Zombie Movies

Let me talk a bit about zombie movies, which in general are awesome. I recently watched the original Day of the Dead, the last of the original Dead Trilogy from George Romero, so I feel like sort of recapping the genre.

Romero really created the genre as we know it with the classic Night of the Living Dead, which holds up pretty well. It is remarkable for all these reasons according to people who place far too much significance on stupid movies, like for having an intelligent black man as the protagonist, but that is not what is really important. What is important is that it sets out some of the rules for zombies, such as that they are slow and stupid and all they want to do is eat people. Zombie movies fans seem to be obsessed with "the rules" more than fans of any other genre, and flip out if zombies are made fast or smart or anything. I think this is due to the fact that zombie movies are basically just survival fantasy, and people get bees in their bonnets when the fantastic plans they inevitable contrive for their own survival in the unlikely event of a zombie apocolypse end up being useless.

Anyway, the sequel proper to Night of the Living Dead is Dawn of the Dead, which is basically about some folks who hole up in a mall. I have to say it is the best zombie movie I've seen. It manages to have a sense of humor despite being pretty bleak. The opening sequence is also kind of surreal, being about soldiers raiding a building to kill the zombies that the people living there had allowed to survive because they didn't want to destroy the bodies. It's very weird, but shows one of the cool things about the Romero Trilogy in that you don't really see everything that is going on, but it is clear that the world is pretty messed up.

The last of the trilogy is Day of the Dead, which is pretty hard to find, as I Dead, which is pretty hard to find, as I understand it. It's absurdly dark, being about a small group of people living in a military bunker who are trying to find a cure or solution or something for the zombie plague despite thinking they are probably the only people left on earth. It's mostly about the group all hating on each other and going crazy, and there is almost no humor. It's also absurdly gory compared to other zombie movies, especially the last twenty minutes or so, when everything goes wrong. It's pretty good, though.

There's another movie in that series, but is generally not part of the trilogy, as a trilogy usually has part of the trilogy, as a trilogy usually has three parts, as I understand it. It's called Land of the Dead, and it is pretty much terrible, but at least entertaining. It features Jon Leguizamo (I am not concerned enough to look up his name) bashing up zombies to protect a city that has been built by some crazy industrialist guy, pretty much the only refuge from the zombies, but you gots to pay to get in. Kind of an interesting concept, but like I said, not really good. It is pretty obvious that stuff goes wrong and the zombies get in. Wow.

The other sequels to Night of the Living Dead are the Return of the Living Dead series, which zombie fans seem to hate due to their utter stupidity. I personally think they are awesome. They are generally low budget, and play by slightly different rules than the other Dead series. For example, in the Return of the Living Dead series, the zombies can only be killed by fire or electrocution, but in Romero's series, zombies can only be killed by destroying their brains. In the Romero series, zombies just try to eat people, but in the Return try to eat people, but in the Return series, the zombies hunger specifically for brains. Also, sometimes the zombies talk and are created by some crazy government chemical. These movies are hilarious.

There are other low budget movies, but I am not going to other low budget movies, but I am not going to look them up specifically.

I should mention the Resident Evil movies, which are generally terrible. I never really got why anyone would enjoy the games, which struck me as boring whenever I saw them, and the movies don't really do any better. They feature a super-powered main character, which is a pet peeve of mine. They have a lot of crappy cg. They spend forever talking about their stupid evil corporation villain which is uninteresting to say the least. They generally just try to be cool and fail on every level.

28 Days Later is a cool movie, even if some zombie purists claim it isn't a zombie movie because the so-called zombies aren't dead and are fast. Regardless, it is a zombie movie for all intents and purposes, and pretty effective. It's very dark and keeps you watching. It gets a little ridiculous near the end in terms of how realistic the plot is, but whatever. I'm particularly pleased with the idea that zombies would eventually starve to death, because, yeah, they would.

28 Weeks Later is an abomination. You can tell it will be terrible almost from the very beginning, and with this movie more than any other, I found myself cheering for the zombies to kill the annoying main character. Stupid incompetent zombies.

That's pretty much all there is for now. Happy Vernal Equinox.