October Horror 2011: Day 8 - Dawn of the Dead (2004)

The first Dawn of the Dead was a George Romera zombie movie from 1978, part of the original Trilogy of the Dead which consisted of 1968's Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and 1985's Day of the Dead.

This 2004 remake was directed by Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen, Suckerpunch).  The film is visually striking and is awash with Snyder's signatures, including specific use of slow motion and a noticeable soundtrack using contemporary songs.  The story of both movies are fairly similar: In the middle of the Zombie Apocalypse a small group of survivors lock themselves inside of a shopping mall and deal with personal conflicts while trying to survive the growing number of zombies amassing outside and in the lower floors of the mall.  Beyond that there isn't much similarity.

The original film was rife with social commentary about consumerist culture and materialism, which doesn't present itself at all in the remake.  The remake plays more with personal drama between characters but is far less high minded.  Also, zombies in the remake have human or better capabilities while the original featured Romero's famed slow zombies.

The remake on its own is very entertaining.  The writing is good and the characters are fun.  It's got a nice, brisk pace that manages to avoid dragging too much towards the end of the 2nd act.  The effects are really good and realistically bloody.  The zombies were scary, the actions scenes were pretty tense.  The non-action scenes served pretty well to setup the next bit of story while maintaining a slightly desperate or creepy tone.  I really liked the soundtrack with short montages set to Johnny Cash and Richard Cheese.

In fact, I think the only thing I didn't actually like about this movie was the subplot with Mekhi Phifer and his Russian Mail-order Bride.  I honestly don't believe anyone that "From the Hood", or that street smart, would be that damned stupid.  Plus, that scene killed off one of my favorite characters.

The original movie had a pretty uncertain ending, where you could decide for yourself if you wanted the characters to live or die.  The remake's ending was a lot more clear-cut, or at least I thought.  When I had watched this I was convinced the cast all died in the final zombie attack where the camera is dropped, but wikipedia describes this ending as "leaving their fate unknown".

Either way, it's a great zombie movie that's very well balanced between human drama, gore, and action.  It's well worth watching both, since the original is a classic, but this one capably stands on its own.  It's also pretty obvious watching it that the Dead Rising video game took some major cues from the movie: Exploding gas station, set in a mall, unorthodox weapons, a dog.  The biker gang in the original movie is pretty similar to the convicts in the game.  Dead Rising in some ways led to the Left 4 Dead series and by proxy Dead Island.  So yeah.  Good movie.

Re-week continues tomorrow with Rob Zombie's Halloween.

October Horror 2011: Day 7 - The Ninth Gate

The Ninth Gate is the most modern feeling movie of the season, although The Order was released 4 years after it.  The Ninth Gate was released in 1999, along with a slew of other Satanic stories, and stars a pre-Burton Johnny Depp.

The premise here is that there is a book, written in the mid 17th century by Aristide Torchia called The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows.  There are 3 surviving copies of the book in 1999 and one is in the possession of a Boris Balkan, who hires Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) to authenticate the book against the other 2 copies for him.


Corso is a rare-book buyer and dealer who operates on the shadier side of things, often conning people out of collections in order to sell them at a profit.  He smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish, to the point where it's a bit ridiculous.


Corso's investigation into the books leads him into a massive conspiracy involving a secret society of very rich and powerful people who are attempting to use the book to summon ultimate power or commune with the devil or something.


The writing in this movie is probably the best we've had all week.  It's very focused, but very natural and quite witty when it needed to be.  It was mostly a mystery with a few supernatural elements sprinkled in for effect, but would've been just as entertaining without them.  The excellent character writing and acting actually helps you relate to these characters as people, that sort of thing is important when you're watching a movie where the majority of the characters are eccentric and absurdly rich book collectors.

The only real points playing against the movie are the ending, which was just a bit confusing, and the soundtrack.  They'd managed to explain everything up to that point without a painfully obvious exposition dump but just kindof dropped the ball in the last 5 minutes.  I had no idea who the girl was supposed to be or how she related to the rest of the plot, except to haul Depp along when he lost the trail.  The soundtrack had some great moments where the orchestral score really complimented the epicness of what was going on, but other times it dropped into this funky bassoon and trumpet based theme which was very reminiscent of bits of Ghostbusters or those black & white "industry!" Disney cartoons.  It really did the atmosphere the movie was trying to build a disservice.


Children of the Corn was probably the best "horror" movie so far, but this I think is the best movie in general.  It was just really fun to watch even if the supernatural elements were superfluous and without them this would have no right belonging in October Horror Season.


I guess that's a back handed endorsement: It's not horror, but it is creepy at a few points and a good movie, watch it anyway.


With this movie, Cults week is over.  Kicking off Re-rererererererereerere-whatever will be 2004's Dawn of the Dead, a remake of the 1978 Dawn of the Dead.

October Horror 2011: Day 6 - Children of the Corn

He wants you too, Malachai!
Children of the Corn was first shot in 1984 and is based on a short story by Stephen King.  It stars Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton.


Children of the Corn is another classic horror movie and is based on a cult of children in a rural Nebraska town that murders the adults.  They take over the town and spend 3 years murdering any outsiders who happen upon it while practicing a bizarre "Coming of Age" ritual when the children turn 19.  All in the name of "He who walks behind the rows".  Effectively a "Corn God".

I like that Children hints at the powerful nature gods of ancient pagan religions, something that was also poked at in an episode of Supernatural starring Paris Hilton.  Children of the Corn is a pretty good movie that is very well constructed and beautifully cast.  It suffers a bit when screened to modern audiences because some of the cinematography that was probably pretty atmospheric and creepy comes off as kindof cheesy and schlocky.  Likely, this is due to the success of the Horror genre in the 80s leading to a lot of poor imitations over the last 20-30 years.

The actor that was cast to play Isaac, the original leader of the Children, suffers from a Growth Hormone Deficiency.  The effect of this is that at age 25 he had the body of a 12 year old boy, while having a very unique voice and facial features that were subtly "old" looking for the age of the character.  It also meant he wasn't a child actor and could pull off the part more convincingly than a child could.  The character was "off" in so many slight ways he almost fell into the uncanny valley and was very unsettling to watch.

The movie isn't exactly "scary" in the sense of modern movies, but it's very good and well constructed.  There's a large amount of creepiness that I can really appreciate and I like that it doesn't depend on gore or shock like a modern play on the concept probably would.  Although I will admit that a more modern take on the story would appeal more to modern audiences and be scarier to those audiences who expect more visual thrills rather than depending on shear psychological "THESE ARE FREAKING KIDS" WTF-ery.

I think there is actual a modern remake, but I haven't seen it.
Either way the story on this original is very good and well worth watching if you're a fan of the genre, but don't expect to be scared by it, just pretty unnerved.

Closing out Cults week is "The Ninth Gate"

October Horror 2011: Day 5 - The Collective

The Collective, a 2008 independent "paranoid thriller".



The Collective has a list of credits that usually worries me.  The cast is very small, 12 names in total, and most of those only have 1-2 speaking lines if they have any.  The worrisome part is that most of the cast also have several other credited positions in the production.  The 2 lead actors also wrote the movie, directed it, edited it, and helped score the soundtrack.  Now, I'm not trying to imply that all indy movies like that are bad, it's just that it's often a red flag because of how just terrible Tommy Wiseau's The Room is.  It can turn into the one person who's the protagonist, writer, director, producer, wall-paper artist just fellating themselves for the entire movie's runtime.

Thankfully,  The Collective isn't one of those movies.  It's actually very competent and everyone involved is a pretty decent actor.  The soundtrack isn't particularly interesting, but it's serviceable.  The writing isn't quite as taut as you'd want this sort of movie and there are a few scenes that don't add much and probably should've been left on the cutting room floor.

In the movie, Tyler gets a terse voicemail from her sister, Jessica, using someone else's phone asking for help.  Tyler hops a red-eye flight to New York City immediately to try to find her sister.  Everyone Tyler speaks to is secretive, evasive, and paranoid.  Tyler eventually discovers her sister has become involved with a group of elite Manhattanites that have formed a secret society in an old cathedral, where they attempt to explore faith and the power of the spirit by mishmashing different cultures' religious ceremonies.  Things go horribly wrong during one of these and a member dies.  Naturally, this leads to a cover-up and the whodunnit is the central mystery of the plot.

Unfortunately the movie really failed hook me into caring about the mystery, and really doesn't offer clues or any explanation.  By the end I didn't know if they had actually solved it correctly, and I really didn't care.  The way the characters were reacting seems to imply they didn't care either.  It just didn't seem like there was much at stake, and even the rescue of the sister seemed to just go perfectly even though there were problems along the way.

It's kindof like marketing a movie as a Police Drama, and then it's just a movie about a traffic cop writing tickets all day without any issues except one driver got a little angry but then backed down when the cop threatened to arrest him.

Next up is Steven King's Children of the Corn.  This one is actually movie length, we checked.

October Horror 2011: Day 4 - Suspiria

I finally got my Xbox to play the English dub of Suspiria directed by Dario Argento.

Released originally in Italian in 1977, Suspiria is not only considered a classic horror film but one of the best movies ever.

The premise of this movie is that an American ballet dancer decides to take her career to the next level by going to study at an ultra-prestigious German ballet school.  Unfortunately the school is a front for a coven of witches who derive power from torturing and murdering the students.

I really liked this one, it's probably the best movie of the season so far.  Even with the elements that I really had a hard time enjoying this was supremely creepy and very focused, which are qualities everything else this year has lacked.  It's heavily atmospheric, very bloody (for the 70's, anyway), and very imagery heavy.  The soundtrack has what might be one of the best horror motifs I've ever heard next to the Halloween soundtrack.

Unfortunately the soundtrack is also the first thing that I found somewhat distracting.  It has a tendency to get absurdly loud during the tense scenes, especially during the murders.  And it's not a typical modern soundtrack that's built around being melodic or rhythmic in a traditional sense, it's a 70's style synth, sample, and noise soundtrack.  It also has the peculiar tendency to cut off abruptly during a scene change from scary night time to a daytime scene.  It makes the dialog very hard to understand since it's so quiet in comparison.

I'm also pretty sure they got a lighting director who was used to working in the theater to design their lighting.  It's definitely a unique look but compared to more modern movies that have done that it looks a bit too strong.  The movie is overwhelmingly red.  Everything is bright red.  So bright red my eyes hurt a few times.  The lighting is red, the walls are red, the wine is red, the blood is red...all the same red.  There was one scene where a character dumped some wine down the sink then had to scrub it off the bowl because it was pretty clearly red paint.  They also have a heavy green light at certain times, and sometimes they even pull out blue lighting towards the end.  At times it serves the atmosphere very well, others it's "MIEN EYES THAT IS SO RED".  Thankfully it seems to serve the atmosphere most of the time, just when it doesn't work it pretty glaring.

The ending sprint is absolutely glorious, and the sound design was just great.  The noises and the voice the witch queen was using were truly creepy in the most visceral sense.  It made my skin crawl.

Definitely a must-see.

I'm heading out of town for a few days for a friend's wedding so the next few movies might have to get back dated, or I'll just post multiple reviews per day if I have to catch up since I might miss a few.

On deck: The Collective

October Horror 2011: Day 3 - The Believers

The Believers is a 1987 horror mystery starring Martin Sheen and Helen Shaver.



The film opens with a family of 3 getting ready for the morning when the coffee machine boils over and Martin Sheen spills the milk.  Then the mother dies in a freak coffee/electrical/spilled milk accident as Sheen and his son can do nothing but watch in horror.  After a brief scene of an African tribal ceremony involving goat sacrifice we return to Martin, who's moving into his new apartment/office in New York City.  We figure out much later in the movie that this cutscene actually takes place decades ago, but there's no indication of it.

That's one of the problems with the movie.  There's really no sense of the flow of time around the events that are depicted, which leaves the story feeling like an aimless meander.  The peripheral characters come in and out and are hard to keep track of, even when they come bearing important information.  The soundtrack cues aggressively, it's even funny at times.  They seriously played an "Evil Music" cue for barely more than a second because a character picked up a black magic Santeria artifact, then shrugged and put it back down.  They also heavily featured windchimes.

There were some good creepy moments towards the end, with snakes and spiders.  It was a pretty lackluster delivery of a sparse story, there was a fair twist ending though.  But it wasn't enough pay off for how uninteresting the rest of it was.

Tomorrow continues with Suspiria, in English this time.

October Horror 2011: Day 2 - The Omega Man

Day 2 is The Omega Man, released in 1971.  It stars Charlton Heston and Anthony Zerbe and is based on the 1954 novel I am Legend by Richard Matheson.



The Omega Man is the 2nd film adaptation of the story, the 1st being 1964's The Last Man on Earth starring Vincent Price.  The 3rd being I am Legend in 2007.  I know it comes as a surprise since it's black & white, but I've actually seen the 1964 film.

The basic story is that some disaster has taken place, which kills most of the world's population, leaves some as some sort of monstrous creature that is highly sensitive to light, and very very few unaffected.  Dr. Robert Neville (Robert Morgan, in the case of Price) is an army doctor who is for some reason immune to the disaster and now lives completely alone in a ruined city, surrounded by the monstrous "others" trying to find a cure for the affliction and save humanity.  However, the others are just as intelligent and have formed their own society in the ruins of our society.  I am Legend is one of the classic examples of the "The real monster is us" idea that often shows up in some of the more adventurous horror that attempts to have societal commentary


There are various differences between the 3 representations of the character being doctor or eradicator in various proportions.  It's also very interesting how each treats the others, but I'd like to keep this short.


The movie is solid, but plays as action/survival and less horror.  Unfortunately, this focus on action makes Omega Man the least interesting in the group.  Any and all moral ambiguity is gone, it just comes down to Heston as "Good" vs. the "Evil" leader of the others, Matthias.  Heston represents the modern world, technology, electricity, artificial light, guns and Matthias represents a movement deliberately away from these modern ideals.  Add in a sprinkling of 70's era racial dynamic ("honky paradise" is one of the funniest lines in this movie) and you've got the movie.  There's nothing to think about, it's just Heston vs. Matthias and Heston's eventual downfall as brought about by the fact the he helps the rag-tag jive-talkin' survivors and some of them betray him.

It's definitely entertaining, but for my money I think I am Legend with Will Smith tells the story best.  It's just as fun to watch as Omega Man, but focuses more on drama and horror.  It's got some very excellent creepy moments when Neville questions his sanity, some very good emotional moments with Neville and his dog, and some very good action moments.  It's just more well rounded than the others.

Omega Man isn't a bad movie, and definitely worth watching on its own.  It's just a bit flat compared to the other two.  It offers a much stronger cult than The Order did.

Next up is The Believers (1987).