zombies

Am currently reading Max Brooks (Mel’s son) very serious book called the “Zombie Survival Guide.” It contains fewer blatant attempts at humor than the average Army Survival Manual, and comes across like a mix of the Anarchist’s Cookbook and the serious writings of a disturbed 18 year old. Having said that, it is of course very funny, and I had never realized how dangerous zombies underwater could be until now.

Ahh, zombies. I’m almost always disappointed by the zombie movies. Night of the Comet, even Romero’s many attempts at the genre. After 28 Days Later, I kind of thought, well this is probably about the best zombie movie that’ll come along for a while, so I didn’t bother with the James Gunn penned Dawn of the Dead rebake (Though I strongly recommend Gunn’s book The Toy Collector) or even Shaun of the Dead.

Still, after reading ZSG I think I will go rent those two, and post a follow-up. Apparently the new Romero Zombie flick – Land of the Dead – seems to be taken straight out of a Max Brooks scenario which is that the Zombies have won and taken over the world.

All those awful Uwe Boll video game movies seem to be zombie films also. In fact, that may explain the resurrection of the genre. Silent Hill, Resident Evil, House of Dead – full of zombies. Kids these days have been killing zombies for years at home now.

While those films have entirely sucked, there is some hope as Mr. Hooper returns to the fight with this: http://www.aintitcoolnews.com/images/zombiesposter.jpg

And there’s a German film playing the Newport film festival right now that looks promising:
Revenge of the Teenage Zombies (Die Nacht Der Lebenden Loser). (Germany) Mathias Dinter’s horror comedy follows three hapless teens, Philip, Konrad and Weener, who experiment with voodoo and end up as zombies following a car accident. If you think that Peter Jackson hit his peak back in the Bad Taste days and you keep waiting for him to go back to directing low-budget, gross-out zombie comedies with people’s brains being eaten and all that, here’s something to tide you over in the meantime.

And that of course brings up one time zombie-master Peter Jackson, who tackled zombies in Dead-Alive (not in Bad Taste as was quoted above).

But much as I love Dead-Alive, having a zombie film be overtly funny – as with Shaun of the Dead also – it can result in a good film; but it’s not a true zombie horror film. That’s what has made the Brooks book so enjoyable – never playing it anything less than straight. Look, that thing wants to eat you, kill you, make you one of them. You had better shoot it in the head.