George A. Romero is Dead

I hate to write that but as far as the visionary independent film maker who made a couple of the most influential films in the zombie/post apocalyptic genre, I just don't see his hand at work in the films produced under the name Romero. I watched his latest one the other night and it was so bad that I actually got pissed off. The movie was bad in several areas and they are as follows:

• Plot
• Consistency / Continuity
• Acting
• Effects
• Writing / Dialog

PLOT:

Well, the plot doesn't seem to have a destination in mind in that the stated motivation of the characters in the beginning does not seem to bind their actions. They want to find a safe place but they do everything but try to find a safe place. You find the Sarge's rag tag band of deserters in the middle of nowhere doing nothing but surfing the internet that would not really be functioning unless they had a satellite up link. They do not make decisions through the whole movie that make any sense whatsoever. Not from a military training point of view nor from a "how would a normal logical person react" point of view.

Consistency/Continuity:

This kind of ties in with the decision making from the last statement. They (the characters) constantly do things that would not be consistent with their own personalities nor what would be a result of their stated plans. Survivors in a post apocalyptic zombie world don't just wander off by themselves in unfamiliar territory nor would the others in the group not be alarmed by this. The zombies in the movie do not follow the rules set forth for zombie behavior in Romero's other films. Some zombies in this film are slow and lumbering, while others who seem dead suddenly jump up and almost roar at the characters. Many of the zombies act docile as they are chained and performing routine tasks like delivering mail or mowing the lawn. It was like the movie Fido had somehow merged a little with the Romero zombieverse. Some points just don't make sense in that they just could not happen. The characters drive into the fishing docks and are informed that the road they just drove in on was mined with dynamite so they can't drive away. The road they just drove on to get there is impassable due to land mines made of dynamite...and if they drive on it they will blow up (and one zombie stumbles on a mine, blowing up to illustrate this point) even though they just drove on the road and nothing happened, they will surely die if they drive on the road that they just drove on. Must have been some of that one way dynamite that I hear about all the time.

Acting:

I am sure that some of the actors may have some talent but if this is the case they did a masterful job of masking it. Some may be attributed to the material. You are the Sarge and your gruff with a heart of scoundrel with a soft spot. You are the lesbian (only female in the military unit so you must be a lesbian right?). You are the swarthy Italian lover boy who chases the lesbian swearing you can change her life with five minutes of your love expertise. You are the kid, rebellious, smart, crafty, with a razor keen sense of what is cool. Your are the bad guy who speaks with an Irish accent and wears cowboy attire. You are the Irish anti-hero who apposes the bad guy but your are not clearly good so curse a lot and try to have a rye approach to any situation no matter how touching, comedic, tragic, or dangerous. Then you have the full assortment of mindless henchmen who populate movies like this. In this last paragraph you have seen the full spectrum or maybe more in regards to the range of acting this movie holds.

Effects:

Did you ever wonder what happened to the effects coordinator from the old 80s The A-Team? Well, wonder no more. The gun play and squibs were cut rate but the gore effects that should be somewhat true to the physics and anatomy of the real world fell very short. A zombie who has been in a state of decay and therefore getting weaker with every action does not have the strength to grab your hair and rip the all the skin off your head as if it were a lose fitting shower cap. Not to mention your hair tends to rip out long before this happens. The zombie effects were not as good as I have seen at local zombie walks put on here in St. Louis.

Writing and Dialog:

Simple, simple, simple is the course of the day in terms of writing the plot and the dialog for this movie. There is no development of character or complex situations. At some points it seems like the writer (Romero) could not come up with a plausible solution to a situation so he just had the characters do something illogical to drive them to the next point in the story. The character's words could have been taken from a very bad old detective comic strip. At no point do the characters try to give the feel of layers within their personalities.

I wish I could tell you their were some redeeming aspects or moments to this film but in truth the best thing about the DVD version was the advertisement for the live action adaption to Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead that will be appearing on AMC in October. I will spare you wondering about that by including the trailer for that below. In the end I was left a little pissed and disappointed over this movie. I had even been warned months ago at our monthly Zombie Squad meeting about how bad it was. My problem is I did not believe the movie could be as bad as they were telling me. I was wrong, so wrong.

Click Here to see the trailer for The Walking Dead.