Post by CrawlingKaos on Jul 1, 2005 19:26:38 GMT -5
Sadly, I saw this film on a Monday evening with an audience of only three other people. The movie opened at ten million dollars and a fifth place on the box office. Not bad but not great- gotta wonder what the future holds for Romero and other forthcoming dead films.
The movie opens with the old Universal logo from the 30s/40s and right when they show a small suburban town taken over by zombies, you know this is a true Romero film! There is something disquieting about the zombies walking around, having vague memories of their former lives (such as 'big daddy' pumping gas and the zombie band attempting to play their instruments).
This is the current state of the world. The zombies have taken over and the humans are holed up in city fortresses, the elite and very rich members of human society live in luxury of a high rise known as 'Fiddler's Green' (the name itself refers to some kind of seafarer's version of heaven).One of the more interesting characters is a despot named Kaufman played by Dennis Hooper who lives here.
Simon Baker plays Riley, who has created a vehicle called 'Dead Reckoning' and uses this to go out into the world, pillage and bring back supplies and such for the city. John Leguizamo plays Cholo, who is running erands for Kaufman in hopes that he will be able to live in Fiddler's Green himself. When he is denied, he steals Dead Reckoning and threatens to destroy Fiddler's Green with his arsenal of weapons unless his demands are met. So you have a fairly intriguing plotline going on even before the zombies invade the guarded city.
And then there is 'Big Daddy', who picks up a gun and leads a zombie revolt against the living.
All in all it's an entertaining movie, but ultimately I feel the evolving zombie consciousness is not handled as well as Romereo handled the same theme in 'Day of the Dead'. It all seems akward and since the zombies are roving the night together as an army, you don't get the sense that they could be anywhere and could pop up from any corner at any given time. There was no real tension to the movie at all.
Lots of good gore scenes, good and seemingly minimal cgi effects, great make-up! Lots of cool visual images like a person's hand being ripped in half, a zombie who appears headless even though his head is hanging from his spinal column, etc. I would have liked to have seen more about the inhabitants of Fiddler's Green and what it must be like for them to be living in denial of the world outside them until the dead are litterally at their doorstep. But that's not the movie that Romero made so for the most part I really enjoyed it.
There are alot of people I talked to who were disappointed that Simon Baker did not kill Big Daddy and the zombies towards the end. I think he realized that they were alot alike and decided to let them go in search of a home, just as he went north in search of a place to call his own.
The movie opens with the old Universal logo from the 30s/40s and right when they show a small suburban town taken over by zombies, you know this is a true Romero film! There is something disquieting about the zombies walking around, having vague memories of their former lives (such as 'big daddy' pumping gas and the zombie band attempting to play their instruments).
This is the current state of the world. The zombies have taken over and the humans are holed up in city fortresses, the elite and very rich members of human society live in luxury of a high rise known as 'Fiddler's Green' (the name itself refers to some kind of seafarer's version of heaven).One of the more interesting characters is a despot named Kaufman played by Dennis Hooper who lives here.
Simon Baker plays Riley, who has created a vehicle called 'Dead Reckoning' and uses this to go out into the world, pillage and bring back supplies and such for the city. John Leguizamo plays Cholo, who is running erands for Kaufman in hopes that he will be able to live in Fiddler's Green himself. When he is denied, he steals Dead Reckoning and threatens to destroy Fiddler's Green with his arsenal of weapons unless his demands are met. So you have a fairly intriguing plotline going on even before the zombies invade the guarded city.
And then there is 'Big Daddy', who picks up a gun and leads a zombie revolt against the living.
All in all it's an entertaining movie, but ultimately I feel the evolving zombie consciousness is not handled as well as Romereo handled the same theme in 'Day of the Dead'. It all seems akward and since the zombies are roving the night together as an army, you don't get the sense that they could be anywhere and could pop up from any corner at any given time. There was no real tension to the movie at all.
Lots of good gore scenes, good and seemingly minimal cgi effects, great make-up! Lots of cool visual images like a person's hand being ripped in half, a zombie who appears headless even though his head is hanging from his spinal column, etc. I would have liked to have seen more about the inhabitants of Fiddler's Green and what it must be like for them to be living in denial of the world outside them until the dead are litterally at their doorstep. But that's not the movie that Romero made so for the most part I really enjoyed it.
There are alot of people I talked to who were disappointed that Simon Baker did not kill Big Daddy and the zombies towards the end. I think he realized that they were alot alike and decided to let them go in search of a home, just as he went north in search of a place to call his own.
