.
For me that is an error in quite a lot of horror films. It’s down to the one who knows to convince people what they are saying is true not for everyone to immediately believe such a tall tale.
You are telling them something you yourself didn’t believe until moments ago and would’ve had the same reaction if a stranger ran up to you saying what you are saying now.
In real life if someone asked for help then said it is Zombies and started getting arsy with you when you say ‘yeah, right’ you wouldn’t help them. You’d tell them to piss off and leave you alone which I wish is what would happen in these scenes in horror films.
Plus if someone did tell me they was attacked by Zombies regardless if it was true I’d tell them to sod off just for taking one of my biggest wishes and making it into a joke.
After all we all want a Zombie apocalypse…
Until it happens then we don’t because let’s face it that would be one horrific nightmarish hell if it was real and we ALL know that.
The biggest problem with Barb is that she’s ungrateful and judgemental. Always has to be right and it doesn’t matter what has just happened or what someone has just been through she’ll take every opportunity to let you know you’re wrong and she’s right even after going through the same thing herself moments ago.
She finds out the man she’s known for an hour sells a bit of weed and decides to judge him on it when they are out in the open with Zombies nearby to which he rightly exclaims that that is not the issue right now.
No wonder Johnny abandoned her.
The writing for this film is bad to the point off pointless.
I hate films that try to add drama where it doesn’t belong. If you found out that the dead have risen and was holed up with some strangers that have bent over backwards to help you at the cost of some of their lives (little miss judgemental is the leading cause of someone’s death but obviously decided that’s not worth judging herself over) would you really start to act high and mighty with what they do with their life.
It’s not like we’re talking about selling hard drugs or running a prostitution ring.
The film doesn’t need it and suffers for it. The annoying selfish character was always Harry not the heroine.
If you can’t root for the hero then who can you?
At least there isn’t a love story here.
The ending is stupid and makes no sense and some of the characters make ridiculous choices. Henry for instance shoots through a window to a Zombie outside the house only for every other Zombie in hearing distance to climb through the now shattered window.
Pointless as they weren’t in danger then that scene is made redundant because they lock the door to that room and that’s the end of that.
Compared to most low budget horrors of today it doesn’t look that bad picture quality wise though some of the acting is questionable.
I found Barbs acting to be far too good at times to warrant the actress lowering herself to being in something like this.
Sound quality whilst not up to film standards again is better than most low budget horrors of today.
The make up effects would look better if filmed with a more decent camera and had better lighting but aren’t too bad and are mostly practical but the very few times CGI is used it is bad.
So bad it’s good. Look out for the blood coming from the Zombie shot through the window.
The film isn’t a like for like remake, we know how bad those turn out, so I do credit the director with trying to be original but head-scratching choices by most of the characters, a badly written hero (waste of an actress and a waste of Sid Haig), what sounds like stock music and some poor direction ruin this.
Still better than the 1990 remake. At least it tries something new.
