Gotta love the old black and whites. You know you're in for some laughs when you see that. I watched this with two of my kids. Fun times.
The zombies were great. Like, real zombies. True zombies. They were exactly what I think of when I think of zombies. Slow. Beatable one on one. And coming in swarms. Eating people. I would have loved to hear one call for "brains!' This story had the best zombies of everything we've covered so far.
But, the characters were terrible. They were so flat. I wasn't sure I was going to make it far enough into the movie to see Barb die because she was driving me crazy. Such a poor, one-dimensional portrayal of someone dealing with tragedy. I couldn't wait for her to die.
Same thing with Conner. It was interesting to see Ben shoot him while he was alive, and kill him. I wasn't expecting that. I was happy to see him go but, honestly, I wish he would have been the one stabbed over and over by his daughter instead of his wife.
The knucklehead and his girlfriend, who couldn't see that he was going to die when they were in the house and Judy was like "But why does it have to be you?" I'm like, yeah, he's dead. That the girl was stupid enough to ad hoc the plan and run out there, and then get stuck in a seat belt... good riddance.
Ben was the only character I actually cared about, and he was the only one that had a little more dimension to him. He was all business about trying to solve the problem. He also tried to talk reason into Barb, until he just gave up on her. He started his relationship off with Conner reasonably. Tried to work with him and the other guy as a team. But because they were idiots, he turned to violence (at least on Conner), but had every reason to. He adapted. He was cool.
The ending was rough. It was like, hey, we want to kill all the characters in this movie, but we made Ben too good to die. Let's have him be accidentally killed by the rescue party. That was so lame. The movie showed its age, but it still stood on solid ground plot-wise (well, except for the stupid explanation of a satellite returning from Venus that was irradiating the eastern third of the US). It's crazy how a lame ending can undo all the hard work done in the middle. Of course, the only one doing the hard work was Ben. The rest of the crew was terrible. And the acting would best be described as "over-acting." The dude who played Ben though, he was as calm and cool as the character he played.
Very cool shout out to Greensburg in the movie! When I was hearing all the references to places around Pittsburgh, I was wondering if Greensburg was going to show up. It sure did. I thought that was cool.
Ben was the only likable character. It is nice to see another person felt all the others fell flat. I thought the zombies moved rather fast in this movie compared to most films I have seen. I also felt they were more intelligent than just flesh hungry wackos. I was rooting for Barb to die from the start too. Her character was flat AND annoying. She didn't offer much of anything to the plot, if you ask me. Aside from being annoying then dying to her zombie brother, what did she add other than a full, flattened circle for herself? I was also happy to see the one dumb couple get it. I knew it was coming as soon as Judy ran out the door.
ReplyDeleteBarb drove me nuts as well. She ended up being comic relief for me and my kids, but had I been watching it alone, I don't know that I could have made it to the end. I was hoping her death would have been more gruesome, like the mom got from her kid.
ReplyDeleteI thought when Johnny showed up again that he was going to have the keys to his car in his pocket or something and Ben was going to find them somehow... like a skirmish and they fall out of Johnny's pocket or something.
Even though Tom and Judy were an idiotic train wreck, I really did like them. I feel like they are the most relatable characters to how I would act in the situation: trying to keep the peace and worried about one another taking risks. However, I would not be an idiot and run out to the car. And I agree that the foreshadowing with her saying did it have to be him made it obvious he would die.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad someone else agrees with me that the ending didn't do it for them. I like that everyone dies, but I would have liked it more if the zombies had gotten Ben, at least then he could have gone down in a blaze of glory. His death was anticlimactic.
I'm so glad Barbara died. I understand trying to put all the different forms of coping and trauma into the plot, but they could have done the her being in shock much better. I just wanted her to die at the start.
Oh snap! I completely forgot about the Western PA connection in NOTLD! Good call, Shoe. For some reason, I rarely remember that Romero is to Pittsburgh what John Waters is to Baltimore. I have to say my favorite zombie movie of all time is Dan O'Bannon's RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985). There were plenty of "Braaaiiinnnsss!" in that one.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious what about the zombies in the film made them so effective for you. I usually don't have too much of a problem suspending my disbelief when it comes to older movies and their monster effects, but I just couldn't get myself to be frightened by those zombies. Maybe it's because they sometimes seemed to be the slow, shuffling kind, and other times seemed capable of speed and thought—but never when it would have been most advantageous to them. The only time I found them truly horrifying was in that very last scene (especially Karen eating her parents—that was absolute gold). For the rest of the film, though, we seemed to learn more about the zombies from the TV and radio reports than we did from the characters' actual interactions with them—a "journalistic" style I liked less than WWZ's, come to think of it.
ReplyDeleteYes! I was irritated with Barbara the whole movie. I thought she was incredibly pathetic even before she started acting like she lost her mind, and while I don't think the actress did a great job, I don't think anyone could have made her better the way she was written to be in the movie. I think she'd have been better if she kept causing issues with trying to escape from the house to get her brother and having Cooper trying to kick her out of the house or feed her to the zombies. I think that's more of a new age kind of plot though. If this movie was already controversial for its time with how "violent" it was, then I doubt they could get away with a character acting ignoble. Books have been banned for less. It probably makes for a good kid introduction to zombie horror, although I know the second graders I taught hated books with black and white pictures, so I don't know how a younger kid's attention would hold up with how flashy movies and shows are now.
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