I LIKE MOVIES #9: Survival of the Dead

George Romero has made three of the greatest zombie movies ever made. With Night, Dawn, and Day he laid the ground work for the majority of the zombie genre. His newest movie, Survival of the Dead, is the sixth in the "Dead" series and the first one to directly connect a character to its predecessor. So it is the first "sort-of-direct-sequel." When he made Diary of the Dead in 2007, he went back to the beginning, to the first night that the dead came back to life. Part of Survival's story follows a character briefly encountered in Diary.

The other part of the story follows two rival families living on an island, the Muldoons and the O'Flynns. These two families are clashing over the proper way of dealing with the reanimated dead. O'Flynn wants a bullet in every walking corpse and Muldoon wants to keep the dead restrained and hope for God's judgement or perhaps even a cure.

Given that this is a George Romero movie, I was surprised that this war of ideologies was not entirely beaten like a dead horse (the phrase "dead horse" being unintentionally funny after having watched the movie). And I say that with love. I really do love his first three Dead movies, and I definitely enjoyed the later three entries. It just seems that with this newest installment Romero restrained himself from an overindulgence into themes of religious zealotry in favor of shootouts and a general theme of people with different ideas not being able to live peaceably together, dead or alive. And for me that was a good thing. Fans who have left his previous two zombie films with unfulfilled expectations will probably feel similarly after watching Survival. This isn't the grand epic of world wide proportions everybody seems to keep wishing for from George Romero.

Instead of letting social commentary overwhelm the movie (as I worried it might have earlier on) Romero goes for laughs and a quick pace. This isn't as much a horror movie as it is a modernized Western with zombie gags. The zombies do not provide scares for us or for the characters they are trying to eat. They are nonchalantly manhandled by characters throughout the movie. The focus of the story is more on how the dead are treated by the characters.

For example, the idea of family members unable to kill one another after they have become the walking dead has been explored in Romero's other movies. Most memorable might be the scene in Dawn of the Dead, when we see the basement of an apartment building full of what used to be tenants' relatives but are now flesh eating ghouls. It was scary and kind of sad as Roger and Peter had to put them all down. In Survival, the dead are treated like cattle or livestock. But not scary. Just another day on the farm for the Muldoons. I think it was an intentional transition though.

Since the movie doesn't get too bogged down in social commentary, which is always a danger in the genre, there is room for playing. George Romero introduced the movie when I saw it and described it as having several "Looney Tunes" moments. He went on to say that people should not be afraid to laugh. It's a movie. Have fun. Perhaps it was due to this granting of permission, but the audience was going wild for some of the more outlandish stuff and I was glad. It seems George Romero is at a point where he just wants to have some fun with his zombies. It was as if the scene from Diary with Samuel the Amish mute had spread out into most of this movie. There was a lot of silliness to be had here.

Zombies get lobotomized with fire extinguisher foam, used as cigarette lighters, ride horseback, and try to do chores around the farm while some of the living characters are entertainingly cartoonish with ridiculous accents. There is even a scene where a wall gets exploded, leaving the men who were hiding behind it comically covered in ash, like Yosemite Sam after pushing an ill-prepared dynamite plunger. These are, for the most part, what I consider intentional laughs. On the other hand there are moments that made me laugh that I don't think were supposed to. The introduction of a character's twin was a little iffy story-wise but hilarious nonetheless. And the end result of Muldoon's training zombies to eat something other than humans played out comically as well. I don't think it had the intended impact. Although I must say that the final shot of the movie is pretty great.

Bottom line, America: I had a fun time at the movies. Survival of the Dead is not the living dead epic that hardcore fans have been awaiting, but I'm totally fine with watching George Romero have fun with his zombies.

Today's arbitrary rating says that Survival of the Dead gets 46 empty graves out of 57.

I LIKE MOVIES #5: THE CRAZIES

Remakes can be a touchy topic, especially for horror fans. I begrudgingly came to the conclusion a few years ago that remakes will happen regardless of if I want them to. And the originals will always be the originals. Even though I would rather see Jason return to Crystal Lake for a dozen more murder sprees, each with increasing degrees of ridiculousness, before starting over from scratch, I must admit that I did check out the remake/reboot. And it was fine. Kind of meh. Jason X was actually more fun. Don't tell anybody.

On the other hand, some movies have great premises but could benefit from a modernized retelling. The Crazies definitely fits the bill. George Romero's original has a cool premise: a government created weaponized virus gets unleashed on a small town after the plane transporting it crashes into the local water supply. It suffers from a low budget and the general George Romero heavy-handedness when it comes to portraying the government and military. Romero was never very subtle with his allegories. It's a pretty good movie, and I would never tell you not to see something. Like I said, the originals are always the originals. Remakes should never be considered replacements.

If you are going to remake something, the best thing to do is to bring something fresh to the table. The new The Crazies keeps the same plot but removes the government point of view from the story. Instead of the audience seeing the town's people trying to cope and survive and then seeing what the military honchos are doing to keep control in alternating scenes, we are only presented with the locals' perspective. In a way it makes the military presence scarier. We as an audience are as much in the dark as the characters that we are watching. Which is why I am surprised that they didn't try to recreate the most jarring scene of the original in which men in haz-mat suits with machine guns are kicking in doors and pulling families out of their beds. They do show some children being taken from their parents in the remake, but not on their home turf, not from their own beds. Like I said, Romero doesn't do subtlety.

The remake also benefits from modern special effects and a budget with which to utilize them. The movie looks gritty and bloody but also polished when it needs to be. If you are a fan of virus movies or zombie movies, you'll know what to expect. This isn't the most original movie but it works well and is aware of exactly what it is. It opens with Johnny Cash singing over the credits. Immediately I am reminded of the opening credits of the 2004 version of Dawn of the Dead (another Romero remake). I think the reference was intentional. The action and suspense get started and the pace is quick as our Sheriff puts the pieces of the plot together so that we can get down to some more action.

Even though this a remake of a George Romero movie, I felt a stronger presence of Jaws references than Romero references. Director Breck Eisner is clearly a Jaws fan. We have a widow slapping our police chief like Mrs. Kintner and a fun scene with the mayor thinking of dollars over safety. He may as well have told the chief that, "Amity is a summer town . . . we need summer dollars."

I was along for the ride and accepted everything that the movie threw at me. Except for one thing. Timothy Olyphant gets stabbed through the hand. It's brutal. But it never seems to hurt in the subsequent scenes as he steers cars and shoots guns without wincing. It's stupid that it bothers me, but he basically throws a bandaid on it and forgets about it. It hurts the "realism," even in a movie like this. I'm glad that's off my chest. Now I can finally move on with my life.

The Crazies was a lot of fun and has some pretty good scares. Check out the original too. I'll give this today's arbitrary rating of 17 virus infected maniacs out of 21.