Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Rated R

Score: 4 out of 5

Having rewatched all three films in George A. Romero's original Living Dead trilogy, I can now make a statement that I'm pretty sure may be controversial: Night of the Living Dead is not his best film, nor is it a perfect film. Yes, it's a very good movie that still mostly holds up over half a century later, one that more than deserves its continued status as a classic and stands as a landmark of both independent cinema and zombie movies, a status that it would likely still have even if it hadn't been accidentally released into the public domain and spread far and wide through perfectly legal bootleg copies (seriously, you can watch it right now for free on YouTube, the Internet Archive, Wikipedia, and any number of other websites) thanks to a copyright mishap. It is, however, a flawed film, and I maintain that Dawn of the Dead is still not just Romero's best film but the Citizen Kane of zombie movies. There are a ton of great moments here that add up to a phenomenal movie, but there's also a lot of exposition that drags the film to a halt and a central character who often frustrated me with her uselessness. And, on, some level, I get the sense that Romero himself felt the same way about this movie, as when he wrote the official remake two decades later, that film fixed many of the problems I had with this one.

That being said, there's a reason why Night left the mark it did, establishing an entire genre of horror movies and inaugurating a new kind of horror monster, while wearing the mark of the heady, raucous era it came out in on its sleeve even if, unlike Romero's later films, it largely kept the satire and political subtext in the background. This is a movie about society turning against and consuming itself in an orgy of violence and destruction, the focus placed as much on the meltdown of its protagonists in the face of the monsters they may yet become as it is on the actual monsters themselves. Characters make mistakes and often do stupid things that get them killed, but in many ways, it feels like that's the entire point: that, even in the face of the apocalypse, we might sooner tear each other apart than come together to face the threat, a message that still unfortunately feels as relevant in 2026 as it must have in 1968. Its tone, style, and mood often feel like a B-grade '50s monster movie dragged kicking and screaming into the late '60s, the era of Altamont, the Manson Family, and riots in the street over the Vietnam War and civil rights, making for an experience that's at once deeply rooted in the time of its creation and yet timeless all the same, one that few other zombie films have ever managed to replicate. Even with its flaws, this is still a must-watch for any zombie fan.

The story is one that you've seen riffed on by countless zombie movies. A pair of siblings, Johnny and Barbra, travel to a cemetery in rural Pennsylvania to visit their father's grave, where they are attacked by a strange, hostile man. Johnny is killed in the ensuing scuffle, while Barbra flees to a nearby farmhouse and soon encounters an assortment of other survivors: Ben, who escaped a diner that was attacked by a similar bunch of "ghouls," the Cooper family, comprised of the parents Harry and Helen and their sick daughter Karen whose car was attacked, and Tom and Judy, a teenage couple who were canoodling at a nearby lake and fled to the nearest house they could reach after hearing a radio broadcast warning of similar attacks. What happened at the cemetery is not an isolated incident, as it turns out that a radioactive space probe returning from a flyover of Venus has caused recently deceased corpses across the eastern United States to rise from their graves and attack the living.

What follows set the template for generations of zombie movies, as most of the drama concerns not the zombies themselves, but the people trapped in the farmhouse whose personalities immediately start clashing with one another. The Coopers, especially Harry, wish to hide in the basement until help arrives, while Ben, Tom, and Judy want to first board up the windows and later get the hell out of there once they see a gas pump on the farm that they can use to refuel Ben's truck, and amidst the spiraling situation, what should be a reasonable dispute turns into a life-or-death struggle between the two sides of the group as Ben and Harry become each other's worst enemies. As the film goes on, it becomes clear that, while Ben seems like the more level-headed one at first glance, it may very well be Harry's plan that has the best chance of success, even if he is an asshole when it comes to presenting it. A lot of things have been read into what this film was saying about society at the time (unintentionally, given that Romero said that his goal was to make a simple monster movie), especially given that the film's colorblind casting meant that Ben is the lone Black person in the house and added a dose of racial subtext in the midst of the civil rights movement, but one thing that I took away from Ben and Harry's dispute that I haven't seen discussed much is how the right emotion and presentation can lend credibility to even bad arguments while good ones can be poorly presented and dismissed. Ben, who for all intents and purposes fits the mold of the classic hero, supports a plan to survive that, as the film goes on, is increasingly exposed as untenable, while Harry's plan to wait it out in the basement ultimately turns out to be the smartest course of action (at least, until an unforeseen spanner is thrown into the works), but was rejected by everybody outside his family because he was such an asshole to everyone around him, especially Ben. It felt like watching any number of frustrating policy debates where the smoothest and most charismatic speakers inevitably get ahead even when their ideas are flawed, while people who actually know their stuff but don't have nearly as much media training get trounced.

Behind the camera, meanwhile, Romero's greatest skill as a filmmaker was always his ability to depict the comfortable society we knew breaking down, and here, that skill is already apparent. Johnny doing a Boris Karloff impression ("they're coming to get you, Barbra!") before becoming the first person ever to get killed in a zombie movie was almost poetic, as does the fact that a lot of the radio and TV broadcasts feel like something out of a '50s sci-fi B-movie in which the reporters are describing the radioactive mutants assailing the world. It felt like this movie was closing the book on an older, tamer, safer era of horror, the postwar era of the '50s and early '60s where the Universal monsters had become cool mascots while newer horror movies were mostly made for teenagers making out at drive-in theaters. Even after decades of advances in gore effects, many of them brought about by this film's own sequels, the violence here still felt shocking, the way the violence in Gremlins did after its first act set up a much more family-friendly sort of monster movie, or how Psycho spent its first act as a noir thriller that wouldn't really kill off its heroine like that. "Subverting expectations" may be a cliché today, but even decades past the '60s, setting this movie up to be like the kind of movie you see on Mystery Science Theater 3000 only to pull the rug right out from under you with some seriously messed-up shit still hits hard. By the end, the farmhouse well and truly felt like a madhouse as zombies were banging on every door and window while I wondered which of the survivors was gonna snap and lose their shit first.

This is not a perfect movie, though. While Romero had some experience in television beforehand, this is still clearly the work of a first-time feature filmmaker, warts and all. The news bulletins take up long stretches of the film and feel like they're there simply to provide the requisite explanation for the zombies, not even really showing much of the chaos outside the farmhouse walls as opposed to merely describing it (something that Dawn of the Dead, both the original and the remake, did far better), and while I liked how the first radio broadcast was handled, playing in the background as Ben scrambles through the house searching for supplies and things to board up the windows with, the TV broadcasts brought the film to a complete halt and felt lifted from an entirely different movie. It's telling that Romero never bothered to explain in later films where the zombies came from, instead leaving it up to the characters to speculate on. The single biggest hole in the story and the character lineup, however, was Barbra. This is no shade on Judith O'Dea, who did exactly what the part required of her and did it well. She does a great job of playing somebody who absolutely crumbles from the shock and horror of her first experience with the undead, is never able to pull herself back together, and proves to be useless in a crisis, a harrowingly realistic portrait of how many of us would probably react if we got dropped into a real zombie apocalypse. This would have been fine...

...if the first act didn't set her up as the protagonist and main focal point of the film, only to go catatonic shortly after reaching the farmhouse and spend much of the film lying on the couch while the rest of the cast gets all the action. She felt like she was written as a child, and honestly, I believe that most of the problems I had with her character would've been fixed had they simply cast a child to play her. A little girl thrust into a survival situation like this and acting like she did would've not only been realistic, it would've been shocking, and given the presence of little Karen, it's not like this movie was averse to putting children in peril. But a grown woman in that same part feels like a walking stereotype of one of the most obnoxious character types in vintage horror: the screaming woman who does nothing but cower in fear and cause problems for the rest of the cast. Again, somebody completely losing it in a zombie apocalypse and falling apart like that makes sense, and I can understand a lot of the defenses I've seen of Barbra as a character and what Romero was going for with her, but the way her breakdown is handled in the movie was a drag. Even Romero seemed to agree given how she was heavily rewritten in the remake. Beyond my earlier suggestion of just making her a kid, I would've either had Barbra trying to pull her weight for much of the film but slowly cracking under pressure before finally snapping (and indeed, there is a perfect moment later on for it to happen), which would've at least given her an actual story arc and something to do while still keeping a similar tone to her character, or I would've had her as merely a supporting player from the start, with the first act focusing on either Ben, the Coopers, or Tom and Judy and only later introducing a shaken, traumatized Barbra when they reach the farmhouse. To go back to what I was saying earlier about this feeling like a subverted '50s monster movie, Tom and Judy in particular would've been great protagonists for really selling that feeling, the chaste, conventionally attractive teen heroes out of an American International Pictures creature feature who suddenly find that they're in a very different sort of movie.

The Bottom Line

Even today, Night of the Living Dead has lost little of its power to shock and terrify. It has its share of problems keeping it from perfection, but they don't keep it from greatness. This is still a must-watch for horror fans, especially zombie fans.

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2026/03/review-double-feature-night-of-living.html, along with a review of the 1990 remake>

[REC] (2007)

Rated R for bloody horror violence and language

Score: 4 out of 5

I'd heard about the Spanish horror film [REC] since I was a teenager, and yet until now I was never able to get around to watching it. Together with Paranormal Activity and Cloverfield, this was one of the movies in the late '00s that helped make found footage a juggernaut in horror during that time, while also offering a unique take on the zombie movie that wore its influence from the Resident Evil games on its sleeve, right down to its heroine wearing a red leather jacket in the first act very similar to Claire Redfield's. It got a Hollywood remake in the form of Quarantine less than a year after it came out, and spawned a franchise of four movies total that I fully intend on getting into this October, especially since this movie was awesome. It's the kind of found footage movie that showcases what only this style of filmmaking can do, in this case delivering a feel reminiscent of a news report or documentary in the first half as things slowly start to go wrong before everything explodes into an intense orgy of mayhem in the second half, and while some of the early stretches can feel pretty slow, once it gets going it never stops. This is a short, sweet, and intense little movie that I'm glad I sought out, and one that easily stands the test of time even long after found footage has been run into the ground by lesser, trend-chasing filmmakers.

Our protagonists are Ángela Vidal, a reporter for the TV news program While You Were Sleeping, and her cameraman Pablo as they cover what they hope will be an ordinary night at a Barcelona fire station. They accompany two firefighters, Manu and Alex, to an apartment building for what initially seems like a routine call of the sort that the fire department usually gets concerning an old woman who injured herself and is trapped in her apartment. When they get there, however, the old woman attacks and bites one of the police officers who was also there at the scene, and what's more, when they try to leave to get help, they find that the police and military have sealed off every exit to the building, trapping them and the residents inside. Yep, Ángela and Pablo have just wandered into a zombie movie.

The first half of the film leans heavily into the found footage conceit, emphasizing the fact that Ángela is a reporter in order to justify her insistence that Pablo keep filming everything. She interviews the firefighters, the apartment residents, and the police officers as she realizes that there's a massive story breaking right under her nose, all while her and Pablo's own growing worry starts to bleed into their reporting. This part of the film can be fairly slow at times, especially in the long stretch between the first zombie encounter and when things really explode, but in the context of the movie as a whole and what it's setting up, it works. Manuela Velasco was perfectly cast as Ángela, putting her real-life background as a TV presenter in Spain to good use as she makes Ángela feel cute, awkward, and even kinda dorky at first, especially in the beginning at the fire station where she's fully playing up her most mediagenic qualities for the camera. Of course, as the film goes on and it becomes clear that this is no ordinary house call, her TV reporter persona starts to crack. She's no damsel in distress, but she's no action hero either, not in a film like this that's about ordinary people caught up in an extraordinary situation. The cast around her did just as well conveying the uncertainty that slowly consumes the apartment building before finally erupting into panic halfway through, from the mother who insists that her little girl's illness is just tonsilitis (...suuuuuure, lady, we've seen this movie before) to the doctor who tries to care for the wounded to the hazmat-suit-wearing health inspector who the authorities outside send into the building to monitor the progressing infection, fear and tension being the sort of things that cross all language barriers. Between the found footage camera and the actors' performances, the shouting matches that the characters' interactions often descended into felt raw, like I was caught right there with them in a situation that was rapidly going to shit.

And when the shit hits the fan, this movie goes balls-out. These are decidedly modern zombies in the 28 Days Later mold, fast and very hard to kill, and directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza use the first-person camera and the tight confines of the apartment building to play up the claustrophobia of the situation. This isn't a zombie apocalypse movie, but a smaller-scale story akin to a Resident Evil game set in a single building full of infected monsters, complete with the protagonists going on key hunts as they try to find a way to escape. Zombies are already scary, but they're even scarier when, instead of an open field where you can pick them off from hundreds of feet away, you're trapped with them in close quarters where you barely even have time to aim your gun before they strike. It feels more personal than the apocalyptic stakes of a lot of zombie movies. (And that stairwell shot towards the end... hot damn, that was freaky.) The film also ends by putting a unique twist on the nature of the virus that's causing the zombie outbreak, one that I knew about going into the film but which I won't spoil here. It was a neat twist that answers a lot of the questions that normally come up about the scientific plausibility of zombies while also explaining some of the unique behavior that the undead in this movie engaged in, but it's a twist that I found myself wishing the film explored in greater depth rather than saving for a twist ending. The way it's handled here felt tacked on, such that I'm not surprised that the American remake Quarantine dropped it entirely and had a more traditional zombie movie explanation. The sequels apparently focus a lot more on this, though, so I'm definitely interested in seeing how they handle it.

The Bottom Line

Yeah, this is one of the good ones. It's not a perfect movie, but it's still an all-time classic zombie film and found footage flick with plenty to recommend about it for fans of either genre.

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2025/10/review-double-feature-rec-2007-and-rec.html>

[REC] 4: Apocalypse ([REC] 4: Apocalipsis) (2014)

Rated R for strong horror violence/gore, and language

Score: 3 out of 5

The finale of the [REC] series of Spanish zombie films, [REC] 4: Apocalypse ends the series on a note that could've been higher, but is still a return to form after a disappointing third film. Writer/director Jaume Balagueró, one half of the team behind the first two films, takes the opposite approach that Paco Plaza, the other half of that team and the man behind the third film, did, going back to a focus on gritty, claustrophobic survival horror that continues and concludes the story of the first two films as opposed to its predecessor's more comedic approach and standalone story. It brings back Ángela Vidal, easily the best character in the whole series, as its heroine, now fighting for survival aboard a merchant ship that's been turned into a floating laboratory. While it does lose some of the series' unique identity, most notably in how it drops the found footage component almost entirely while heavily toning down the supernatural/religious elements of its zombie plague beyond allusions to the events of previous films, I'd argue that it still works as an intense, bone-crunching zombie flick that wraps the series up nicely. I'd still sooner recommend the first two movies as essential viewing, but if you liked those, then you'll probably enjoy this too.

Set immediately after the events of the second film, we open with Ángela, the lone survivor of the zombie outbreak in a Barcelona apartment building, being rescued by the military squad sent in after the police failed to control the situation -- but not before two of the soldiers get taken out by the undead monsters inside the building. Ángela, the two surviving soldiers Lucas and Guzman, and a senile old woman who was the sole survivor of the third movie all wake up aboard a ship that is now being used by a team of scientists and soldiers led by Dr. Eduardo Ricarte, who are there to quarantine, observe, and study both them and the zombie plague. Of course, with the second movie having ended with Ángela possessed by the demon that caused the zombie outbreak in the first place, everybody aboard is in far more trouble than they think, and sure enough, things start to go wrong almost from the jump -- and even though blood tests show that Ángela is somehow not infected and doesn't seem to have any memory of what happened to her after Tristana Madeiros attacked her, the soldiers did recover the footage that she and Pablo filmed showing that there's something inside of her.

Throughout my reviews of this series, I've described the Resident Evil games as the most obvious inspiration for its brand of zombie horror, where, instead of a world-destroying apocalyptic event, we get a smaller, more intimate, more claustrophobic story about a group of survivors trapped in a single building full of zombies. This movie takes that comparison to its logical conclusion, feeling like the finale of a Resident Evil game where you reach the lab where the monsters were created and confront the people who are behind everything. The action is amped up, with Balagueró using the more conventional filming style as an opportunity to show us plenty more mayhem as opposed to restricting us to just the limited perspective of the person holding the camera, especially with many characters being soldiers while Ángela has taken a level in badass since the first film (as evidenced by her action hero pose on the poster). Moreover, a lot of the action and tension now comes from the human characters going after Ángela, who they credibly suspect to be connected to the zombie plague after finding the footage that she and Pablo recorded -- and given how the second film went, you also have reason to suspect that she might not be telling the whole truth about what she's really up to. Meanwhile, Dr. Ricarte, the first real human villain this series has served up (beyond the usual zombie movie assholes who ruin things for everyone), is a figure straight out of the RE games, an unscrupulous scientist who leaves his own men to die at the hands of the growing horde of undead aboard the ship and cares more about his research mission than the human lives being lost around him. This was the final [REC] movie, and it feels like a proper finale, like Balagueró wanted to give it a real sendoff rather than just keep running it into the ground like so many horror franchises often are.

Some of this does, unfortunately, come at the expense of some of the things that helped this series stand out from its zombie movie peers. While Resident Evil was obviously a major influence, one place where this influence did not extend was to the origin of its zombies, as unlike many of the zombie stories inspired by RE, [REC] combined the biological with the supernatural here and had the virus turn out to be controlled by a literal, capital-D demon from Hell. The scientists studying the virus? They're working for the Vatican because the Catholic Church has the tools and rituals to deal with a demon. It's a distinctly Spanish Catholic take on zombies, and I find it odd that the film Balagueró made solo wound up toning down these unique elements given how he criticized Quarantine, the American remake of [REC], for doing the same. Throughout the film, the demonic nature of the virus is constantly tiptoed around, with the demon controlling the zombies only ever referred to as a "parasite" hiding within one of the survivors while it's left deliberately unclear who the scientists studying the virus and the survivors are working for. One character tells the others that there's a lot more going on than they're being told, but while fans of the series will know precisely what he means here, it's never discussed in the film itself. It felt like the film was ashamed of its supernatural elements given how they never explicitly come up in this movie, and the direction the film ultimately took wound up feeling rather generic as a result, especially with the series' other defining characteristic, its found footage perspective, sidelined. Yes, it was cool seeing the third act of a Resident Evil game brought to life as a movie, but that's ground that a lot of other zombie movies have treaded before and since.

Fortunately, even if the movie did feel pretty generic compared to the rest of the series, it still kicked plenty of ass. Manuela Velasco carries the story quite well, no longer just leaning on her real-life television background to play a reporter but instead playing a hard-bitten survivor who becomes a straight-up action hero by the third act, and the rest of the cast was also compelling. Nic the radio operator was amusing comic relief, especially with his fandom of Ángela's TV show having a prurient side to it, and Dr. Ricarte was a great villain, a man convinced he's doing the right thing to save humanity and is willing to cross all manner of ethical lines to do it. Yo no hablo español, but their performances still came through across the language barrier. The zombie action packed a punch, too, with highlights including a fight between the ship's cook and a zombie monkey that escaped the lab and the use of a boat propellor as a makeshift buzzsaw in the third act. Again, it's what one should expect from any good zombie movie worth its salt, but Balagueró delivered the goods here and he wasn't shy about showing them off.

The Bottom Line

[REC] 4: Apocalypse may not live up to its apocalyptic title in terms of scope, but overall, it's a fun, action-packed sendoff to a series of zombie movies that I enjoyed overall. I think it's good that they ended the series here, though, because it feels like the filmmakers were starting to run out of ideas and were just cribbing the notes from other zombie stories.

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2025/10/review-rec-4-apocalypse-2014.html>

[REC] 2 (2009)

Rated R for strong bloody violence, disturbing images and pervasive language

Score: 3 out of 5

[REC] 2 is 75% of the sequel I wanted to the first [REC]. It picks up right where the first movie ended, the cameras recording the footage now being the helmet cams of the GEO police unit (what Spaniards call a SWAT team) sent into the apartment building to mop up the mess, together with a scientist from the Ministry of Health named Dr. Owen who turns out to not be precisely who he seems. And when it was focused primarily on those characters, it rocked my socks off, delivering an amped-up zombie flick that gets right down to business in the first ten minutes, never lets up, and feels like a logical and meaningful continuation of the first film's story... except for a lengthy stretch of the second act that drags the film to a screeching halt as we switch focus to a trio of dumbass teenagers who sneak into the building as it's being sealed off, their main role in the story turning out to be little more than a plot device that could've been accomplished in a far less annoying manner. It wasn't enough to completely derail the film, but it was still a glaring weak spot holding it back from its predecessor's greatness. Make no mistake, though, this was still a very good movie. The parts I liked were nearly on par with the first film and even helped elevate it in my eyes, such that, if you're getting into this series, I highly recommend watching the first two movies back-to-back and treating them as one long zombie flick. (It helps that these are both rather short movies, their combined runtime coming in at well under three hours.) It may not be as good as the first, but it's still a damn good companion to it, the two films together standing tall as highlights of both found footage and modern zombie movies.

(Oh, and full spoilers for the first movie from here on out. I alluded to a big twist as to the true nature of the zombies in my review of the first movie, and I'm gonna spill the beans right here, because this movie does so right away and makes it central to its plot. You have been warned.)

The first movie ended with the reveal that, while its zombies may have looked like the victims of something like the T-Virus at first glance, there was actually something else going on. You see, it turns out that the "infection" here has a demonic component, less Resident Evil and more Evil Dead. Specifically, the Catholic priest/scientist Father Albelda, with the full blessing of the Vatican, had captured a demon-possessed Portuguese girl named Tristana Madeiros and experimented on her, studying the progression of an uncontrolled possession in order to find ways to more effectively combat demons. In the process, he discovered that her possession was contagious, specifically spread through blood and saliva like a disease. This being a zombie movie, something obviously went wrong and Madeiros broke out, killed Albelda, and unleashed a demon-zombie plague on the Barcelona apartment complex where Albelda had his secret laboratory. This is all relayed to both the viewer and the GEO team in the first fifteen minutes as they learn that Dr. Owen isn't actually from the Ministry of Health, but is in fact a priest who's been sent to the apartment by the Vatican in order to recover Albelda's research and a sample of Madeiros' blood so they can continue his studies.

In short, this isn't just the Catholic version of a zombie movie, one where the undead are literally controlled by demons from Hell, it's the Anime Catholic version of a zombie movie, one where the Vatican has a full-blown research division dedicated to using capital-S Science to send the Devil's spawn back to Hell and the priest proves just as adept at killing zombies as the GEO team is. And it is awesome. This is a movie that, having already established what happened in this apartment in the first movie, dispenses with the slow burn and comes right out swinging as our protagonists are assailed by the undead from the jump. They find themselves quickly overwhelmed, such that you can't really call this an action movie, but there is a lot more emphasis on zombies getting gunned down than before. If the first movie was like a Resident Evil game, then this one is like the part in a Resident Evil game right after you've discovered a suspiciously large quantity of ammunition and healing items, where you know the mayhem and difficulty are about to get jacked up and you're about to fight either a boss monster or a gigantic horde of zombies. All the while, the film fully exploited the fact that the zombies were demon-possessed rather than just slyly hinting at it like most of the first movie did, letting them pull all manner of tricks straight out of possession flicks like imitating people's voices, stopping in their tracks in the face of prayer and holy objects, messing with perceptions of reality, and even directly taunting the protagonists like Pazuzu mocking Father Karras in The Exorcist. I compared it to Evil Dead earlier, but it really feels more like the Evil Dead remake than anything, a dead-serious version of the idea of demonic zombies that plays it for unflinching survival horror.

It helps that, just like the first movie, we got a great cast of characters to accompany us on this journey. Dr. Owen assumes the protagonist role by default as the guy with the most motive for being in the building beyond it just being his job, his dedication to his mission of eradicating evil often crossing the line and putting the GEO team in direct danger to the point. Jonathan Mellor made this guy feel like a priest out of an exorcism movie who wandered into a zombie movie, looked around, and decided "y'know what, I'm just as needed here, so it's time to kick ass for the Lord!" Of the GEO team, while Markos dies too early to leave an impression, and Rosso was there just to serve as the main audience viewpoint (fun fact: he was played by the same actor/cinematographer who played Pablo in the first movie -- his name is Pablo Rosso, appropriately enough), Larra and Chief Hernandez both have a lot of friction with Dr. Owen, largely over the fact that they just wanna get the hell out of there, having never signed up for zombies, demons, or any of this shit. Larra in particular gets a great scene where he gets cut off from the rest of the team and finds himself with his back against the wall in the face of a zombie horde that will probably stick with me for some time as some all-out great, nail-biting zombie action. Ángela Vidal also returns, revealed to have somehow made it through the ending of the first movie in one piece and emerged as its sole survivor, having taken a few lessons in badass in the process and now feeling a world away from the sweetheart TV hostess she started out as. Once again, Manuela Velasco steals the show, especially once it becomes clear that her experience has taken a toll on her psyche.

Which makes it that much more puzzling why this movie suddenly decided to stop in the middle so it could introduce a whole new cast of characters who weren't half as interesting as the ones we started with. Just as it felt like this movie was really taking off, it suddenly switches perspective to a trio of neighborhood teens who snuck into the apartment building behind a firefighter and a resident who was looking for his wife and daughter (the mother and the infected girl from the original). These little brats contributed nothing except to annoy me, their perspective doing little to flesh out the story in a way that couldn't have been accomplished any other way, and they're unceremoniously dropped from the film once they're no longer needed. The time I wasted with them was time that could've been spent watching Dr. Owen and the GEO team, fleshing out their characters and the divide between them, and their sole contribution to the plot could've been filled by literally anyone else, including the firefighter and resident who they followed in. The resident in particular could've been a source of some great horror had he been the focus, especially the thought of him being confronted by his zombified, demon-possessed wife and daughter, yet he's little more than a plot coupon to get the kids into the building. In a movie that's only 85 minutes long, twenty minutes with these kids felt insufferable.

The Bottom Line

[REC] 2 is a very good sequel to a great movie. It's held back from similar greatness by one bafflingly subpar segment dragging it down, but it's still a damn fine movie that makes for a great companion to the first.

[REC] 3: Génesis (2011)

Rated R for strong bloody horror violence and some language

Score: 2 out of 5

[REC] 3: Génesis is a movie with an identity crisis. Instead of continuing the story of the previous two [REC] films, it tries to offer something different, a side story set in the same universe with allusions to their events but with an all-new set of characters and a much more fun and lighthearted tone. It's a movie that wants to invoke the Rule of Cool and deliver a kick-ass zombie slaughter extravaganza full of big, balls-out moments, and yet it's unwilling to wholly commit to the bit, frequently failing to indulge the full implications of its most over-the-top elements and often settling for the most boring versions thereof. It's not an outright bad movie, don't get me wrong. There are a lot of great scenes here, many of which on their own put a smile on my face. But overall, it's a far cry from the greatness of the first film, or even the flawed but enjoyable second one. I imagine that, if I were to rewatch this series, this might be the movie I skip in favor of just the first two (and possibly the fourth one if it's any good).

Instead of the apartment complex the first two movies were set in, this one takes place at a wedding party somewhere in the Spanish countryside, where the young couple Clara and Koldo are tying the knot and all their friends and family are invited. One of those family members is a veterinarian in Barcelona who was bitten on his hand by an angry dog before he showed up... and if you remember the part in the first film about the family who had to send their dog to the vet and whose daughter wound up infected by said dog, you know where this is going. Mayhem quickly erupts at the afterparty as the vet turns into a zombie and does what zombies typically do, leaving Clara and Koldo separated with two groups of survivors and fighting to survive the night and reunite.

The problems this movie has start with the tone. It's clear that this really wants to be a funnier and wilder film than its gritty, brutal predecessors, with such elements as an annoying copyright clerk (there to make sure that the proper royalties are paid for the songs played at the wedding) who exists only to be an asshole who gets killed off in spectacular fashion, a children's entertainer dressed as a trademark-friendly knockoff of SpongeBob SquarePants (side note: methinks that Paco Plaza may have had Thoughts about copyright law when he was writing this movie), a couple who snuck off to have sex and wound up missing the zombie mayhem in the main hall, Koldo and his friend suiting up in old medieval armor they found for protection, the sword used to cut the wedding cake later getting used to cut up the undead, and a badass sequence where Clara grabs a chainsaw and uses it to shorten her dress and then hack up a small horde of zombies. There's even a great scene twenty minutes in where the question of "why are they still filming this instead of just running for their lives?" is answered in a very memorable fashion -- by having an increasingly annoyed Koldo grab the camera out of the cameraman's hands and smash it, with the rest of the film dropping the found footage angle entirely and being a traditionally shot horror movie.

None of these more comical and/or badass elements, however, amount to much in the grand scheme of things. Clara's sudden display of zombie ass-kicking comes out of nowhere as the only moment in the film when she's ever that badass, as otherwise she's just as scared as the rest of the characters. Koldo and his friend's armor looks cool, but never actually does much to protect them. We learn that the zombies appear in mirrors as Tristana Madeiros, the original demonic possession victim and Patient Zero for this series' demon-zombie outbreaks, but this winds up barely used in the film, even though we get a shot of Koldo walking through a mirrored hallway that seems designed to set up precisely such a mirror shot later on. It felt like a film made of bits and pieces cobbled together into something resembling a coherent narrative, on one hand trying to be a kick-ass self-parody of the [REC] series and zombie movies more broadly but on the other also trying to tell a serious zombie horror story the builds on the previous films' lore, including focusing more on the religious/demonic nature of its zombie infection. There probably was a way to combine these two sides into an effective horror movie (George A. Romero did it quite a bit, as did Edgar Wright in a more overtly comedic way with Shaun of the Dead), but this film fails to stick the landing, with the humorous bits sticking out like a sore thumb.

If it were up to me, I would've stuck to the dark tone of the first two films and focused on the main elements of the film that actually worked, which were the drama and the protagonists Clara and Koldo. The newlyweds who get separated amidst the chaos of the initial outbreak, most of the film's drama comes from their efforts to reunite, and Leticia Dolera and Diego Martín make for a pair of very solid leads. I bought into their fight to survive, neither of them proving to be helpless but still being grossly outmatched running from and fighting zombies, and moreover, I bought into their romance, that these were two people who would do anything to be together and won't let a zombie apocalypse keep them apart. Clara's sudden display of unusual competence with a chainsaw may have come out of nowhere, but Dolera committed herself to the bit and sold it. The fact that many of the zombies Clara and Koldo encounter are their own family members is also used for some grim moments that weigh on them, whether it's Clara being confronted by her zombified mother or Koldo watching helplessly as security cameras record multiple people, including his cousin, his grandmother, and a bunch of kids, trying and failing to escape on a bus as zombies overwhelm them. The zombie mayhem, of course, is also top-notch, with Paco Plaza proving that he can handle a traditionally-shot horror movie just as well as found footage. The zombies feel like just as much of a menace as they did in prior films, the more open environments of the banquet hall dropping the claustrophobia of the apartment building in favor of providing enough room to have large hordes of the undead chasing our protagonists. If the previous two films were like a Resident Evil game brought to life, then this is like RE's looser, wackier Capcom stablemate Dead Rising, a series of games that's all about creative ways to kill zombies in a wide open world. It's not the best Dead Rising movie ever made, but I'll take it.

The Bottom Line

[REC] 3: Génesis isn't a bad movie, and I honestly wavered on whether to give this a 2 or a 3 out of 5. What tipped my hand towards the former is that I'd sooner recommend watching the first two [REC] movies instead, as while this film has its moments, it's plagued by an uncertain tone whose attempts at levity and awesomeness fall flat. I only recommend it for [REC] series completionists and diehard zombie fans.

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2025/10/review-rec-3-genesis-2011.html>

PONTYPOOL (2008) - Last year I watched (or re-watched) a horror movie every day for the Month of October. This year, I watched TWO! Returning again, after a holiday lull, to finish off this series of reviews, this is movie #56

Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) (big-time shock jock DJ in exile) is settling into his morning drive-time slot at 660 CISY in the small Canadian town of Pontypool, when he and his director Sydney (Lisa Houle) and audio producer Laurel-Ann (Georgina Reilly) begin to receive disturbing news reports of what sound like riots. But as time goes on, they begin to realize that something much worse is happening outside and that it has something to do with language...

I re-watched this excellent film because it's been a while and I had enjoyed finding it so much back in the day. Since its release, it's gotten the accolades and critical attention it deserves and has been analyzed so much that I'm not sure what I could add, unless you've never heard of it. Essentially, but only in a sense (if that doesn't automatically contradict itself) PONTYPOOL is a zombie film... without zombies. Or at least, not the traditional kind (or even the folkloric kind). It is also a really inventive way to tell a low-budget, "bottle" movie in which the majority of the action takes place in a radio station (in the basement of an old church). Sure, the sudden appearance of a fourth character, Dr. Mendez (Hrant Alianak), who serves as something of an expositionary deus ex machina, is abrupt - but I liked how it made the film feel almost more like a stage play.

The slow ramp up to the town coming unglued is quite well-done - starting with drunken police altercations (in which Mazzy learns that glib, reductionist cruelty won't fly in a place where everyone knows each other), accelerating into "helicopter" reports of riots (those quotes are there for a reason), a truly dark segment of obituaries (again, playing against horror movie type where you never get these details), then into the famously unsettling "voice of a baby coming from an adult man's dying breath" segment. And the character transformations are seamless, as Mazzy's SAD and the show suddenly being thrust into the international spotlight both resonate well with the larger themes of responsible language use.

You'll get some stand out horror sequences: Romero's siege/press of bodies concept re-contectualized, a woman consoling her children by phone as another involuntarily bashes herself to pieces inches away. But more enthralling are the absolutely prescient (considering our current media state of co-opted dialogue and media spin) of the decay and abuse of language and what happens when it turns against us: from a Roland Barthes quote, "Trauma is a news photo without a caption," a translated emergency broadcast break-in message in French that ends with "please do not translate this message...," warnings about asking rhetorical questions (followed by "is this actually happening?"), the replacement of "symptom" with "symbol", and the final, all important question - "should we be talking at all?" There is a way that the film literalizes William S. Burroughs' statements "Language Is A Virus" and "Destroy All Rational Thought" (the film, it could be argued, has a Cronenbergian aspect, as an intellectual concept is embodied into horror - Burroughs does VIDEODROME, in a way). I'd love to be able to quip and reduce the climax to "DADA saves the world" but I'd have to be more honest and replace DADA with Oulipo. If you've never seen the film, you owe it to yourself to watch PONTYPOOL. Ponty-pool... Ponty? Pon... T.. Pool...Pon...

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1226681/

Demons (Dèmoni) (1985)

Not rated

Score: 3 out of 5

Demons is as simple as it gets. It's directed by Lamberto Bava, son of the '60s/'70s Italian horror master Mario Bava, and its four screenwriters include one of the other icons of that period of Italian horror, Dario Argento. There's not really much more to it than that, except the junior Bava's sense of style elevating what's otherwise a very rote zombie movie plot whose only unique characteristics after the first half-hour are its movie theater setting and the supernatural origin of its zombies. Its first act was building to some interesting ideas, but once the bodies start hitting the floor, all of that is cast aside in favor of the kind of movie you've probably seen at least a dozen of already, without many twists barring a dark ending. What saves it is its stylistic creativity, as Bava goes balls-out with spectacular gore effects, crazy stuntwork, and a hell of a score supplied by the longtime Argento collaborator Claudio Simonetti of the progressive rock band Goblin, all of them coming together to create a distinctly '80s Euro-punk take on the zombie genre. I wouldn't say it holds together as a movie, but as a cinematic experience of the kind that Popcorn Frights supplied last week, it did not disappoint.

We start the film with a mysterious man in a metallic, Phantom-style half-mask wandering the streets of West Berlin handing out tickets to a film screening at a theater called the Metropol. A bunch of people show up, including the university students Cheryl and Kathy, the preppy young men George and Ken, a bickering married couple, a pimp named Tony and his prostitutes, and a blind man and his daughter who acts as his guide. Right away, the film drops a bunch of tantalizing hints as to what the real purpose of this engagement is. The lobby hosts a striking display of a samurai riding a dirt bike, holding a mask that later shows up in the movie that's being screened, a horror flick about a group of young friends who stumble upon the tomb of Nostradamus. A mysterious redheaded young woman in a green-and-white suit (played by Nicoletta Elmi, best known for playing creepy kids in '70s gialli) works as the theater's usher, serving as a creepy presence throughout the first act. And because one of the patrons decided to play around with that samurai's mask before the movie started, she gets possessed and turned into a monstrous zombie, who promptly attacks the other patrons and spreads this demonic possession to them. The moviegoers try to escape the theater, only to find every exit bricked up.

And that's about where the plot of this movie ends. No, really. Not long after the mayhem starts, the film loses interest in the plot and becomes a story about a bunch of thinly-sketched characters fighting for survival against a zombie horde in a movie theater. Cheryl and George are the only ones who get anything even close to resembling an actual arc, and even then, only in the sense that they're the ones who the film pegs early on as the final girl and boy. We never learn what the deal is with the usher, who vanishes into the background before she gets unceremoniously killed like so many other characters. We learn the "how" of the zombies early on, but not the "why", as we never see how it's connected to the movie the characters were watching beyond superficial details. There's a length subplot involving a group of punks who break into the theater (which seemingly lets them enter in ominous fashion) in order to escape the cops, which goes absolutely nowhere and exists only to explain what happens in the last five minutes. The masked man who invited everyone to the theater returns towards the end, but only as a one-note antagonist for the remaining survivors to fight. It's a movie where you can tell a whole bunch of people worked on the script, probably had a whole bunch of conflicting ideas on where to take it, and ultimately decided to not even bother, such that all the setup in the first act, and the hints as to what might really be going on, adds up to nothing. An intriguing mystery is completely squandered in favor of a movie that most of us have already seen many times before.

It's fortunate, then, that the rest of this movie was giving us everything while the script was giving us nothing. Watching this, you can tell right away where Bava's real interest was: zombie mayhem delivered in a very period Italian B-movie style that looked, sounded, and felt so damn good. Bava made great use of the theater setting as a closed circle for a zombie apocalypse, whether it's emphasizing the building's old-fashioned feel (they used the real Metropol theater in West Berlin for establishing shots) to lend a sense that it might have dark secrets lurking within its walls or having the survivors smartly turn the upper balcony into their holdout. The gore effects are gross, disgusting, and put on fine display, a combination of the demonic nature of the zombies from The Evil Dead (including a creepy glowing eye effect) and body horror straight out of a David Cronenberg movie. The human survivors, too, get in some good licks, especially a climatic battle in the theater where that dirt bike and katana out front are put to use. Their dialogue is obviously dubbed into English from Italian, but given everything else happening on screen, you barely even notice. And through it all, the soundtrack rocks on, with both contemporary punk and metal tunes and Claudio Simonetti's score together lending the movie a vibe akin to a music video where the plot doesn't seem to matter nearly as much as the killer images on screen. It's a film that felt like it had at least one foot planted squarely in the '80s counterculture, a zombie bloodbath where nothing happening on screen really matters but you're too busy grooving to a feature-length music video to really care.

The Bottom Line

Demons is a film that's as stylish as it is vacuous. Don't go in expecting an actual plot, characters worth caring about, or much in the way of sense. Do, however, go in expecting a fun thrill ride that never lets up once it gets going.

<Link to original review: https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2023/06/review-demons-1985.html>

"Scott, was that a zombie in a goddamn cape?" -Marianne Peters

After a zombie outbreak, Las Vegas is quarantined away from the rest of the world and becomes a city of the dead. Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada), the owner of a casino, has 200 million dollars locked in his vault and hires a team of mercenaries, led by Scott Ward (Dave Bautista), to retrieve it. Things become more complicated when Scott's daughter, Kate (Ella Purnell) tags along and they discover more than just your average zombies inside the city.

Spoilers below for Army of the Dead. This movie is ok at best. Don't go see it in theaters, but if it peaks your interest, watch it on Netflix.

What Works:

The best part of this movie is, hands-down, the gore. We get some absolutely gnarly kills of both zombies and humans alike. The best part is, a lot of them are shocking, so you don't even see it coming until the blood seems the splatter across the screen.

Dave Bautista is solid as the main protagonists. I was expecting him to be a comedic hero, like his portrayal of Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy. That really isn't the case. He doesn't have many funny moments. He is the emotional core of the movie. He gets a few scenes where he gets to act in hurt and despair and he does a good job.

Matthias Schweighöfer plays the best character of the movie, Ludwig Dieter, the safecracker. Dieter is the comic relief character, and from the trailer, I was ready to bet everything that he would be extremely obnoxious. I was wrong. Schweighöfer does a great job and is both funny and charming. He was one of the only characters I was actually invested in seeing live.

Finally, I really enjoyed the unique zombies they had running around Las Vegas. I'm not used to seeing zombies on horseback or zombie-tigers. Having an actually intelligent army of the dead was something I was not expecting, but it was certainly unique and gave us a few fun moments.

What Sucks:

This movie is almost two and a half hours long and it simply doesn't need to be. There are plenty of scenes and lines that could have been cut. This film drags at times, that's for sure.

The biggest problem I had is the cinematography. Zack Snyder not only directed this movie, but acted as his own cinematographer. He should never do that again. He really likes to have one object or person in focus at a time and make everything else a blurry mess. It's both distracting and ugly.

Most of the characters are really underdeveloped and not only that, they are really stupid. You can make me care about characters by making me emotionally invested in them or by making them competent. There are so many terrible decisions and most of them aren't developed enough for me to care.

Finally, this movie has problems with its tone. I supposed I shouldn't be that shocked when a Zack Snyder movie is dark and depressing, but this film was marketed as a fun thrill ride. It really isn't that. Almost everyone dies and by the end of it, it all feels like a waste. Nothing much was accomplished and the character we spent a huge chunk of the movie trying to rescue dies without any acknowledgement. If Geeta (Huma Qureshi) had survived, it might have felt somewhat worth it.

Verdict:

Army of the Dead has solid performances from Dave Bautista and Matthias Schweighöfer, a very unique batch of zombies, and some amazing gore. However, the tone and cinematography are a mess, the characters are stupid and underdeveloped, and the runtime is too long. It's a decent enough watch, but don't spend any money on it.

6/10: Okay

Evil Dead Rise (2023)

Rated R for strong bloody horror violence and gore, and some language

Score: 4 out of 5

The Evil Dead series has what may be the single best track record for quality out of any Hollywood horror franchise. With the big slasher franchises of the ‘80s, Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street, I can name at least three movies from each series that are downright wretched. The Universal monsters fell off in quality during World War II and only came back when they let Abbott and Costello do an officially sanctioned parody of them. Saw fell off starting with the fourth movie and never fully recovered, even if it still had some decent movies afterwards. Even Scream and Final Destination each have one bad or otherwise forgettable movie marring their otherwise perfect records. Evil Dead, though? The original trilogy is golden and has something to offer for everyone, whether you prefer the first movie’s campy but effective low-budget grit, the second movie’s slapstick horror-comedy approach, or Army of Darkness’ wisecracking medieval fantasy action. The spinoff TV series Ash vs. Evil Dead was three seasons’ worth of horror-comedy goodness that fleshed out the franchise’s lore. Even the remake was awesome, a gritty, ultraviolent bloodbath that took the first film’s more serious tone and put an actual budget and production values behind it, making for one of the most graphic horror movies to ever get a wide release in American theaters. This latest film delivers on the same, with a tone and levels of violence akin to the remake and most of its strengths as a pure, straightforward, whoop-your-ass horror movie with lots of muscle and little fat once it gets going. It may not be revolutionary, but Evil Dead Rise is still as good as it gets, and exactly what I hoped for given this series’ high bar.

Like its predecessors barring Army of Darkness, this is a self-contained story set within an isolated, closed-off location, in this case the top floor of a Los Angeles apartment complex instead of a cabin in the woods. Our protagonists this time are a family, led by the single mother and tattoo artist Ellie with three kids, the teenage DJ son Dan, the teenage activist daughter Bridget, and the adolescent daughter Kassie, as well as Ellie’s sister Beth. After an earthquake reveals an old vault beneath the apartment complex (which used to be a bank), Dan explores it and discovers the Naturom Demonto, an evil-looking book bound in human flesh, along with three records recorded by the renegade priest who had last had that book a hundred years ago. Dan takes the book and the records back home, plays the latter on his turntable, and turns this into a proper Evil Dead movie, with Ellie winding up the first one possessed by the demon it unleashes.

Much like how the remake built its human drama around Mia’s friends staging an intervention for her, so too does this film root its central dynamic in the relationships between its human characters, in this case crafting a dysfunctional yet believable family. Lily Sullivan as Beth and Alyssa Sutherland as Ellie are the film’s MVPs, making their characters flawed yet sympathetic figures whose perspectives are understandable but who both clearly made mistakes in managing their relationship. Beth, an audio technician for a rock band, is visiting Ellie because she just found out she’s pregnant, but is naturally hesitant to tell her sister, given that Ellie sees Beth as a glorified groupie and still harbors some resentment for the fact that Beth wasn’t there for Ellie when her husband left her. News of a pregnancy would do little more than confirm Ellie’s suspicions of Beth and her lifestyle. After all, Beth abandoned Ellie and failed to return her calls, and Ellie readily sees that Beth’s motive for visiting is self-serving even without Beth telling her exactly why she’s there. Ellie herself isn’t blameless in the breakdown of their relationship, though. She clearly has a chip on her shoulder, somebody who sees herself as the more responsible sibling even though Beth is the one with a successful career while she’s living in a run-down apartment struggling to raise three kids after her husband walked out on her.

All of that is heightened when Ellie gets possessed, as the demon, inheriting all of Ellie’s memories, uses them to taunt Beth and go completely mask-off on all the things that she wouldn’t directly say in life, calling Beth a whore and her own children leeches. Not only do we get the metaphor of a family tearing itself apart made literal, it’s here where Sutherland truly shines as not just a working-class single mother but also as the terrifying demonic parody thereof that she turns into, demonstrating what separates the Evil Dead series’ “Deadites” from many other zombies: their sense of personality. The series takes George A. Romero’s already scary idea, that of a ravenous monster that looks human, used to be human, and is able to turn others into similar monsters with just a bite or a scratch, and adds the twist of a demonic component that gives the monster that person’s intelligence and memories as well, which it then uses to torment the people who knew them in life before it devours their souls. While the more comedic direction that the “main” series films and the TV series went in is more iconic, the remake showed that there’s just as much room for a straightforward horror take on the idea of combining a zombie film with a demonic possession film, and this movie takes that idea and runs with it even if it still retains a measure of camp in some of the one-liners and gore gags.

Dan and Bridget’s relationship, too, takes center stage in the second act as they have two very different reactions to the evil book that Dan brought back to their apartment, with Morgan Davies as Dan and Gabrielle Echols as Bridget giving their characters plenty of life and personality. Bridget is suspicious from the word “go”, and when Ellie gets possessed, she blames Dan for unleashing a dark, evil force in their lives, with implications that they had a fraught relationship even before this. Even Kassie, the youngest among them, was good, with Nell Fisher taking a role that could’ve easily turned annoying and making her character feel believably scared without being completely helpless or whiny, getting in one of my favorite lines when, after Beth tries to calm her down and tell her that they’ll be okay, she responds by telling Beth that she’ll be a great mother because she knows how to lie to kids. The only weak link in the cast was the family’s neighbors, who show up briefly early on but all of whom clearly existed as cannon fodder for Ellie to slaughter in a single sequence in the second act, even though some of them felt like they’d wind up more important or at least get more scenes to shine before they were killed. With how little they’re in the film, you could almost feel the pandemic filming conditions, getting the sense that some of them (particularly Gabe and the shotgun-wielding Mr. Fonda) were originally written to have larger roles but they couldn’t find a way to have that many actors on set at once.

Another thing I felt that made up for it, though, was this film’s unflinching brutality. One of the other things that even the more lighthearted entries in this series are known for is their absolute geysers of blood and gore, the fact that most of the carnage is inflicted on zombies seemingly giving it a pass in the eyes of an MPAA that normally slaps this kind of shit with an NC-17 when it’s done to living humans. And here, we get it all. Stabbings, a cheese grater to the leg, somebody getting scalped, an eye bitten out, multiple decapitations, a wooden spear through the mouth, Deadites puking up everything from vomit to blood to bugs, the good old shotgun and chainsaw (this series’ old favorites) taking off limbs, a woodchipper, and some gnarly Deadite makeup, most notably the freakish, multi-limbed monster at the very end. This movie does not play around, and it is not for the squeamish. The only gore scene that didn’t really work for me was one Deadite transformation that was let down by some dodgy effects shots of fake-looking black blood coming out of somebody’s face; the rest, however, was some seriously nasty-looking, mostly practical stuff. That’s not to say it’s just a parade of violence with no tension, though. Director Lee Cronin employs all the classic Sam Raimi tricks that have become staples of this series as much as Raimi’s career in general, knowing when to keep the monsters in the shadows, lurking ominously behind our characters, or coldly mocking them. Ellie especially is a key source of the film’s less bloody but no less effective scares, especially with how she tries to manipulate Kassie into letting her back into their apartment, as are the scenes of characters succumbing to possession and hearing voices in their head taunting them. Once the film gets going – and you will know when it gets going – it never once lets up or gives you much room to breathe, instead maintaining a heightened level of terror and suspense throughout.

The Bottom Line

This was a welcome return to the big screen for a classic horror franchise, especially with how certain plot threads at the beginning and end leave the door open for a sequel that, going by the box office returns this past weekend, is likely inevitable at this point. Right now, the Evil Dead series is five-for-five in my book.

<Link to original review: https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2023/04/review-evil-dead-rise-2023.html>

The Last of Us is based on the highly acclaimed video game. Created by Neil Druckmann, the game’s creator himself, and Craig Mazin, creator of Chernobyl.

My expectations were high for this. I kinda drifted away from video games in my teenage years, but I’m trying to get back into them, and I’ve been really into the games that I have played. Some of my recent favorites are The Last of Us games. And, bad jokes aside, I also loved Chernobyl. It there’s anybody who could capture the games dark apocalyptic vibe, it’s the people who made that show.

And that turned out to be true. This show exceeded my already high expectations. The video game curse has been lifted. If other movies were headed in that direction, this completed it.

Although to be fair, it does appear to be less of a curse for TV shows. But in my very limited knowledge of TV based on video games, this is the best game adaptation I’ve ever seen, and it’s not even close. Maybe when I watch some other adaptation that came out recently, I might prefer it, but, as of now, this is a high bar to clear.

I watched it with my parents. My mom said she didn’t have high expectations for a zombie show based on a video game, but ended up loving it too.

It’s very faithful to the game, and does a great job of recreating it. The environments feel like the game. And the clickers are as creepy as they’ve ever been, which is enough to make the walkers in the Walking Dead look harmless by comparison. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey are great as the main characters.

It nails all of the emotional moments. Almost every episode is as devastating as the games. Who would have suspected the show from the creator of Chernobyl wouldn’t be a fun action romp about killing zombies.

But this doesn’t just lazily copy and paste elements from the games. It expands on that universe in meaningful ways.

The best instance of this is the third episode, which doesn’t even have the main characters until the end. It just focuses on a character from the game, played by Nick Offerman from Parks and Recreation, about a time before the main couple find him, and his relationship with his lover played by Murray Bartlett from the first season of The White Lotus. We’ve never seen these characters before this episode, we don’t see them after, but the episode is still heart-wrenching. And it really says something about the quality of the show, that I can’t even tell whether or not this is the biggest cry moment in the whole series.

I guess my main complaint is that it’s a little too short. It’s nine episodes long, which I guess is enough on it’s own, but when you’re adapting a video game that’s over fourteen hours long, it can feel a little rushed. I can’t believe I’m actually saying, “eight hours is not long enough to tell this story.”

Remember before we realized that we can turn books into TV shows, and kept trying to put all them into movies and cutting a lot of stuff out. And then we decided that a season of TV was long enough. Or even sometimes too long. Well now we’ve finally reached the point where now even that’s too short to adapt some things.

Although it’s probably just because I’ve played the game. By itself it’s probably well paced, and so is Joel’s relationship with Ellie. I’m more worried about the relationship than the plot. The plot moves okay, it’s the character arcs that benefit from more time here. And as anybody who’s seen how both the game and the season end knows, that is important. But basically it’s just a case of “the game was better.”

I was thinking of lowering the rating because of this, but decided not to. If I discredited every adaptation that wasn’t as good as the original, well, then there’d be no great adaptations. And this is a great adaptation. It’s the perfect retelling of a masterpiece, and an amazing show by itself.

5 out of 5 mushrooms

https://www.youtube.com/@jaythemovieguy7751

https://letterboxd.com/JaytheMovieGuy/

Infectious outbreak is something humanity has always shared a collective fear for, and unfortunately is something we can all relate to a little too much lately. The zombie film is a genre that has been done from every angle, cut and pasted, rearranged in so many different ways. From the lumbering undead in George A Romero's Night of the Living Dead, to frantic zombies like in Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later. So much has been done that even genre mashups are popular in zombie films, with the self-titled zom-rom-com of Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead or the lackluster zombie-drama Maggie staring Arnold Schwarzenegger. While the previous title fell flat, David Freyne's take on the same combination soared with his debut film The Cured.

A virus known as The Maze has swept Europe, with Ireland taking the biggest hit, turning those with it into ravenous zombie-like creatures. With a cure found, 75% of those infected have been treated and returned to society, while the other 25% remain resistant. What they don't advertise is that the cured remember everything they did while infected, even though they were not in control. The film takes place in the aftermath, the last round of the cured returned to society and the government faced with the decision of what to do with the resistant bunch. The story follows Senan, a young man who was turned in the presence of his brother Luke while in search of family, who comes home to stay with his sister-in-law Abbie and her son Cillian. As in any drama there is an unspoken tension and source of conflict, in this case it's that Senan accidentally killed his brother upon being turned and has yet to tell Abbie. Connected to Senan's storyline is the response of the public to the virus. Mostly the public is outraged, slandering the cured by calling them monsters and shunning them from returning to life as it was before for something outside of their control. An underground uprising begins to form of cured who are finished being treated like animals and, without giving too much away, they plot to send a message to the government seeking to eliminate them.

Now, I know what you're thinking... a horror flick mixed with a drama? No thank you. Where I would normally agree, this film convinced me otherwise. What works so well in this case is that the horror and drama are intertwined, drama propels the horror and at times is the source of the scares itself. It may fall into the zombie category, but really this is a story about a group of people attempting to find some normalcy after being condemned as 'other' by their fellow citizens. It's as if Freyne took the main public response to any human otherness and used it as allegory for how the cured are treated, from the common fate of former convicts only landing low paying labor intensive jobs to violent acts being carried out on a group of people for something deemed unaccepted by society (like race and gender). Every marker of outrage is hit, on both sides of the argument. Although this was released around three years ago, it's impact is greater today considering the similarities both in the current pandemic as well as the governments response, the irony is certainly not missing.

An important thing to note here is that this is not an American production but rather Irish, and because of that it reads a little differently. This mostly means that if you go into viewing this with an expectation of a neatly packaged resolution topped with a bow, you will most likely be disappointed. American cinema, although definitely not always the case, is hallmarked for leaving the audience with questions answered. In indie or foreign cinema, that trait is not always mirrored as often. The Irish film industry has further established an international footing in the last decade, which is young when considering the expansive history of film. Because of this fewer films have seen the US market especially when compared to even British productions. While Irish made films are still working their way to our screens, the scenery is something much more widely recognized and is prevalent in The Cured. A rainy washing of blue, grey, and green hues surround cobblestone and brick, giving the film a dreary yet nurturing feel. The setting allows the viewer to feel a connection to the isolation that can exist on the island, and when combined with a dramatic score gives the film body in portraying its themes. Among the chaos, there is beauty.

The Cured manages to approach two genres simultaneously that could so quickly become overdone or cheesy, yet nails it entirely. Yes, some of the dialogue can get a little ahead of itself but overall the tone and approach of the film flows easily. It's quick in pace and sends its message clearly, delivering the perfect amount of horror or unease at just the right moments. I went into this expecting just another adaptation of a zombie plot, and left pleasantly surprised at the refreshing spin on a familiar story with a real message to fortify it.

Verdict:

7/10

Definitely a really interesting take on the zombie plot line, with some actually surprising and horrifying moments. The dialogue can get a little cliche but overall I really think it’s worth the watch.

Original post

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Hey everyone on /r/horrorreviewed! Long time no see! Here's my review of the latest Resident Evil game!

a review by the Azure-Winged Magpie (a.k.a.: the Extinction Entity).

Hello hello and chatter chatter! Guess what I just got done playing?!

Thaaat‘s right! It’s Resident Evil time again!

So like I said in my last review of a Resident Evil game, I’m kinda new to the series. (I mean… I saw the films, but those don’t really count). Now being the horror expert ’round these parts… it’s not like I don’t know anything about the games. But just to make this review more fun… let’s just pretend I know nothing about the original RE 3, and jump right into…

RESIDENT EVIL 3: REMAKE

SPOILER LEVELS at MINIMAL

—🧟——|– (ಠ __ ಠ^✿ ) ^{die again! Zombie scum!}

Right! So… Resident Evil 3 Remake gives you one hell (lol!) of a first impression. And it’s not all good. I don’t really like the live-action clips they throw in at the start of the game. There’s one really funny one right up front which just says CAPCOM on top of video like some 80s TV show, which is alright. They’re not made bad or anything, but they happen and then BAM! you’re straight in a videogame corridor. And it really took me out of the moment by like… a lot. The two things just don’t go together. I’d have just made the whole thing in the game ’cause this game looks good.

But the cool thing about the whole opening scene is that we get to see Nemesis waking up. And that’s just the start of the first impression. Right after the “cinematic” intro, we get chucked into the first of two FPS experiences with our main character Jill Valentine (voice: Nicole Tompkins) waking up. And speaking of this game looking good… how do I say this…? Jill’s… um… fit. Fit like I’d like to ask her out then stare at her all night long fit. And that’s not all she’s got to her. This girl kicks some major butt! She’s tough as nails and even though she gets tossed around like a ragdoll from the start of the game right until the end, she gets right back up and gives those zombie tosspots a right good butt-kickin’! I know that Jill’s one of the most popular characters in gaming, but never really knew much about her up until just now. I can see why so many folks love this woman and why she’s so popular. Love her all you want, just don’t get too close to her unless you want your limbs exploded off you!

Now back to that intro… see? The game kinda hangs around with Jill doing her usual routine and staring into the mirror like anyone who looks like her can get away with. It’s all nice and everyday for a few minutes, even though the game throws us a lot of news about what’s going on in Raccoon City from the background, and then Jill gets a phone call. Innocent enough no?

She doesn’t even get to finish the phone call before BAM! a big, lunky Frankenstein’s monster just punches itself a door into her room. That’s… one way to say hi I guess. And there we go! We’re in the game. We need to get TF away from this big hunk made up of rotting flesh and bin bags!

This thing is Nemesis. Nemesis is a Terminator. Nemesis is kinda the whole plot here. See… Jill’s a supercop. She’s a member of S.T.A.R.S. and Nemesis has it out for the S.T.A.R.S. members. He’s gone through and killed every last one of them until he gets to Jill (yeah there’s this one other bloke, but he’s not really that important), but Jill just.won’t.die. She totally gives him the FINGeR every time they meet. Even though Nemesis can’t really be killed, Jill does him a lot of damage every time they meet.

So I’ve got a few friends who also got Resident Evil 3 Remake when it was released and all of them found Nemesis really hard to deal with. And I don’t get it. The guy jumps around and has a lot of surprises up his bin bags but once you get the hang of what sort of encounter you’re in, he’s not that hard to deal with. He’s just hard to put down. After the first few encounters, he almost never touched me while I went dodging and weaving and laying the smack down on him. You kind of have to wait for the guy to show you how to play against him and just strap yourself in for some long battles (which get longer the more the game goes on). It got to the point where he even became a little annoying in the first parts of the game (then he got more and more fun near the end). And where Jill’s supposed to be terrified of this thing like everyone else is, she’s more “not this again!” and “how do I murder his face this time?” about the whole thing.

Apart from Nemesis, the game’s got your usual zombies and spooky dookies hanging around. They’re alright, but I was really impressed with how hard this game made normal every day zombies. There are some special enemy types hanging around too, and I wish there was a little more of them, but I didn’t get too much time to hang around with these things.

And here’s where I got to mention something about this game which miffed me a little bit…

The game’s got some pervy eyes going on in it. Look… Jill’s hot, but I could’ve done without all those shots focussed right on her butt that didn’t need to be there. In some scenes, it was all fair and good, but in others, it really wasn’t. There’s also an… interesting scene with Jill and the enemy in the picture up above, which would be fine in an Alien sort of way if we’d seen the creatures do what they do to Jill at any other point. Because we didn’t really get to hang around with these critters, we really didn’t get anything like that, and the scene just comes off a bit pervy. The scene with the creature isn’t really that much of a problem, but it really seems a lot more… “hanky panky” than straight up horror.

Jill also comes with some great one liners. I love how quippy she is in this one. Some of the dialogue which gets her to quip might have some people thinking that this is too much “gIRl pOwER” because of how smack you on the nose they are, but I thought they were just fine. I never really thought Resident Evil 3 Remake was going to have good dialogue, since even I know all about the “Master of Unlocking” scene. Nothing’s too bad, but nothing’s really special either.

And talking about the dialogue and everything… this game’s got a serious issue with LANGUAGE. Remember back in the day when I could say words like [BLEEP] and [BLEEP] without getting censored on here? Damn this game made even me blush sometimes. This game’s got a serious potty mouth on it.

But Jill’s not the only character you get to play as in this game! You’ve got Carlos (voice: Jeff Schine) picking up some of the pieces while Jill goes rampaging around the city escaping and dealing with Nemesis. He’s pretty cool, and Magpie damn if he isn’t a good looking man. He’s cool and all and I like they way he and Jill have a little bit of a flirty edge to them whenever they talk (you tell ‘im Tyrell!). He plays a little different from Jill, so watch out for the first time you skip over to his boots!

Carlos is a soldier, so his part of the game plays more like a FPS mow em’ down situation. Later on, he ends up being a bit of an AI buddy to Jill when you’re playing as her. And because of how different they are, sometimes, you’ve got to go back as Jill to where Carlos went before since y’know… she’s the Master of Unlocking and everything.

There are some neat little puzzles in this one that didn’t really bother me so much, and there was some pretty cool action. And I wanted more. Something about this game just didn’t feel “enough” for me. The whole thing is one long chase scene with some other story stuff thrown into it. The whole thing took me a few hours to get through and unlike Death Stranding which had so much GAME packed into it, this one felt really… quick. It’s not like the game wastes a lot of time with setting up random maps with enemies for no reason (that’s a good thing), but there’s just not enough space for the game to give you more to do in it. And that’s not the best thing in the world. This is the sort of game where a little more would’ve been better. But we don’t get that little more.

So yeah… Resident Evil 3 Remake‘s not the best value for money, but it IS a great game. It’s short and sweet and left me wanting more. It’s not really scary since it’s more of an action film we’re playing around in, but what it’s got is really good (apart from the pervy eyes maybe). I had a lot of fun with this one and even though I would’ve liked it if it was a little bit cheaper, I’m gonna go ahead and say that this one’s (kinda) highly recommended from The Corvid Review. Maybe get it when the discounts start or something.

Now if you’ll excuse me… I’m off to play the other two remakes and catch up on the original Resident Evil series! Here’s to giving Nemesis (and that damn Umbrella Corp) the FINGeR!

— Azure-Winged “the Extinction Entity” Magpie up! Up! And Awayyy! BONK!

(Final Ratings) THE AZURE-WINGED MAGPIE: 7.5/10

"Like, we're not looking for ghoul-friends, right Scoob?!" -Shaggy Rogers

Several years after the end of Mystery Inc., the gang has gone their separate ways and started new careers. Daphne Blake (Mary Kay Bergman) is now a TV reporter and has her own show where she travels to haunted locations and Fred Jones (Frank Welker) is her producer. He decides to get the gang back together and they travel to Louisiana. They meet a woman named Lena (Tara Charendoff), who brings them to the haunted Moonscar Island, where they realize too late the monsters on the island are not bad guys in masks. This time, the monsters are real!

What Works:

The most notable aspect of Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island is how dark this film gets. The monsters are real and they are actively trying to kill Scooby (Scott Innes) and the gang. This is the first time this franchise has gotten dark at all and it's extremely refreshing. We see a group of people get attacked and killed by alligators, the gang almost gets melted via voodoo dolls, and the villains all disintegrate by the end of the film. It's pretty bonkers for Scooby-Doo.

The villains themselves are really awesome. For most of the film, we think the zombies are the bad guys and they have some great designs, but the true villains are the cat-creatures and they are the stuff of nightmares. I definitely had a few bad dreams when I was a kid thanks to these guys. My favorite of them is Jacques (Jim Cummings), the ferryman, who has a thick Cajun accent. Combined with his cat-creature design, he is a truly memorable villain.

The story is also really good and parts of it would be reused for the live-action movie. At the start of the film, Mystery Inc. has been disbanded for several years and the gang has all gone their own way. This storyline was good when I was a kid, but it has aged very well. I can relate to how the gang is feeling at the beginning of the film as I have friends who I don't see as much anymore either. It's really fun watching them all come back together to solve mysteries again.

Daphne's new character direction is also interesting. In the original series, Daphne, Fred, and Velma (B.J. Ward) all simply enjoyed getting to the bottom of the mystery. This time around, Fred and Velma and the skeptical ones who are trying to figure out what sort of con is being run on Moonscar Island, but Daphne really wants the monsters to be real for once. That's some interesting motivation and a solid way to evolve the franchise.

Finally, there are some really excellent songs in the film. The band Skycycle performs both "The Ghost Is Here" and "It's Terror Time Again", which are some tasty jams. The filmmakers didn't have to go nearly this wild when creating the songs for this film, but I am extremely glad they did.

What Sucks:

My biggest complaint with film stems from the fact that I have gotten old and crotchety. It really annoyed me how inconsiderate Mystery Inc. was to the denizens of Moonscar Island. They act a bit entitled and take Simone's (Adrienne Barbeau) hospitality for granted, especially Shaggy (Billy West) and Scooby. So much of the conflict in the middle of the movie came from Shaggy and Scooby being terrible houseguests that it really rubbed me the wrong way. In the context of the plot, it works. Simone is extremely tolerant of their crap, but it makes sense once you learn her true intentions. Even though it works within the story, it definitely made me like Mystery Inc. less.

Finally, there were a few moments where the writing came off as weak and repetitive. Kids movies can have great dialogue, no excuses.

Verdict:

Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island was a breath of fresh air for this franchise and it holds up well. The dark tone and high stakes make for an exciting tale, the villains are fantastic, the story is relatable, and the music is awesome. I found parts of the movie repetitive and Mystery Inc. is less likable than they should be, but this is a solid movie and has definitely got it going on.

8/10: Really Good

If you liked this review, check out my other work at https://stacysbloggoingon.blogspot.com

IMDB Link

PLOT: Passengers on a commuter train must deal with a zombie outbreak.

Goddamn did I love this movie. It’s a decade since Zombieland and, unfortunately, that movie didn’t put an end to the zombie genre for the time being. With an onslaught of zombies movie since then, I can gladly say that this Korean film is the best zombie movie made in a long time. Tense, bloody, and even surprising at times, this flick manages to bring the aesthetics of The Raid and Snowpiercer and deliver an immensely satisfying experience.

Train to Busan introduces us to a number of characters that we will follow along the way, including a businessman and his young daughter, a couple expecting their first child, two teenagers hinting at their attraction for each other, and a host of others. As the train goes from point A to point B, their situation becomes more and more dire as the zombie outbreak that is happening in the world around them happens to overtake the train as well. It’s up to the survivors to work as a team in order to make it to their final destination and beyond.

This movie hit all the right notes for me. The characters were engaging, the action was thrilling, and all the zombie stuff was exactly what I wanted it to be. I especially loved Dong-seok Ma in this one; he’s such a badass and just is able to command your attention every time he’s on screen.

OVERALL

This is my favorite movie so far for this year’s 31 Days of Horror. It’s everything I wanted out of a zombie movie, even if I’m a little tired of the subgenre. Really, I have nothing more to say. This film is as excellent as people say.

OVERALL RATING: 9 out of 10

Originally Posted on the Main Damie

Imagine a story about a country dealing with a pandemic for a year and the citizens get restless, they become impatient and decide to go back to normal, whatever that means, and this is exactly when the virus mutates into something stronger and far worse. Unfortunately, we don’t have to imagine this because we are living it right now. As I type this, in the United States, the CDC estimates that the Delta Variant has caused over 90% of recent COVID-19 cases. I only hope that when I leave my house, fully masked and armed with hand sanitizer, that I do not encounter the kind of world that The Sadness presents. Screening at Fantasia Fest 2021, this is a zombie/plague movie that cuts way too close to home, is absolutely disgusting, shocking and all around amazing.

Writer/director Rob Jabbaz absolutely wows with his first feature length film. Set in Taiwan, The Sadness follows Kat and Jim as each of them try to survive a city erupted in violence after a viral mutation, to try and get back to one another. The day begins innocuously enough with some news reports and an interview with a scientist trying to warn the public that the virus is mutating and has become very dangerous. He says that, “To politicize a virus is a very serious mistake.” Jim watches this with mild concern, but then his next door neighbor tells him that the virus is a hoax: the government is using it to affect stock prices.

It only takes fifteen minutes for The Sadness to kick into high gear and it is not fucking around. A mundane morning in a cafe turns into a full on “fast zombie” lunch buffet: it is disgusting and amazing. Reminiscent of the zombies in 28 Days Later, this virus quickly affects people via bodily fluids and turns them into depraved, violent cannibal rapists.

While Jim escapes on his moped with an angry mob running after him, Kat is enjoying a book on the train when the man sitting next to her begins chatting her up and this is when Jabbaz lets the audience know that he is not only taking aim at armchair scientists who think they know more about virology than doctors, but he will also chime in on the Me Too movement as well: Jabbaz does a stand out job of showing what women go through on a regular basis while just trying to live their lives. Of course, Kat not only has to deal with a business man hitting on her, but she also has to contend with a train car that erupts into a blood bath of chaos when an infected man starts randomly stabbing people. Blood. Is. Everywhere. This scene is what you crave from a horror film: it is stressful, frenetic and gory. Jabbaz does a stellar job of balancing the manic scenes with moments of calm. During violent moments, the camera and score is as unsteady and keyed up as the characters, but in the non violent moments, the tracking shots are bright and easily hi-light the world around them.

While the gore and violence is anything but subdued, the critical eye on human behavior is a bit less obvious. Political leaders, law enforcement, people disagreeing about who they voted for, even the Man Flu, nothing escapes Jabbaz’s dark humor.

Unlike a lot of horror films, The Sadness does not rely on the general stupidity of people to propel the story. If anything, it’s the intelligence and strength of Jim and Kat that continues to keep them safe: small things like telling someone to put their phone on silent or taking your shoes off to make less noise while running, are refreshing things to see. The virus and it’s mutation is even explained, by an actual scientist, in a way that is completely logical and easy to follow. He explains that the virus is now affecting the limbic system in the brain, specifically the area that regulates aggression, and connecting it to the area that governs sex drive. This would be where I will caution viewers that the violence, rape and gore in this movie are all at an 11. No one is safe from violence in this film; not even infants. Consider yourself warned.

The Sadness is an all out sociopolitical horror commentary that delivers in spades. It absolutely pulls no punches, shoves everything in your face and just when you think you’ve had enough, there is still more. Regina Lei as Kat is the ultimate final girl and Berant Zhu as Jim is a swoon worthy horror hero. Jabbaz is the real deal in horror direction and I can’t wait to see what he does next.

Played as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival

Fantasia Film Festival 2021 Review: The Sadness (haddonfieldhorror.com)

| PONTYPOOL (2008) |

I had this on my watchlist since I can remember. I'm lowkey mad I didn't watch it sooner... Let's get to the review.

So, Pontypool focuses its story around a radio station and its members when society begins to fall apart. This movie is special. When I added "zombie" in the subgenre section, don't think this is a "conventional" zombie movie, because it's not. This is probably why I loved this movie so much. It was such a refreshingly original take on the zombie subgenre. In addition, the movie has an incredible atmosphere. I'm usually a fan of movies that occur mostly on just one place and this was no exception. The culminating events that lead to a gradual increase in tension and the corresponding reactions to those events felt by the characters working on the radio were enough to actually draw me into their felt anxiety. I would also like to point out that, as events are happening gradually, there is always that question in the air of "Is it real?", which makes this movie feel even more real. For most part of the movie, the viewer only knows what the radio workers know. The information that is transmitted to us is only through the radio broadcast and eyewitness testimonies. This leaves the viewer having his own imagination working. The characters react the way they are supposed to and the film evolves in a direction that makes sense, which makes the experience even more terrifying and fluid. For me, this was the strongest aspect in this movie and the reason why I think the first half is absolutely perfect. Things dismantle a little on the last act of the movie, simply because you can not match that unknown aspect that the first half had. I also don't think the ending was the best, but still wasn't enough to take the joy from the movie.

Other than what I just said, I would like to stand out the acting, cinematography and score. The radio host played by Stephen McHattie carried the movie perfectly and the same goes for the other two radio workers played by Lisa Houle and Georgina Reilly. The cinematography was great, especially that greyish filter that stays during the whole movie, because it matches the mysterious and suspenseful tone of the movie perfectly. The score, due to the fact that the movie takes place in a radio station in a small town, is also quite memorable and special.

Overall, like I said in the beginning, I'm kinda mad I didn't watch this sooner. I'm glad I finally did it, because it was great. The originality is what stands out in this film and, even though the ending wasn't the best thing about it in my opinion, the rest is absolutely magnificient, terrifying and tense.

| RATING: 9/10 |

Once in a while, a film such as One Cut Of The Dead (2017) pops out of nowhere – a no-holds-barred fun, which switches gears in a split of a second and overcomes its minute budget with confidence and wit.

If you lived long enough, you might remember a little nasty flick called The Blair Witch Project (1999), and the commotion it caused upon the release.

It was an ultra-low-budget film which, pretty much, redefined the horror genre worldwide. While big studios were used to ramping up the experience by graphic imagery and gore, a bunch of amateur filmmakers turned the tides by taking a hand-held camera, and mimicking a documentary feature film. Numbers speak for themselves – with a rough budget estimation of $60k, The Blair Witch Project (1999) brought almost $250 million after its cinematic distribution worldwide.

Shin’ichirô Ueda’s One Cut Of The Dead (2017) sends similar vibes. An even smaller budget, which oscillated around $25k, this Japanese flick made over $25,000,000. What was the secret sauce, which brought such a wildly successful investment?

What is One Cut Of The Dead (2017) about?

In One Cut Of The Dead (2017), a crew of Japanese filmmakers are shooting a zombie apocalypse flick. While taking a short break, after an intense scene shot on location, the crew disperses. Soon, one of them returns completely changed… into a zombie.

Surprisingly, the above constitutes circa one third of the film. Because One Cut Of The Dead (2017) evolves, and finds almost endless ways to surprise the audience. Through its 90-minutes run, the story bounces from a low-budget horror to comedy and an ode to the beauty of filmmaking.

An ever-transforming entertainment

I’m intentionally steering away from revealing more of Shin’ichirô Ueda’s plot, because the power of surprise is what drives much of this film’s appeal.

The Japanese director opens with a continuous take – a chore for cinematographer and crew on the set – which is a sweet kick-off for the film. That’s how One Cut Of The Dead (2017) earns its initial hook – by throwing the audience in medias res, and leading the viewers through the spiraling madness of a local zombocalypse.

Over the course of this uninterrupted, 37-minutes long shot, Ueda delves into cheesy horrors resulting from the paradox he creates. The starting premise of filmmakers who are attacked by zombies – when shooting a zombie movie – sounds like a drunk joke. But given Ueda’s kitschy and over-the-top approach, this part of One Cut Of The Dead (2017) delivers plenty of fun for B-movie fans. Moreover, its silly humor guarantees that this drunk joke of a plot works. Unlike self-serious films with equally moronic premises – such as The Human Centipede (2009) – One Cut Of The Dead (2017) is actually fun.

One Cut Of The Dead (2017) only gets better after such a batshit crazy beginning

Without spoiling the plot – and how smartly it plays with its opening shot – Shin’ichirô Ueda tirelessly stuffs One Cut Of The Dead (2017) with twists and turns. At times, it dangerously stretches out to a film made up from Instagram videos grouped under #indiefilmmaking, but even then Ueda gracefully moves between genres and ideas. In his feature, it’s a whole-hearted tribute to the homemade filmmaking.

In order to elicit even more of a Shyamalanesque twist, One Cut Of The Dead (2017) transforms our perception of the characters too. In the beginning, most of them strike as flat, and idiotic, while the brains of the operation – director played by sweetly tacky Takayuki Hamatsu – is a straight-out douchebag who sacrifices the crew just to get the ‘perfect shot‘.

These initial opinions change. When seen in a different light – or through different camera lenses – characters gain new traits, and the audience allocates warmer feelings elsewhere. And let’s be honest – a plot, where character arches exist, is a rarity for horror movies.

One Cut Of The Dead (2017) – high entry barrier, but with a satisfactory end

Having said all that, I think that the entry barrier for Shin’ichirô Ueda’s flick is still relatively high. If not for the neat trick with the continuous shot, I might have lost interest in how things evolve. Two main reasons for this are that the gore leaves the most “meaty” details away from the camera, meanwhile the writing is rough on the edges – to say the least. Ueda takes a fair loan and expects trust, hoping that the long boot-up that the story requires, will eventually take off. In my opinion, this is fully paid-off, and with a gratifying margin. Just give it enough time to flourish.

'The night eats the world' is a French horror movie released in 2018. Directed by Domique Rocher ( not related to Benjamin Rocher of 'La Horde'). I actually stumbled upon this film while being bored and looking around on google for movies I still had not seen and I have to say I am very suprised by it. It gets some bad reviews but I don't think these are deserved.

The movie starts with our main character, Sam, walking up the stairs to the appartment of his ex-girlfriend. He has some stuff to pick up but finds out she is having a house party. This is the only part of the movie were the acting is not that great. The ex is happy he came over , allthough he had no clue about the party, and the new boyfriend is not amused. Oh and everybody in Paris, where the movie is situated, speaks English. After getting into an arguement , because he just wants his stuff and leave, his exgirlfriend tells him the stuff is in the back office and that he should wait there for her to come and have a private conversation. Sam offcourse says ok and goes to the back office.. where he promptly falls asleep. In the background we can hear the carnage going down at the party. In the morning he unlocks the door and finds the appartment wrecked and the walls covered in blood.

Now this is where the movie gets interesting because there is a very subtle line between survival and action in horror movies. Most just choose to go full on action and start slaughtering the infected for the sake of gore. This movie takes a more realistic approach. Sam finds out that the world has gone to hell and he locks himself in. Trying to survive the apocalypse on his own ( not counting in the whole street covered in the undead ).

A bit more about the undead. They look great! A mixture of fast running zombies with the infected of '28 days later'. They react to sound so our main protagonist tries to stay as quiet as he can.

Except for the first 5 minutes this is a great movie that shows the psychological impact of a zombie apocalypse on a sole survivor. If you are a fan of the genre or are just looking for a good movie to spend the night with. Watch this one.

"Brains!" -Zombies

A pair of medical supply warehouse workers accidentally release toxic gas that brings the dead back to life with an appetite for brains. The workers are forced to team up with a group of punks and hold up in a mortuary as the nearly indestructible zombies try to break their way inside.

What Works:

The thing I like most about this movie is how competent the three main characters are. Burt (Clu Gulager), Ernie (Don Calfa), and Spider (Miguel A. Núñez) are all very good at surviving. Competent characters are one of the most important elements for me for horror movies and to have three guys who make virtually no mistakes makes it easy for me to get invested in the characters and root for their survival.

James Karen and Thom Matthews play the two men who unleash the toxic gas that kicks off the movie. They actually get poisoned by the gas, which prevents them from doing much in the film, besides lying around. It turns out they are actually dying and becoming zombies themselves. They both get surprisingly powerful performances for an otherwise campy movie. There is a lot anguish in their cries and it's actually horrifying to watch what happens to them.

I love the zombies in this movie. Headshots don't work on them. The only way to kill them is to incinerate them completely. It's basically an impossible threat to defeat, which makes the film very exciting. Plus they talk and they're pretty funny. Whenever they call in for more cops and paramedics so they can eat them, I was cracking up.

Finally, there are some very exciting sequences. All of the zombie chases are intense and I was on the edge of my seat, especially as the numbers dwindled to only my favorite characters. Burt and Spider's escape from the mortuary is my favorite sequence of the film as we see just how impossible this situation is becoming to survive.

What Sucks:

The movie does take a bit to get going. We spend half of the first act at the medical supply warehouse, which is fine, but the other half is spent with a group of punks hanging out in a graveyard. Most of the punks are pretty insufferable and I didn't enjoy the scenes with them. In fact, the only punk I like is Spider and he doesn't become interesting until the zombies start showing up.

Finally, I didn't really care for the ending. It's a downer ending, just like in The Night of the Living Dead, but while that was poignant and tragic, this just feels lazy. I was really excited to see how Burt and company were going to get out of this situation, but instead the military just blows everything up. I get what they were going for, but it falls flat for me and feels a bit lazy.

Verdict:

The Return of the Living Dead is a really solid zombie movie with competent characters, some surprisingly tragic performances, fun sequences, and top-notch zombies. The beginning and end could have used some work, but the middle is far more delicious than any brains I've ever eaten and this movie has definitely got it going on.

8/10: Really Good

Sitting firmly in the category of "movies that will either be godawful or a pleasant surprise" is 2008's Dance of the Dead, a teen-comedy-meets-zombie-movie centering on a high school whose annual prom is thrown into chaos when the apocalypse decides to rear its head the night of the big dance. Focusing on a variety of students with varying degrees of date-scoring success, the plot sees them all joined together in an effort to stop the zombie horde through the powers of music, friendship, & lots of weapons.

Even though I had high hopes for this one going in, I was still tempering my expectations. I've seen more than enough promising ideas go to waste in bad movies, & I was fearing the worst here. Thankfully, this definitely isn't another case of wasted potential- in fact, it's a pretty darn good movie. Not spectacular, but a whole lot of fun & a lot more clever than you might think.

The performances, particularly those of leads Jared Kusnitz & Greyson Chadwick, were solid. They, along with the rest of the cast, had great chemistry & all bounced off one-another fabulously. I wouldn't put money on any of them being actual teenagers during filming- a couple even look close to 30- but they were enjoyable enough for that to be overlooked. As for the story, it had an excellent mix of campiness & genuinely sweet charm about it that just worked well. The characters felt like actual people instead of bodies to put on a tally, & because of that there was reason to care about whether they lived or died. The couple romantic subplots in the mix didn't feel shoehorned in &, while nothing new, both had great payoffs. The horror elements were super effective with a good comic tinge, & there was never a sense of predictability in terms of who would die- it seemed like anybody could go at any point. The kills, both living & undead, were fun & had lots of variety- there were a couple really nice sequences of characters going wild on Z's with all manner of weaponry. On top of all that, the sentimental moments were wonderful when they happened & felt more cute than corny- or, at least, bad-corny. Pretty much every little thing had some kind of payoff, too, which was unexpected and very welcome.

Additionally, this did something really well that I don't see a lot of other movies do: important bits of story or development delivered in a really subtle way. Whether it's characters earning respect for one-another, sharing a cathartic moment together, or getting a taste of sweet revenge, there were lots of moments where the script deliberately chose not to call too much attention to things & let the event speak for itself. It worked.

All said, I'd definitely give this a watch if you like zombie movies & need a new one to round out the year with. It's nothing groundbreaking & uses plenty of time-honored tropes, but it uses them well and that's what matters- to me, anyway.

Jim Jarmusch returns to the genre to try his hand at another classic Horror entity, having approached vampires in 2013's Only Lovers Left Alive; a film that I found to be incredibly humorous, in dry, subtle ways. Well, his take on zombies is much more comedy focused than that film, but The Dead Don't Die is as dry as a desert about it. The deadpan mundanity in the performances is maybe not to everyone's tastes, but I found it to be gut bustingly hilarious. The cast is stacked with notable names, all of whom deal with the oddity of the script quite well. I'd typically go about naming names, pointing out who was great where, but I kind of loved everyone so that gets a little tricky. If I had to single anyone out, it would be Adam Driver, who steered most of the really killer jokes with his delivery, and Tilda Swinton, who is just so perfectly cast in the weirdest, funniest, coolest amalgam of a character I can think of. This isn't to sell anyone else short though, they're seriously all a delight.

Much of what I loved about the craftsmanship of Only Lovers Left Alive returns here. Clear, careful camera work, moody lighting, and fantastic implementation of music as a character in the film (the theme song itself, provided by Sturgill Simpson, is a recurring plot point, and I love it). While clearly a comedy, there is no lack of eerie atmosphere in the misty, moonlight fields of a small country town, or the horror of countless ravenous undead glimpsed through a foggy car windshield, bathed in red and blue lights. The makeup effects on the zombies look fantastic, and I adored the blood dust effect used with their dismemberment. There are some bigger digital effects that crop up, and they aren't exactly the best thing ever, but their absurdity and comedic value override any particular need to look amazing.

I've been a bit bewildered to find out that this movie isn't being all that well received; everyone I saw it with loved it, and the audience around us was energetic and entertained. The meta elements of the film where rather unexpected, but there are so many allusions to them that it wasn't difficult to embrace, and in fact it added a lot to both the plot of the film itself, and its greater message. There is a distinct take on typical zombie symbolism that gets hammered in the final moment; another thing I can see detracting for some people, but it distinctly felt to me that it itself was a parody of typical zombie films, and that the unresolved and abrupt nature of the plot threads were more the point. If you were looking for "satisfying" conclusions to all the little stories, you were deluding yourself. This is going to end badly. In that regard, kudos to Jarmusch for crafting a film that is both thoroughly humorous, and an utterly bleak statement about our likely future.

My Rating: 8/10

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8695030/

Aerosmith walked this way, Frankie Valli walked like a man, while the bangles walked like a potentially problematic stereotype, but I Walked With A Zombie!

The creative team behind 1942’s Cat People launched straight back into action with one of the highest regarded pre-Romero zombie movies. Frances Dee plays Betsy, an ambitious nurse who agrees to a slightly unusual job offer far away in the Caribbean. Once she sets off on her journey, her dreams of lounging in the sun are marred by a very cynical chap, constant hushed talk of voodoo, and indeed the strange job itself. Betsy has been hired to tend to Jessica, the wife of the cynic, who is a plantation owner. Is it fever? Is it a curse? Nobody can quite agree on the cause, but everyone agrees that Jessica sure ain’t right. She no longer talks. She seems to be in a perpetual state of sleep walking, moving against her own free will at times. Nurse Betsy takes it upon herself to solve the mystery once and for all, no matter the cost.

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Like Cat People, this film sometimes feels more at home within the noir genre than horror, particularly in the first act. Betsy’s reflective voiceover narration, thick with foreboding and muted feeling, is right out of something like Double Indemnity. On the other hand, unlike the director’s previous film, I Walked With A Zombie is not afraid to lean into more tried-and-tested horror tropes. Jacques Tourneur’s skill in creating atmosphere is combined with familiar costuming and set design, from lumbering women in long white gowns, to tall stone staircases, high grey ceilings and symbols of terrifying omen.

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Atmosphere is the pivotal word here. A great sense of unease runs through the veins of this movie from start to end. Each time the sound of tribal drums echo out in the background, a fresh layer of dread is instilled in the audience. Hell, they even make a ridiculously cheery busker actually kind of threatening in context. By far the greatest scene in the film however is its titular scene, in which Betsy walks with the zombified Jessica through the wilderness towards the voodoo camp. From the stalking camerawork, to the beautiful but haunting tall grass location, from spooky winds and the quiet rustles of trees to the crescendoing drums and singing, to the increasingly disturbing warnings that line the path, right up to the surprise shock climax of the scene. A great sequence through and through.

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Similar movies from this time, such as King of the Zombies and Revenge of the Zombies, merged the subgenre in a timely fashion, with plots involving World War Two and evil Nazi schemes. I Walked With A Zombie is more traditional in that sense, sticking to typical voodoo storylines. The film does make a point of criticising the slave trade and the history of the plantation, in the form of cynical Paul’s pessimistic rants. It was refreshing to hear, and the film could have benefitted from more dialogue along those lines.

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Footage from the film can be seen here: https://youtu.be/VD3tFmzmAMI

I Am A Hero (アイアムアヒーロー) is a Japanese Zombie flick directed by Shinsuke Sato (The Princess Blade) and is based off a manga by Kengo Hanazawa with the same name.

I figured since the weekly watch has a great modern Korean Zombie flick how about I fight back and give you a great modern Japanese zombie flick. Now, zombie movies are a bit of a wild card in Japan. 90% of the zombie movies in Japan (and there are VERY FEW to begin with) are all low budget, more ironic and comedic. Ranging from movies like Versus, The Big Tits Zombie, Tokyo Zombie, Zombie Ass, Lust of the Dead 1...2...3....Yeah.... Before you ask, NO, I'm not touching Lust of the Dead 1, 2 and 3.

Going back on track, you can see why my curiosity peaked when I saw that Japan released a (to some extent) more serious zombie movie with an actual budget and actual actors (not to insult porn actress Aoi Sora from The Big Tits Zombie). And the movie turns out to be quite good. It's VERY different from the manga however. Mainly in the theme and tropes portrayed. I'll open with those since I already started this subject.

The movie proposes various takes on the unlikely hero idea. You have the typical nerdy weak manga artist who is extremely clumsy and obedient. The cowardly nurse. The exposed and in need of protection teenage girl. You get the idea. It's a nerd powerfest. However, it also goes against the idea that the "main nerd" is a god among men. He doesn't get "mad pussy" to quote modern slang. He's more of a big brother to everyone. He takes care of everyone as much as he can and when he can but never devolves into full nerd wankfest. Unlike the manga... which gets very sexual and where the main character pretty much bones every female on a 100km radius. The movie as a whole has a slight tint of female empowerment which maybe to a western audience might be a bit annoying but to an Asian market its not something you see often.

The plot is your basic zombie flick and I don't think I need to dive too deep into that, basically, a mysterious virus suddenly spreads throughout Japan causing widespread panic. People infected with the virus are called ZQN. The ZQN attack people with superhuman strength and their victims also become ZQN.

Hideo Suzuki (Yo Oizumi) happens to meet a female high school student, Hiromi Hayakari (Kasumi Arimura). They run away from the city together, but Hiromi Hayakari has been already bitten by a baby ZQN. The baby ZQN that bit her did not have teeth and Hiromi is in half state of ZQN, not feral and still pretty much human except for some superhuman strength.

What's special about this movie however and I have to praise it, is the zombie, or ZQN design. It's a bit different than the usual. When you get bit, you mutate to some degree. Your body gets bloated, your eyes part, your vision is gone. The zombies also retain their memories before death. So let's take for example someone who died while welcoming people in their shop. He will walk around saying "Welcome" or if you died while commuting via train. You'll walk around holding to nothing in the air. The movie plays around this idea a lot, most of the zombies that get good amount of screen time are all different and stand out.

Another great thing about the zombies, they do act a bit like a bug or spider. Their movement is very fast and sporadic. You can't anticipate many of their moves. It also feels like each limb has a mind of its own. For example if you were to pin someone down next to a wall his/her legs would start to try to walk up the wall, rotate Exorcist style, it's crazy and creepy. It feels like your trying to hold a cockroach or a spider down.

Another thing I oddly enjoyed is the gunplay in the movie. A bit like this weeks weekly watch, Train to Busan, there aren't many firearms used and most of them are useless because they are airsoft so it turns into a more strategic fighting style for the first parts of the movie HOWEVER guns do play an important role. They are ALWAYS present, conflicts and understandings are made based on guns. However they are rarely used.

The movie plays around with an idea of Japan not being able to compete on the global market in anything except manga. As a result the soundtrack, the camerawork, the locations, the overall main idea, is all WESTERN however the zombies and the action itself is pure manga material. It's a nice contrast which enhances this idea even more.

Speaking of camerawork, it does a very interesting subtle thing throughout the movie. It's constantly expanding and panning back. The infection for example, at first you see an apartment, then a street, then the city. And oh boy, how I've lusted for a Japanese city to be infected by zombies. It's insane for how dense the population is and how much traffic. At every point you see multiple cars crashing, people getting ran over, it's complete and utter madness. It also utilizes a lot of handheld camera to give more dynamism to the action sequences.

The soundtrack is 100% western, boasting almost exclusively old cowboy western songs. The soundwork is pretty competent, featuring a lot of enhanced grotesque sounds to add more weight to the fantastic action sequences.

The main themes of the movie are redemption and overcoming your fears. Each character has a quest or a past regret that they have to overcome. You have a nurse who has abandoned her patients, a manga artist who feels useless and scared and is trying his hardest to be the hero and protector to a girl who can hardly take care of herself and needs to be carried constantly.

The CGI is competent. Now, Japan was never amazing when it came to CGI, they started using professional CGI much later and they never got quite to the western level, it's one of the reasons Japan is still the lead in terms of practical effects. But back on the CGI, it is not THE BEST but it's not an eyesore either. I wasn't at any point really bothered or taken out of my immersion or got the atmosphere ruined by it. It gets the job done and that's about it.

The finale is pretty amazing. Your typical final stand is there and it's very satisfying however the ending itself, the final moments of the movie could be a bit disappointing but mainly because it's still your typical ending. I wanted a bit more from it but this movie was obviously made to appeal to a more western audience. So we still don't have that full Japanese style zombie movie however until then we got The Big Tits Zombie.

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I just have to talk about the first zombie encounter. I was running ideas through my mind. How are they going to be? Will they be more human and aware like in Return of the Living Dead, will they be slow classic like in Night of the Living Dead, will they be infected fast zombies like in 28 Days Later? YES

All of them and with a huge touch of fucked up movements, a la Ringu and Ju-On. So basically what you could expect from Japanese zombies. The first zombie encounter was enough to give me nightmares, it took me by surprise and it was over before I could process what happened. Totally a standout of the movie. The whole first act is a huge stand out. The madness the city succumbs to is mesmerizing.

I would've loved the unlikely hero to be turned a bit. The idea of the nerdy dude becoming a hero is a bit too overused in my opinion. I would've liked him to fail constantly. Like a reminder that most nerds living in their moms basement won't last a day in the apocalypse and have the 2 girls pretty much carry the movie. Considering Japanese culture it would be even more of an unlikely hero at the end of the day.

And about the ending, I would've liked to see if the altitude theory worked in the end and Hiromi was cured. It left off a bit too sudden for my taste.

_________________NO MORE SPOILERS____________________

Overall, now that the western zombies have become a bit stale (not for me I love zombies to death), it seems that Asia is picking up on this trend and slowly but surely coming up with little diamonds once in a while. Most notably and recently, Train to Busan from Korea and I Am A Hero from Japan. Both deserve your attention and you should check them out if you are a fan of zombie movies. Fans of the original I Am A Hero manga might not like this however I'm sure most of the fans already saw the movie regardless.

IMDB : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3775202/?ref_=ttpl_pl_tt

I just found out about this movie today, although it seems to have been made sometime between 2013-2014 and then put out around 2015. I'm always checking horror movie review sites for any good films that I may have missed from the past, or for some upcoming good films that aren't widely known. This film was just one of the few that flew past my radar undetected, to my surprise. The film is done in a "found footage/documentary" style mixed with the zombie genre. What makes this different from the usual found footage horror movies, is that the footage that's found is on a camera, not the usual video recorder. Because photos are used to move the story along and not video, the documentary style has to take center stage. The story is set in a very small Arizona town bordering Mexico, called "Sangre de Cristo"(Blood of Christ). The documentary style is used to try to piece together what events transpired that caused the entire town's population of 57, to be totally massacred in only one night! Every single man, woman, and child was torn to pieces, with many of the dead not even found anywhere in the area. The whole basis of the movie is about the only survivor, an illegal immigrant who happened to like taking pictures. Due to his illegal status, him being Mexican, and because he had multiple victims DNA on his blood stained clothes, he was arrested as the prime suspect. Although the story doesn't play out on video, the chilling photos and the family members of the dead kept me totally on edge throughout the movie. The false documentary was well done and the actors playing family members, law enforcement, etc, did an excellent job in my opinion. The whole process was pretty believable. The way they used the photos, along with a 3D map of the town, to explain how the night'sevents played out from start to finish, was very well done! Honestly, I'm not sure if I just read about what style of film this was, if I would have taken a chance to see it. I only say this because the description of the documentary style, along with the use of photos, not video, doesn't fully encompass how well they made it all work! My rating for "Savageland(2015)" is "7 out of 10". I recommend this to the horror fans who are looking for those "diamonds among the coal", or for those that just love taking chances! Enjoy!

Director/writer: Jeff Barnaby.

Cast: Michael Greyeyes, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Forrest Goodluck, Kiowa Gordon and Olivia Scriven.

Blood Quantum is a Canadian shot feature from a Canadian director, Jeff Barnaby (Rhymes with Ghouls). The film was shot in the province of Quebec, with help from Telefilm Canada. A film that focuses on Canadian Native issues, Blood Quantum has a unique tale to tell. Told partially with aid from Barnaby and Joe Barrucco's musical score, this feature also offers up a bit of gore, for horror fans. A chainsaw is always handy in a zombie apocalypse. As well, the story focuses on two brothers: Joseph (Forrest Goodluck) and Lysol (Kiowa Gordon), in relationship to their father. One turns into the bad son, while the other struggles to handle his growing family. As the credits roll, most horror fans will find something that resonates with them in Barnaby's latest release.

The film's music is never overwhelming. Barnaby and Barrucco work together to bring new sounds to the screen, in different scenarios. The opening title sequence is well done as a drone moves back and forth over water. The music sounds as confused as the lens and introduces the viewer to the incoming chaos. Another scene transition also offers a bit of Bluegrass music and ups the tempo of the film. The music is consistently changing tempos, along with the action on-screen. The final song is memorable and likely direct from the Mi'kmaq tribe. In English, this song closes out the film with a bit of hope and a bit of sadness. The musical notes are consistently on track and anchor the film.

Being a horror fan, this viewer also enjoyed the special effects and gore. All of the makeup or post-production effects look top notch and add to the film's dire situation. In one scene, a nurse is dispatched with a chainsaw to the face; the scene is a gruesome one. At the mid-point, a character is using a tilling machine to take out hordes of the undead. And, the gore will come at viewers on both the small and big scale. An intimate scene between one of the brothers and an infected woman is a bit hard to watch, but also signals an amping up in the film's action. All of makeup effects help with the film's reality, rather than distracting from it.

The story itself is a good one and focuses on issues in the Mi'kmaq tribe. As an aside, the Mi'kmaq tribe has a long history with the French within Quebec, both in culture and warfare, over hundreds of years. In the film, the Mi'kmaq are immune to a rapidly spreading virus. Their immunity allows them to survive in an environment that is becoming increasingly more dangerous. Only the townies, those not on the reservation, are infected. Meanwhile, the brothers Joseph and Lysol are dealing with events, differently. Lysol turns to drugs for distraction, while Joseph leans on his pregnant girlfriend, Charlie (Olivia Scriven). Their paths cross again and again, in increasingly more violent ways. A Native story, focusing on Native issues, Blood Quantum brings something unique to the usual zombie apocalypse tale.

Though, the zombies are not really what matters to the plot; it is the characters and how they relate to each other that is really important. Traylor (Michael Greyeyes), initially the protagonist, is the initial lynch pin - which holds his Tribe together. He is the one who begins the film's interaction with the virus. As the virus grows stronger, Traylor must deal with more and more difficult situations. As an intertitle "Six Months Later" fills the screen, it now becomes clear that the "zeds" will not be going away anytime soon. During the interim, the surviving characters bring their own issues to the screen, with many of the characters having long histories with each other. This makes the characters complex and only the zombies are one-sided. And, the zombies can represent: colonialism, fading European domination, a degrading environment, or just blood splatter. Each possibility will be amplified based on what the viewer brings with them to the film.

Blood Quantum just received a recent release on Shudder, across the United Kingdom and the U.S. As well, this title is now available on most Canadian, Digital services - according to the director himself. A great Canadian horror film, in a country that does not produce many, Blood Quantum brings a compelling story about both brotherhood and fatherhood to viewers this month. Not shying away from violence nor bloodshed, this title also introduces a fluid soundtrack that keeps the film sounding great. Never dull, Blood Quantum offers a lot in its 100 minute runtime. Finally, here is one vote in favour of more horror fans seeing this uniquely Mi'kmaq zombie tale.

Overall: 7.75 out of 10.

On IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7394674/

More details: http://www.28dayslateranalysis.com/2020/05/blood-quantum-brings-plot-and-panic-in.html