Filmmaker George Romero has had exactly one good idea in his life: the original, 1968 zombie film Night of the Living Dead. Since then, he has been coasting on a reputation as a maker of smarter than average horror films. Although he has made some good movies since Night of the Living Dead, few of his films have above par for the horror genre, and the average quality of horror films in the decades since his breakthrough movie is a very low bar to surpass.
In particular, Romero has revisited the zombie film in quite a few movies over the years, usually providing the press with some serious intellectual/social/political commentary his latest film is supposed to make. So it is once again with his new film, the Venice Film Festival entry Survival of the Dead. Reuters reports that Romero, age 69, said his new film deals with questions about when it’s right to go to war:
"I wasn’t looking at Iraq and saying, well, lets make a movie about Iraq," Romero told reporters on Wednesday.
"It’s much more about man’s underlying inability to forget enmity, forget their enemies even long after they’ve forgotten what started the conflict in the first place.
"I think that part of the problem is that nobody looks at both sides of any issue, it’s automatically: I’m on this side or I’m on that side."
There’s nothing dishonorable in being a hack filmmaker; truly accomplished hacks can make enjoyable movies. But hack filmmakers with big ideas just become increasingly worse bores as the years wear on. Their vapid nattering reminds one of . . . zombies.
–S. T. Karnick
His last film land of the dead almost made wreck my tv set. To let all the fools who let the zombies loose on to the city was enough to make turn off the dvd.
Zombieland looks like it could be fun. Or an unintentional, self-parody.
The upcoming Zombieland looks like a far more interesting angle on the genre. If it’s just a goofy, would-be fun movie that shows a lot of killing, as the trailers suggest it might be, that will be acceptable, I suppose. However, taking pleasure in seeing people harmed is wrong. Seeing justice done, self-defense, etc., are good reasons for depictions of violence, but showing it for pleasure encourages sadism.
However, if, as seems quite possible and the title suggests, Zombieland turns out to inspire thoughts about how the commercial culture of our time exploits base urges (such as aggression and lust) in moneymaking ventures, that could be a very good thing indeed. We shall see.
Sadly, the title Survival of the Dead made me think we were going to get really post-modern and look at end-of-life decisions in a zombie world. I mean a zombie apocalypse is about the only justification I can see for universal health care as part of a larger war on death. And really, Haley Joel Osment as a robot boy is about the only way you win that conflict. And even THAT movie had a downer of an ending.
But protesting the war (particularly the Iraq war) is so 2006. But he was always into the shambling zombies. No wonder he’s so slow.
*sigh* Another aging artist who has bought into his own fanboy press. Memo to George: They’re ZOMBIE MOVIES, dude, just get over it and make them fun. We tolerated Day Of The Dead, barely. Since then it’s just been painful.