Zombieland

I've got no witty or insightful introduction today, so I'll just drop right to the review. Zombieland is, in one simple and catchy word, awesome. Sure, it contains runny zombies, but they feel proper zombie-esque, probably the "dead"-look that a good makeup artist can help you with. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a primarly slow zombies guy, believe me, I don't have to change my URL yet. All I'm saying is this kinda works, keeps the pace good n' strong.

In this post-apocalyptic tale of flesh eaters, we follow the nerdy zombie survivor "Columbus" who teams up with utterly badass zombicalypse cowboy "Tallahassee," and eventually ruthless swindler duo "Witchita" and "Little Rock." So yeah, they don't operate with their real names, if you couldn't tell. The characters are pretty interesting, which they have to be, considering they're the only four left, except for one, but I won't spoil it. The genre savvy Columbus does the narrating, and this does add a good bit of humor, especially given his nerdy deadpan. Said nerdy deadpan comes to shine in lines like:

Columbus: [Tallahassee] is in the asskicking business
[Cut to Tallahasse taking on zombies, chainsaws akimbo]
Tallahasse: And Business is good

I'm guessing that line is taken from somewhere else, but honestly, who can disagree to that when one is wielding dual chainsaws against the undead, the asskicking business is, indeed, good. Sure, Tallahassee has his other moments in the movie, most notably a Deliverance reference, complete with banjo, but in my mind, the moment described above was easily one of the most effective ways to establish a character as a (probably insane) badass, I have ever seen.

Of course, the other characters get their moments too, Columbus, for example, faces down a zombie clown, a creature combining his fear of getting eaten and his fear of clowns. It's not quite the "holy shit, did you SEE that?"-level of awesome, but I'd still say he had his time to shine.

Zombieland is, all in all, not a movie that takes itself too seriously, and I think it does it good. Sure, I have nothing against the more heavy political statement-zombie films, although I have realized Romero, the champion of allegorical zombie-thingies, might be loosing his touch, what with Diary Of The Dead being about as subtle as an anvil, its major saving graces being a dynamite-throwing amish and a pretty cool professor. This action-filled zombie romp is a hoot to watch, it's not very scary, but it'll entertain you, and it can be considered a feelgood-movie for people who don't watch feelgood movies because those aren't manly enough.

ZOMGBie III: They just keep comming

I must say I feel slightly bad about missing my planned halloween-update, since it, in my opinion, is the very axis that the horror movie year revolves around. Aye, halloween is the time when ghouls and goblins of the night doth arise, and even mother nature and father seasons seem to be at eachothers throats, catching us in the middle of this rather unfortunate lovers spat. Anyway, I digress. Point is, them zombie movies are on the run again.

What we have on the Slowzombies agenda today is nothing short of an unique piece. We're talking a Norwegian Zombie movie, Dead Snow. To be more precise, it's a Norwegian action/adventure horror snowboarding nazi zomibe movie. I'm guessing the nazi zombies aren't snowboarding, bu to be honest, either result would only be marginally more wtf-worthy than the other. I saw some clips from the movie today, the whole thing won't be out untill the 9th of january, and that's on the silver screens of the northbound Vikings up here.

The clips were mostly zombie fatality-related, amongst others, there was a zombie-slaying scene which did nothing short of blow me away. A hammer, a sickle and a chainsaw was involved, no further comments should be neccesary.

...

Buuuut that won't prevent me from providing a few more anyway. It's quite an unique experience, for once I'm actually excited about a Norwegian movie. Sure, jogging zombiess does kinda rub me the wrong way, as described in great detail earlier, but since they are zombies that are also nazis, I do suppose they are excused, somehow. Also, the gore seems good, surprisingly so considering how Norwegian films have little to no tradition with gore whatseover.

In closing, I'm optimistic about this, and I certainly hope Dead Snow become the first of many successful Norwegian zedhead gorefests.

ZOMGbie Part II: The Requiem of Vengance

It seems people keep comming up with new and exciting ways to get zombies into a story. The triggering case for this observation is that the good dudes and dudettes over at Shocktillyoudrop writing about a movie called Cockneys vs. Zombies. I'll give you a second to absorb that title. To my understanding it's kind of Snatch/Lock, Stock meets George Romero, or possibly 28 days later, you know how it goes.

That's one thing I love about zombies, they're like cheese. And by that, I do not mean that their quality increases over time, nor that they're what sweet dreams are made of (think about it.) What I mean is that you can add zombies to damn near everything. Of course, it might be silly, but in some cases, it might be good, or possibly even awesome to the point of awesomeness.

In closing: Zombies are like cheese.

ZOMGbie

Today's entry was going to be about something entirely different, but I suddenly stumbled across an interesting piece of news that really pushed my fanboy button. Originally, I was planning to write about interesting horror litterature, including my newfound love for the works of a certain Mr. Lovecraft. However, when I did some research on the book World War Z, among others double-checking the name of the author because that's incredibly embarrasing to mess up in a blog, I learned that there is a silver screen treatment of WWZ in the works.

World War Z is written by Max Brooks, the man who wrote The zombie survival guide, and as the title and previous works implies, it's about our favorite shambling piles of reanimated flesh. World War Z is somewhat unique in that it tells the typical zombie story from the point of view of the people who survived it.

The one thing that worries me, except for a slight chance for running zombies, is that the book is narrated in such a way that making it into a traditional hollywood flick would be nothing short of a lovecraftian nightmare. One hopes that the film is made, like the book, heavily flashback-based. Now that I think about it, there's actually several things that can go wrong, for example shifting the unique focus of the book, that being how the Zombie crisis wrecked all of the world, rather than, like most zombie movies, just focusing on how the Americans, or in some cases the Brits, are faring.

There's not really all that much more I know, hope or fear about this movie, except that I know it'll be about zombies, I hope it'll be awesome and I fear it will be full of fail. While waiting for more details to be released, feel free to check out this script preview and/or wait in eager expectation.

On Rec and remakes

As I mentioned earlier, I'm very fond of the Spanish horror movie Rec. Yes, I do admit it might seem a bit odd, considering how I feel about running zombies. Still, Rec manages to have galopping ghouls that manages to turn out to be a very effective scare. Partly, this is because of the first-person camera and numerous surprise zombie attacks, but Rec also manages to produce a really unnerving atmosphere. I've heard it described as "completely drained of hope and mercy," and that's a bullseye as far as descriptions go. The zombies are a constant, lethal threat, but what makes the threat so overwhelming is the containment, how the characters are kept prisoner by a faceless and unsympathetic authority.

So, in short, I love Rec, and when I heard an American remake was in the works, I can't exactly say I was overjoyed. As so many times before, I asked myself why this remake was neccesary. Yes, it might expose a larger audience to the story of the original, which isn't a bad thing. It seems that foreign language films, no matter how good, will not reach the largest masses of English-speaking audiences. I don't like it, but that's how it is. However, it's my experience that the story gets somewhat dumbed down in the process. The most common way this happens is by overexplaining, taking out the mystery and replacing it with rather banal exposition. This is exactly what will flat out murder the Rec spirit. In Rec, you are left smack in the middle of the end, no denouement, no definite answer to all the questions raised. Don't get me wrong, most of the things you could find out just fine, but the movie didn't exactly rub the answers in your face. This would be a downright unwise move considering how much emphasis the movie puts on the uncertainty and confusion.


While on the topic of remakes, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is scheduled for one, and my initial reaction was "damn, another one bites the dust," but I've been thinking. It could actually be that this remake would provide something fresh and new to the RHPS universe? Exploring new interpritation of the various oddball characters, or maybe even challenge modern morals, especial sexual morale, and society in general, could a Rocky Horror Remake show really be a refreshing jump to the left? Honestly, I'm sceptical, especially since MnotreallymusicTV is going to be involved. There's multiple things that can go wrong, poor casting or directing can screw up the Remake Show beyond all recognition, but the worst possible thing anyone can do to a RHPS remake, except possibly to hire Uwe Boll for directing, is to cower before the rating systems. In a story that is driven by, and contains quite a bit of, sex, trying to get a low rating is pretty much the movie equivalent of saying "Hungry, Dr. Lecter?"

Then again, it could be good, right?

Running zombies

Let's talk zombies, shall we?

I'm a zombie fan, there's no denying it. Romero, Russo or even Resident Evil, doesn't matter, if it used to be dead, but isn't quite so any more, it's fun. It must be said that I prefer Romero zombies, but as previously mentioned, it's all fun. Actually, not everything, there's a snake in zombie paradise. I am talking about a trend in recent zombie movies that doesn't fit at all well with what made older zombie movies so awesome. I am talking about running zombies.

Why is this a problem? A slow-moving foe can't possibly be all that much of a threat, and no threat equals no scares, right? I get that line of reasoning a lot, but I can't say I'm convinced. Yes, one slow zombie is not even close to a threat, but that's kind of the point. One zombie isn't a problem, one zombie is a joke. To quote Seth Grahame-Smith, author of "how to survive a horror movie"

A human being killed by a zombie is the equivalent of a F-16 being shot down by a nerf dart.

This, to me, sums up the entire charm behind zombies. One zombie, no problem. Two zombies, you beat up one with the other. Three zombies, clobber away. A parking lot full of them, now it's getting dangerous. Zombies all over the place, you're screwed. Zombies don't feel fear or pain, so if there's enough of them, they will drown any opposing force in a sea of decaying flesh. Doesn't matter how much ammo you've got, it won't be enough, and all it takes is one bite and it's all over.

Modern zombie movies want to be 28 days later, which in itself isn't a bad thing. 28 days was an interesting entry in the horror genre, and showed the world that the UK still was capable of scaring the living daylights out of the rest of the world. The sequel, not so much, but I'll get more into that at a later date. 28 days, however, was not a zombie film. Although some aspects of it, the contagious killing disease, turning men against men and generally just FUBARing the world up, certainly was borrowed from the zombie genre, the rage infectees were still technically alive.

Apart from moving away from the general philosophy of zombies, these 28 days later-wannabees annoys me for a different reason, namely that it cheapens the scares a lot. An example, Dawn of the Dead (Remake.) This flick is filled to the brim with jogging corpses, and quite frankly it's not very scary, at all. Dawn of the Dead has little to offer in the land of scares, and the little it has is mostly based on the whole "OMG, dead people running, gonna catch meh"-thing, ending up with a fairly infantile attempt at spooking the audience.

Despite my harsh words against sprinting undead, it can't be denied that my all-time favorite zombie movie, Rec, features zombies that are quite good runners, but I'll get into that tomorrow