Not everything this month will be new, I gotta go back to some of the classics, and tonight it was Day Of the Dead. While not as beloved as Dawn of the Dead, no mall scene here folks, but I think there’s more commentary and interesting ideas here than his other films. I am going to attempt to only review 1 zombie movie this year, and this is it. I might break my rule, but I’m making it because I’m a little over o the zombie genre, even with the ideas of making the zombies a comedy, romantic, and all that other hog-wash. There is only one way to make a zombie film for the zombie purist and that’s the Romero Way.
The special effects and make-up STILL look great! Can you believe it? I’m watching this on Hulu, and I’d love to see how a blu-ray version looks.
We delve more into this idea of memories and domesticating the zombies. Bub is our first zombie hero, and Romero even gets the audience to sympathize with the undead. There’s been tons of writing about what the film is saying and I won’t go into all that here, the social commentary is pretty close to the surface.
We also have some interesting, all be it 2-dimensional characters in this film. The bad guys (ie military) are bad, but they kinda have a point, and the scientist is definitely deranged. I can see the Walking Dead coming from this world, where the zombies are just a part of the world, like the sun and moon, the seasons, but the threat and conflict is mankind. That’s what we have here in this film. We have some characters trapped in a confined space, with a timer that will go off, the bomb being the zombies getting loose.
If you haven’t seen it, go do so, it’s one of the best zombie or horror films out there. It’s classic, the make-up is still amazing and some great moments.
5 skulls.
Andres Salazar writes a horror graphic novel called Pariah Missouri, you can learn more at www.pariahmissouri.com