While I did enjoy “The Dead,” I also admit that it spooked me a bit, if only for the Ford Brothers’ ability to depict the walking dead as a truly horrifying, a talent that’s tough to accomplish with our current glut of zombie films dominating pop culture. “The Dead 2” isn’t a far departure, sticking to what made the first film such a success, while switching elements around to regard it as another chapter in the epic continent trotting tale of the zombie apocalypse. There still hasn’t been much of an explanation of the particulars of the zombie virus and where it originated, but that’s irrelevant once the dead are knocking down doors.
Tag Archives: Zombies
The Battery (2012) [Blu-ray]
After a zombie apocalypse has overtaken most of the country including New England, former baseball players Ben and Mickey have found themselves stuck together. They’re too frightened to be alone, and yet don’t like one another enough to stay together. Thus they form an uneasy pact with one another, roaming the more desolate landscape of New England looking for food, shelter, and new means to keep themselves from going absolutely stir crazy. With the rising population of the dead, and the lack of human contact, it’s becoming a task that’s increasingly difficult to conquer day by day.
Super Zero (2014)
Zombie movies are the order of the moment for so many filmmakers working right now, and it’s tough to really find any good zombie entertainment. How do you take a pretty tired concept and turn it in to something interesting or worth investing your time in? Shockingly director and writer Mitch Cohen found a way. Rather than basing his entire short zombie movie on zombies, he instead explores the more humanistic element of the apocalypse, centering on a small group of people trying to survive, and how one seemingly irrelevant young man becomes their savior.
The Walking Dead: The Complete Fourth Season [Blu-ray/Digital]
Season four of “The Walking Dead” is a big leap forward for the series, in where it re-captures a lot of the dread and urgency of season one, while also rebooting the narrative once more. After the big war in season three where the group managed to beat an army by cunning and sheer luck, Rick and his surviving group from Hershel’s farm, along with the remnants of Woodbury, have now settled down in the prison, and have built a respectable society for themselves. Rick is now committed to farming alongside Hershel as his apprentice, while he’s also focused most of the time on giving Carl a childhood, however twisted it may be. The series has a good time with misdirection, and begins the season premiere with Rick outside the prison farming and listening to music, drowning outside noise. As he turns to look back at the prison, we cut to a wide scene of the walking dead clutching the gates in droves only inches from Rick. Try as the survivors might to pretend otherwise, the world is still for the dead.
Kill Zombie! (2012) (DVD)
Eventually the way film culture is progressing, every country, continent, and region in the world will have their own zombie film. The problem is that the great zombie movies are so few and far between that we’re left with a lot of really terrible wastes of potential. “Kill Zombie!” is the perfect example of great potential and no pay off. Granted, the concept is creative, and the surprise ending is ridiculously clever, but the movie is much too tedious and uneventful to really consider the aforementioned elements redeeming factors. “Kill Zombie!” is the Belgium set horror comedy about the zombie apocalypse that channels a lot of its favorite zombie movies.
The Walking Dead #127
Did the show affect the comic book, or did the comic book affect the show? That’s something I’d love to know down the line, since Robert Kirkman didn’t just help reboot the series after the season four finale of “The Walking Dead” TV show, but he rebooted the entire damn series, period, in issue 127 of “The Walking Dead”! Not only does it have a brand new scheme and has been set on a whole new course, but damn it, it’s set two years in to the future, and even has a new logo. A new logo!
Doc of the Dead (2014)
Whether you love or hate George Romero and his films, there’s no denying that without his zombie movies there wouldn’t be the zombie culture we know today. Surely we might have two or three zombie movies concerning the sleepy servants of voodoo masters, but we wouldn’t have the flesh eating hordes that are currently consuming pop culture and the world as we know it. There’s also a very good interview where filmmaker Alex Cox notes that were it not for “Night of the Living Dead” becoming public domain, there likely would not have been inspiration for filmmakers to offer their own zombie entertainment for horror fans.