It’s been precisely five years since the UK tossed “Shaun of the Dead” in to the American shores and so successful was it with fans that most of America’s directors (both independent and mainstream) have tried anxiously to deliver what the “Spaced” clan have. Along the way the after effect of the movie brought us some good clones (Fido) and some just purely awful (The Mad) and the quest to create our own version of what Edgar Wright gave us hasn’t ended, not by a long shot. So here we are again five years later and we finally have a movie that works along “Shaun of the Dead’s” tone while paving its own signature in the horror comedy subgenre.
Sure it watches like a compilation of cut scenes from past games, and sure in some cases it’s an attempt at a reboot for the series, but all I could think about while watching “Regeneration” is: Was this so fucking hard to do for fans and general horror fans? We had to suffer through three really bad derivative quasi-horror films and now we’re given a virtually completely animated movie that just gets it right. Why is it so hard to release this and let us endure Paul WS Anderson’s butchery in the first place? “Degeneration” pretty much sums up its goal from the opening shot where WilPharmacy’s have taken over the city leaving where Raccoon City left off.
And so we enter in to our new storyline involving three new characters and… I’m pleased. Thanks to pulling some strings with fellow comic freak Brian Pittman on Cinema crazed I was able to read Issue 54 without a problem and as stated, I’m pleased about where it’s going because the series was kind of in a rut when last we met our dwindling group of survivors. What will happen now that two survivors have showed up at the farm? Are they enemies or allies? And How far will ths struggle proved to go now that their xenophobia has provided the group with understandable but extremely paranoid situations?
Whoa, whoa, whoa, are you seriously jerking me around Kirkman? The final splash is all one big tease, right? It has to be. These three new characters would say anything to be let in to the farm and I believe it. This series was originally called “Night of the Living Dead” and we only had an inkling of what may have caused the dead uprising in that movie, and one possible explanation. There’s no way Kirkman would explain and hold our hands through why the dead suddenly started rising one day.