Is Everyone Making a Zombie Movie?

[Arbitrary]

Warning! I'm going to be giving spoiler info as the movies I'm going to talk about are mostly shitty. Shitty movies don't get secrecy.

It suddenly occured to me that there is a glut of zombie films on the market that is similar to the glut of slasher flicks sparked by Wes Craven's Scream. I would say that between the fine remakes of Dawn of the Dead, the comedic Shawn of the Dead, and then 28 Days Later the same sort of spark had occured.

The problem, much like the redundant slasher flicks, is that the vast majority of these suck.

Resident Evil - The first one is kinda ok, the second one is fine in every scene that does not involve a zombie, and the third is a mix of about 5 other films including the original Day of the Dead, The Birds, and Mad Max. It mostly blows.

28 Weeks Later - The consensus is pretty much the same. It was kinda ok but it had some fucking major logistical problems. Why is the army retarded? Why does the father pop up everywhere? Why do you kill everyone I give a shit about?

Land of the Dead - Sucks. Balls.

House of the Dead 1 and 2 - God awful.

Return of the Living Dead Sci Fi Originals - All terrible.

Day of the Dead remake - Ving Rhames has ten minutes of screen time and they kill him. The disease is like the flu and then at some point there is a 15 second quick change to zombie. The cause of the outbreak? An underground bioweapons research facility located just out of town. Ripping off Resident Evil takes guts. The movie is also as dark as AvP2 so it's hard to even tell wtf is going on. Zombie soldiers run around shooting M4s into the air like Yosemite Sam. Bad bad bad.

Automaton Transfusion - Distributed by Dimension Films. I saw it at Best Buy and had a gift card burning a hole in my pocket. The zombies are fast again, explanations are not given, and it is amazingly gory. At one point a zombie pulls a fetus out of a pregnant woman and eats it infront of her. They explain nothing, the story makes little sense, the acting sucks. It is like Sci Fi did it but used real gore. Terrible.

Diary of the Dead - It's got that Cloverfield/Blair Witch gimic and the main characters are fairly unlikable and stock. Cool secondary characters are wasted, the disease still doesn't make a ton of sense, but Romero has a good many visually interesting scenes and incorporates the prevalence of technology and the internet into the film in a way that doesn't make him look retarded. It's in the *good* category.

Wicked Little Things - One of the Horrorfest films from 06. The film is dark to the point where you cannot really see what is going on. It is uninteresting despite its attempts at gore.

Those are just the ones I've seen. If you check out List of zombie films - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and then kinda visually can the list by date there are an absolutely staggering amount of zombie flicks that have been made since 2000.

And they are almost all unwatchable. Why? Why cannot anyone lately make something that actually makes sense? In most of them there is little effort made to maintain some sort of internal validity. Characters are frequently complete idiots and the audience is left thinking how they could do better. With all the power of a two story mall you cannot find a way to get a sandwich to Andy? Really? The dog was your best bet? Fuck. I have yet to see one single damn APC versus a hoard of zombies yet the military completely fails over and over with no explanation.

The zombie flick is becoming the bottom rung of the horror genre and I don't like it. World War Z is going to be made into a movie but who knows how much shit will come out between now and 2010.

[Zarcath]

incidentally, check out the thread I just made :P

[Faille]

I wasn't planning on making a zombie movie, but your post have given me an idea!

[Grave]

I didn't even realize the Day of the Dead remake had come out. I'll have to watch it even if you say it blows.

Sucks they kill off Ving, his char was cool in Dawn.

[Occido]

374 zombie movies.... (give or take)

[Blank]

this happens to any popular movie genre. Something defines/redefines the genre and then a bajillion horrible movies based on a similar idea are made. See: End-of-the-world movies, Comic movies, Fantasy-novel movies, and (slightly more recently) the "rape-my-childhood memories" movies.

[Akileese]

Automaton Transfusion

Watch this shit. All I will say is a zombie takes a fetus out of a woman's stomach and eats it. It's fucking gross.

[Vorph]

There's plenty of good ones since 2000 too.

28 Days Later
28 Weeks Later (strongly disagree that there was anything wrong with this one)
Fido
Planet Terror
REC (shitty looking remake called Quarantine due out less than a year after the original... must be some kind of a record there)
Resident Evil (I liked all three of them)
Shaun of the Dead
Slither
Undead
Versus

[Phoenix]

But the problem is none of them are Wickerman good.

[Astrocreep]

I thought Dawn of the Living dead remake with ving rhames was fucking awesome. even that old internet tough guy Maddox gave it a good review.

Cancel the 2005 Academy Award, the contest is over.

Cancel the 2005 Academy Awards, the contest is over.

I'm going to save everyone a lot of time and money on the 77th Annual Academy Awards by just coming out and telling you what's going to win. No point in watching the show next year because one movie alone will dominate the Oscars in every category (except drama, because A. nobody watches drama and B. it's not a category):

This movie stomps so much ass that they have to import colons from other countries to meet the demand. Just to be on the safe side, I went down my check list of ass-kickery to see where this movie stands. I challenge you to read all the way through this list without springing a rubbery one:

At least 750,000 people killed?
Zombies?
Blonde chick getting her shit ruined by a chainsaw?
Tits?
Soundtrack by Conga Master Poncho Sanchez?
Chimney rod through a fat lady's skull?
Explosions?
Robots?
Lesbians? (Pay attention during the credits)
Baby getting shot in the face?

Owned Holy shit! This movie almost has everything. The movie starts out with this chick (who is a 6 at the beginning, but by the end of the movie you're thinking she's an 8 because it's non-stop tit-sagging from fat zombie bitches from this point on) in a hospital, then she talks to her co-worker for what seems like hours and you think you're in the wrong movie because already there's way too much dialogue/plot building or whatever you call it. That's where the genius of the director comes in: he made it like this on purpose so you'll have time to adjust your face before it's rocked off. Almost immediately after that there's a shower scene which sucks because there's a guy in it and you have to state loudly that you think it's "gay" or something along those lines so nobody will question your sexuality. Then it's onto the zombies.

The zombies in this movie are the ultimate evolution of the walking dead. Forget the wuss-burger zombies in "28 Days Later" that eventually die on their own, these zombies are the real deal. First of all, these zombies are fast (even the fat ones). Imagine the fastest Olympic runner you've ever seen, now double that speed and pretend the zombies aren't Kenyan. That's how fast these zombies move, which sucks if you're a zombie because you get your balls stomped on by an army of undead ball stompers if you trip (most zombies stomp on your nuts even when they don't have to just out of spite.. or at least I would):

Right off the bat the chick at the beginning (who I'll call Mope Master because she looks like she's about to cry in every scene) gets the beat down by her ex-human now-zombie husband. Owned So then she bails and gets in a car wreck because women can't drive. Then Ving Rhames threatens to blow her head off, which is cool. They meet up with some pregnant chick and you know it's going to be bad news because everyone hates kids.

They eventually go to a mall where they're accosted by some dude with a badass handle-bar moustache; before he even says anything, you automatically know he listens to Pantera. His buddies, on the other hand, look like they drink Keystone Light and go shopping for purses. Anyway, the Pantera guy totally wants to bang Mope Master, so he lets them stay in the mall. Then they go around killing rogue zombies for about 45 minutes, no complaining from me. All the zombie actors were awesome and deserve best supporting actor awards for their inspired acting work.

For example, check out the look on this chick's face:


A zombie with a very matter-of-fact look on her face.

She looks like she just got done telling someone "I know you didn't just call me what I think you called me," followed by two quick finger snaps so you know she means business. Think you can get that kind of attitude with ordinary extras? Yeah right. These are thespians; they're pros at what they do. Just sit back and admire their art.

So here I am watching the movie and it's pretty badass, but then out of nowhere *WHAM*. Tits on the screen. Like finding an unexpected $20 in the wash, the director throws in some jugs for good measure. I know you're asking "but Maddox, it already sounds awesome, why go on?" Why indeed; stop reading this article and go see "Dawn of the Dead."

1,990,333 people saw "Dawn of the Dead" because of this review.

[Araxen]

Shaun of the Dead is the greatest zombie movie ever

[Jimmy Carter wuwu]

Liked all 3 resident evils
Shaun of the dead....Classic.
28 days later - loved every moment of it.
28 weeks later - eh, helicopter scene was enough for me to buy it
dawn of the dead - Great zombie flick
Night of the living dead - orginal - flawless - first movie I saw where the black guy dies last
House of the dead - terrible


Own all those mentioned above minus house of the dead...fuck that movie.

I'm just hoping if and when they make World War Z that it turns out amazing like the book.

[damastez]

you forgot the best one off the list....

[Korioni]

The amount of recent zombie movies is nothing... Look into the recent fad of epidemic/airborne viruses/biological extermination movies.

[cdyhybrid]

I thought Planet Terror was great. Really looking forward to World War Z.