GHOST TOWN (1988)

Remember that one time you went on vacation with your family to Tombstone, Arizona, or Dodge City, Kansas, and just after finishing your "Buffalo Bill Burger Blast" you went outside and caught the noontime showdown in the street between those two guys in the really bad beards shooting each other with blank pistols whose gunfire seemed to be coming out of the crackling speakers behind you instead of the deadly instruments grasped in their hands?

That's Ghost Town, in a nutshell, with costume store make-up. It is glorified dinner theater with a horror bent and a budget slightly higher than the one possessed by those people who put a little too much effort into their front lawn Halloween displays. And of course, there's obviously nothing wrong with this, because Ghost Town, despite its obviously low budget, its lack of anyone with name recognition (beyond Bruce Glover), and its somewhat restrained use of visual effects (how many times "ghosts" disappear/reappear on screen after a while becomes hilarious), remains an infinitely watchable film, perfect for those late nights when you don't want to surrender to sleep just yet, but you don't want to watch anything heavy. It's Ghost Town, all the way.

What's refreshing about Ghost Town (and unlike many other Charles Band productions) is that everyone on screen knows they're making something silly, yet everyone is sincerely giving it their all. Not every performance is Day-Lewis caliber, but obviously that doesn't matter, because even though the film revolves around a hapless deputy wandering into a ghost town in the middle of the desert and stumbling upon a collection of ghosts, skeletons, and people trapped in time, every member of the cast does admirable work, including the Michael Bay lookalike lead character of Langley, played by Franc Luz.

With a typically quirky story by, at one time, go-to Full Moon Pictures auteur David Schmoeller (interviews with him here and here), Ghost Town is charmingly innocent and not the least bit pretentious. Band became a producer infamous for not only low budget horror, but low budget trash horror, which has only gotten worse over the years, so to see his name affiliated with a project built on good intentions of just trying to tell an old fashioned story is not only surprising but welcoming. Except for the icky ghost make-up exhibited by some of the on-screen ghouls, and a few moments of bullet carnage, Ghost Town isn't terribly violent, either. (It also exhibits the most restrained and tasteful allusion to ghost rape probably ever.) Its tone goes for serious but light at the same time, and except for a moment of side-boob, Ghost Town feels like something to put on for the kids on Halloween night.

Ghost Town's "rules" get a little fuzzy as the film progresses: sometimes the characters Langley encounters are ghosts, sometimes living skeletons, and sometimes living folks (?) "trapped in time," and after a while it's hard to figure out what exactly is going on, and who is in danger of what (apparently those trapped in time can still die - again, or for the first time), but Ghost Town's intentions are pure enough that after a while none of this really matters. There's no denying that the film is patently stupid, but that's okay, because the amount of love that went into this production evens out its inherent stupidity, resulting in a good time.

Ghost Town is deliciously, lovingly, charmingly, and acceptably stupid. It's the perfect example of a title that would have fallen into obscurity in the years following its release just because of how odd, quirky, and somewhat kid-like it is...and let's not forget those visual tricks on the same level of a ghostly Unsolved Mysteries episode.

THE HOUSE WHERE EVIL DWELLS (1982)

Long before the short-lived J-horror phenomenon breached American shores, resulting in one good remake and boatloads of bad ones, The House Where Evil Dwells was already proving that Japanese ghosts could be so, so entertaining. Best described as a bold-faced rip-off of The Shining attempting to coalesce with America's then-fascination with everything ninja, this 1982 oddity about an American family living abroad while its patriarch finishes writing his "story" - and who then confront a trio of hilarious looking ghosts  - has to be seen to be believed. Hopefully the included screen grabs have done a pretty good job of indicating the sheer stupidity on hand and have enticed some unaware lovers of cinema cheese into pursuing this title: how utterly mad The House Where Evil Dwells is willing to go is a thing that every horror fan needs to experience.

The opening of the film, in which a full-on sexy affair is taking place while the unknowing husband is out walking around holding his lantern thing you only ever see in movies set in Japan, does a pretty good but albeit strange job of establishing the conflict of the plot: after the cheating wife gives to her lover a netsuke (a small totem) that she obtained from a witch, and which seems to be of a woman fucking the devil, the husband comes home to see their tryst in full kimono-shedding mode, so he understandably flips out and kills them both before committing harakiri, which is suicide by blade, not the former sports newscaster. (You know, this guy.)

At this point - yep, you guessed it - our American characters enter the story, and the house where all this sexy murder stuff went down, and are immediately haunted by the aforementioned ghosts of an Asian flavor.

The House Where Evil Dwells is insane, lovingly pedestrian, and earnest in its stupidity. Its attempts to be horrific consist of blue-tinted superimposed ghosts walking around, knocking shit off the wall, or temporarily possessing our married couple characters solely to puppet them into saying really inappropriate things and cause marital distress. But what those silly ghost appearances set up, the screaming ghost faces appearing in soup, or the hilarious moaning haunted crabs that chase a young girl up a tree, definitely help to knock down.

What sucks about The House Where Evil Dwells - that is, beyond the typical kind of suck you come to expect from very low-budget horror flicks - is its pace. To be honest, unless ghostly things are occurring, The House Where Evil Dwells isn't really that interesting. It's slow, and dull, and momentarily brought to life by okay performances (unless we're talking about the daughter character, who's at her least offensive when she's not saying a word). If blue ghosts are egging each other on to commit harm or tomfoolery, then great; otherwise, The House Where Evil Dwells is boredom on celluloid. Still, it's a house where I'd want to spend all my time where I'm probably shooing demon crabs out of my nagaya with my bamboo houki.

Fans of campy and "oops, it's stupid!" horror entertainment shouldn't miss it, or else moaning ghost faces will end up in your soup, and they will be so awful.

ECHOES (2016)

Anna (Kate French), a blogger who has been offered her first screenwriting assignment, is struggling to get a workable draft to her manager (and lover), Paul (Steven Brand), so Paul suggests they abscond to his house in the desert to give her a change of scenery and perhaps a bout of inspiration. There only a day, Paul announces that he has to leave to go deal with a client, and Anna suggests she stay behind, hoping that her isolation will force her to be productive. Without a car, and with Paul's dog, Shadow, her only company, Anna tries to do just that, but instead begins to suffer from increasingly worsening instances of the nightmares she's been having for a while now - that of an ash-faced figure with black eyes. With each new visitation from his demon figure, she is left with a new piece of the puzzle, so Anna begins to follow the trail of clues until she pieces together the mystery of her haunting - and what she discovers might have best been left undiscovered.

Echoes, simply put, doesn't really work - not as a ghost film, not as a mysticism film, and not as a murder mystery film. It really wants to be all three, but because of the time it has to share among those other sub-genres, all of them are left feeling unfinished and obligatory. What's suggested by the film's opener - someone haunted by sleep paralysis, a genuinely fascinating phenomenon - is abandoned nearly immediately after in favor of more waking-nightmare/possession nonsense that audiences have seen so many times before.

Speaking of things audiences have seen before, it would appear that writer/director Nils Timm has certainly seen The Conjuring, being that more than one visual trick is stolen from James Wan's surprise 2013 shocker. From flapping sheets revealing ghostly forms to black-eyed monsters possessing their victims, so much of Echoes has been done before and in far better ways that its title is actually perfectly ironic.

One of Kate French's eyebrows alone is sexier than any screenwriter I've ever seen, so her casting as such is dubious at best, and shameless at worst. As a lead she's merely competent, although the script doesn't demand she do much beyond look scared or take sad sit-down showers. Her constant appearances in tight tank tops or skintight exercise pants do more to show off why she was cast than anything having to do with her range as a performer. Alternately, Steven Brand offers up a nice performance as Paul. At first the audience isn't sure what to make of him, but he's likable and charming, and proves to offer the most defined character and solid performance in what is admittedly a small and intimate film with less than a handful of speaking parts.

Echoes brings nothing new to the table, but perhaps it will bring more attention to the phenomenon of sleep paralysis. Leafing through its Wiki entry is infinitely more intriguing and entertaining than anything that Echoes has to offer. Even the most die-hard aficionado won't feel the need to add Echoes to their collection. It's a bland and generic story that jumps from one overused trope to the next, none of which is as satisfying as what the summary promises. Sleep paralysis, also known as Old Hag Syndrome, is a strange ailment affecting an alarmingly high number of people, and has slowly become more and more common knowledge over the years - a shame that the film did away with the concept after an intriguing opening. Echoes is a rental at best.

AUGUST IS AUGHOST

I am someone who loves nearly every sub-genre of horror there is, though some more than others. My sub-genre of choice has changed over the years, from slashers to zombies to a short-lived affair with horror-action (of which there isn’t nearly enough). 

But I always come back to the haunted house sub-genre. There’s something about a ghost story that feels timeless, more culturally intrinsic, and mythological. Ghost stories are passed down, told around campfires, but really, it’s because they are the most in tune with our own fear of death. In a way, all  horror flicks are about death, but the ghost sub-genre forces you to postulate on what death actually is. As I grow older, I become more and more interested in, but also terrified by, the haunted house movie. I don’t see that ever going away. From big studio stuff to quiet indie stuff to completely anonymous streaming stuff – if your plot include the words “haunted” and “ghost,” then I’ll come running.

Which leads us to Aughost – the next and most awfully titled blog theme yet. Throughout the month of August, I’ll be blogging about the haunted house/ghost genre, and, as usual, I’ll be focusing on lesser known titles both great and terrible. Come with me through the creaking front door and see what horrors (or total silliness) awaits us on the other side... 

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)

George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead changed everything. And I’m not just talking about the advent of “the zombie” as we know it. I’d go further and argue it planted the seed for the idea that cheap horror films usually destined for drive-ins and double-feature theaters could smuggle in themes relating to the social experience. For anyone who has closely followed Romero’s career, or at least the genesis of Night of the Living Dead, then you already know Romero has spent his entire life modestly dismissing the idea that he purposely cast a black man (Duane Jones) as Ben, the lead, as nothing more than critics reaching for something that wasn’t intended. “He was the best actor we knew,” was Romero’s go-to line, and the film’s “upstairs” versus “the basement” argument — segregated worlds — that reached a fevered pitch between two dominant men of different races, or the hordes of cops and rednecks with their snarling German shepherds, or the very end when Ben is shot down in the house in too casual of a manner, or when his dead body is handled with hooks and chains, was all just a coincidence. Romero asserts that the script was the same during production as it had been before they’d cast Jones in the lead. 

I can take Romero at his word when it comes to all this. I can accept Jones got the job for his acting alone and not for what his casting would symbolize. But I can’t believe that Romero didn’t know, deep down, that audiences wouldn’t walk away from Night of the Living Dead without reading into all of that themselves, anyway. With a grin, Romero would admit he was fine with people calling him a prescient and philosophical storyteller — and if we’re being honest, he was — but he still cast an African-American man in the lead during a time when that wasn’t happening, which was further bolstered by the character of Ben being much more than just “the black guy.”

From a construct point of view, Night of the Living Dead isn’t within throwing distance of polished. It’s hasty, at times disarmingly edited, and offers a few instances of weak performances from its cast (almost all of whom doubled up in other behind-the-scenes production roles). It very much feels like a stolen film — something shot on weekends (it was) with scenes picked up guerrilla style. (Romero and co. having stolen an exterior Washington D.C. interview sequence, with Romero cameoing as a reporter, while the Capitol Building looms in the background, is one of the ballsiest moments of guerrilla film-making I’ve ever seen.) All of this aids Night of the Living Dead’s purposeful design, which was to deny the polished look of other genre films from that era or earlier (Psycho had been released eight years prior, but looked like a newer production) and instead present as newsreel footage. It was documentary-like in its use of a static camera, serving more as a witness to the tension and terror unfolding in that house without ever distracting with its fluid or showy presence. Romero wanted Night of the Living Dead to feel raw and real, and because it was made with the intent of highlighting experience over entertainment, it does.

What’s perfect about Night of the Living Dead is that you, the viewer, can manifest your own allegories about what it’s really about: racial unrest, generational rebellion (the hippie movement was in full swing), a reaction to the Vietnam war, communism, anti-establishment, and who knows what else? In the excellent documentary The American Nightmare, Romero referred to Night of the Living Dead as “one culture devouring another and changing everything,” and while he meant this about the film’s themes, he very well could have been talking about genre film-making in general. Like most genre filmmakers, Romero fell off his game in later years, going back to the same zombie well too many times, but that will never diminish his mark on the horror genre, and it will never change the fact that phenomena like the Resident Evil franchise (film and video game), The Walking Dead (and its spinoff), IZombie, Netflix's The Santa Clarita Diet, and so many other shows and film series wouldn’t exist without him. If the world is just, then, like his own zombie creations, George A. Romero will never truly die.

THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS (2016)

There is no one on planet Earth more sick of zombies than I am. Even before The Walking Dead premiered to firmly launch both zombies and maudlin mediocrity into the mainstream, Danny Boyle’s “non-zombie” zombie movie, 28 Days Later… (it’s a zombie movie, btw), the Resident Evil franchise, and a thriving direct-to-video market ensured there would be no shortage of flesh-ripping clumsy ghouls. That zombie movies are still being made, not in spite of but directly because of The Walking Dead, has pushed the sub-genre to the stage of saturation, and regardless of well-meaning producers who claim to have done something different, they are all very much the same. A foreign body creates a virus; a virus creates a ghoul; a ghoul creates many ghouls; many ghouls create a ghoul apocalypse; a ghoul apocalypse creates a franchise; a franchise creates exasperation.

Upon the release of The Girl with All the Gifts, based on the novel by M.R. Carey, I’ll admit I didn’t pay much attention. And when the words “dystopian future” and “young lead female character” filtered into my brain, I shut it down entirely, writing it off as yet another film based on an alternafuture young adult book series featuring a strong and plucky girl to lead yet another revolution.

Within moments of the film’s opening, I knew I was in for something different – and not a film ready to rely only on zombie carnage and helicopter shots of a post-human world. Instead, The Girl with All the Gifts is a philosophical, scientific, and at times alarmingly charming new take on the zombie story, looking beyond the cause of the zombie outbreak (called “hungries” here) and at a future where a zombie crossbreed species exists and calls into question the well-worn “us vs. them” concept that has been at the forefront of every zombie movie conflict. Told from the point of a young “girl” named Melanie (an extraordinary Sennia Nanua), one of a dozen special children being held in captivity and studied by what appears to be the last of the world’s military, The Girl with All the Gifts looks not to the far reaches of outer space, a government lab, or to an unspoken cause for all the zombiery on which our characters can ruminate. It looks to the very world we inhabit – something birthed from nature – that brings about the downfall of man. A far less stupid version of The Happening, but with the same basic concept, The Girl with All the Gifts suggests that our planet soon tires of us and relies on fungus – yes, fungus – to bring about the destruction of man.

Director Colm McCarthy, making his feature directorial debut after a long career in television, wants to take this material as seriously as a Vietnam-era George Romero, Danny Boyle, or even Jim Mickle with his underappreciated Mulberry Street, and he does quite handily, falling back and letting the camera linger on intimate environments and small moments between characters. Astoundingly, the audience is thrust into the same confusing environments where Melanie thrives, but where we’re struggling to put together who she is, where she is, and what’s being done to her, she’s instead existing in a place where she always has; she knows nothing else about the outside world, so the cold manner in which she’s treated by the soldiers who point automatic weapons at her face as her shackles are done, or undone, isn’t the least bit surreal to her. That’s been her whole life. 

And this is where The Girl with All the Gifts will begin to feel familiar.

 

At the core of every zombie movie has been the aforementioned “us vs. them” conflict, but always with a suggestion that the “us” had the potential to be far more monstrous than the “them.” Helen Justineau (Gemma Arteron) is the special children’s teacher; someone who shows them kindness and love. Dr. Caldwell (Glenn Close) wants to cut them open and look for the cure to the infection she believes to be inside. Sgt. Parks (Paddy Considine) hovers somewhere in between, not allowing his empathy for young Melanie to supersede his purpose and drive to survive. The Girl with All the Gifts tows that familiar line but with new and ponderous ways, leaving you to wonder about the final sequence and what it means – who’s really in charge? And who, really, is the enemy? Us, or them?

The very unusual musical score by composer Cristobal Tapia De Veer, comprised of a chorus of robotic-sounding human voices and something akin to a theremin, sounds both utterly foreign but completely appropriate for the zombie-ridden environment. It also makes for one of the best musical scores of the year. There aren’t too many instances when the audioscape comes alive in the typical blockbuster movie sense, but when there’s carnage, you hear it — so much that it nearly pierces you with its surprising intensity.

Zombie fans unfettered by mass consumption of their favorite ghouligans have no reason not to love The Girl with All the Gifts. Even those, like me, who need a long breather from the zombie phenomenon will find a lot to respect and adore in this latest take on the walking dead. Anchored in place by a preternaturally confident performance by Sennia Nanua, it’s the best kind of horror film one could ever hope to see — something that’s not just horrific, but about something. 

THE DEAD NEXT DOOR (1989)

More zombies!

Sick of them yet?

I know I am, and not just because it's Ghouly (say it with me now: Ghoul-Eye) here at TEOS. I've been sick of zombies since the third season of The Walking Dead (the same point at which I quit that show altogether).

But perhaps you remember a time — as I do — when zombies hadn’t breached these pop culture shores beyond the every-decade release of George A. Romero’s revered zombie series. Zombies weren’t emblazoned on t-shirts or kids’ lunch boxes or burned into game apps found on tablets. They were for “weirdos” — ya know, those same “weirdos” who liked horror films in general, and enjoyed seeing heads get cut off or eaten in half.

Made on a shoe-stringiest of shoe-string budgets back over four years, The Dead Next Door finally saw a release in 1989 — another four years after the release of Romero’s own Day of the Dead, which didn’t set the box office on fire. By all accounts, whatever life there had been in the zombie sub-genre was dead. And The Dead Next Door, written and directed by J.R. Bookwalter, wasn’t going to change that.

When compared even against Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, which was made for about the price of a half a pack of cigarettes, The Dead Next Door still comes off incredibly cheap looking, so it shouldn’t surprise you that it was made for $125,000. (Okay, to put things in real perspective, Night of the Living Dead was made for about $115,000, and that was in mid-1960s dollars.) When you watch them back to back, The Dead Next Door suffers even more, but even to watch it on its own and judging it on its own merits, it still looks unbearably cheap. Damn it all if it ain’t charming, though. Lousy acting, directing, writing — nearly everything — aside, The Dead Next Door shoots for the rafters but tears the roof off the place with its impressive and unrestrained gore effects. The amount of gore on display puts to shame any of Romero’s most well-known zombie gags, though Bookwalter is obviously going for the outrageous over the cringe-inducing. Numerous characters are named after legendary horror directors — ie, Carpenter, Raimi*, etc. — so Bookwalter is obviously a genre fan at heart, and is trying to make a film akin to the more visceral from those directors’ career. (*And Raimi had better get a shout-out — he ghost-produced the film and helped fund it with whatever profits he earned from Evil Dead 2.)

Low budget films have their defenders, especially in the horror genre, and The Dead Next Door is a beloved title along the same lines as The Evil Dead and Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead (sensing a theme here?). Though it may lack those films’ directorial flair or legendary status, it’s got an awful lot of heart — and it’s flying just past your head along with all the brains.

SPLINTER (2008)

Low budget filmmaking is tough, especially when it comes to horror. If we're taking on just the low budget medium, a lack of financing can affect the final output. Lesser money can only afford the lesser actors, cinematographers, editors, composers, production designers, etc., and a weakness apart of any of these individuals can severely handicap a project. In the horror genre, you have all of these risky areas, but then in addition, you have the inherent prejudice against the genre for the years and years of cheap imitators, exploitation romps, depictions of "glorified" violence, and on and on. Lord knows I certainly feel this way, and I'm supposed to love this shit. Because they were grandfathered in, it's easy to forget that watermarks in the genre – Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser, Night of the Living Dead – were made on the amount of money you found beneath your car seat the last time you dropped your iPhone. Even today, Hollywood approaches to the horror genre – unless of course they're greenlighting a dripping CGI mess of an extravaganza – are apt to keep the budget low. In case you haven't noticed, Hollywood's track record in giving us decent quality horror films (the recent Insidious and Sinister don't count, as they were both made independently) are about on par with those low budget filmmakers who are either genuinely trying to make something good or simply trying to create something stupid they know they can sell for the bottom shelf at the video store. (Oh shit, I just totally dated myself.)

Enter Splinter, a little backwoods monster movie that nearly came out of nowhere and personified how so much could be done with so little.

Polly (Jill Wagner) and Seth (Paulo Costanzo, aka the stoner from Road Trip who believed he was destined for great things) are celebrating their anniversary of sorts in a far less glamorous place than Cancun or Aruba. Instead they're jeeping into the heart of the wilderness with nothing but dufflebags of clothes and some camping gear. Her idea more than his, he attempts to play the role of outdoorsman, but it becomes increasingly obvious he's meant for motel beds and flourescent lighting rather than tent assembly and gazing up at the stars.

Meanwhile, a mile down the road and standing outside a broken-down car, Dennis (the immeasurably cool Shea Whigham) and Lacey (Rachel Kerbs) are on a rendezvous of their own – one that has them fleeing from the law. Tensions run high between them, but Dennis has his sights on getting out of dodge, pronto, and Lacey has her sights on something else – anything else, desperately – as long as it comes in pill form.

Eventually, these two couples run afoul of each other, and at gunpoint, Dennis and Lacey force themselves into the car – and lives – of Polly and Seth. With one half of our on-screen couples taken hostage by the other, the new foursome simply drive down the desolate wilderness-surrounded road...until they run over something strange and suffer a flat tire because of it. Seth and Lacey find the thing they ran over...something covered in unnaturally large splinters...something that most assuredly be dead, but attacks them anyway.

The couples speed off in the repaired jeep, unsure of what they had seen, but Seth, who is currently in the process of obtaining his PhD in biology, attempts to make sense of the very dead thing covered in a blanket of splinters, which seemed to multiply across the ruined piece of roadkill, keeping it alive.

A hissing and smoking radiator has them pulling over at a gas station, where they encounter a former splinter creature victim, and one of their numbers becomes infected. Locking themselves into the gas station to hide from the strange things stalking them, they're forced to rely on their wits, a healthy array of convenience store items, and each other, if they want to survive.

And things get awfully bloody.

What we have with Splinter is a loving homage to creature features that came before it, mixed with zombie films that have directly inspired it. Clearly in love with John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 and The Thing, George Romero's Dead series, and holy crap, even Tremors, Splinter takes the "rules" of the zombie film, marries them to the absurdity of the nature/science run amok sub-genre, and creates a wonderfully clever and at times disturbing resurrection-gone-bad grimy gore fest.

You will find no CGI here; nothing but a collection of unique and imaginative practical effects. A dismembered hand covered in needles crawling across the floor like a spider recalls The Thing (and perhaps Evil Dead II), and the ruined bodies of anyone unfortunate to become infected send-up Peter Jackson's early kiwi splatter romps. Added to this are a collection of camera tricks nearing one hundred years old in their construction and are still just as effective.

The best part of all this? Taking a page out of Night of the Living Dead, there is no explanation – no why – for the events unfolding. A brief, one-second shot of a sign – something about keeping away from an oil company's experimental extraction site – is all we're provided, and we've seen enough of these flicks before to let our imaginations fill in the gaps.

Shea Whigham's presence here is the smartest casting decision. With Denny, Whigham plays a total bastard, but one you know from the start you're going to end up rooting for. Yeah, he's a thief, and he and Lacey are on the run from the law, but his main want for freedom is not to avoid an indeterminate amount of time behind bars, but so he can get his drug-addict girlfriend out of the country and into Mexico, where he'll focus on trying to get her clean. Whigham plays this incredibly well; he is a bastard, but he's also the kind of bastard you'd hope to have around when shit hits the fan. He's got both a cowboy's balls and a thief's unscrupulousness, both of which come in handy as our characters find themselves confined to one place and warding off attacks from the slowly growing numbersof splinter creatures. And wouldn't you know it? Turns out he's a big ol' softy, too, just like the rest of us.

Whigham has done nothing but expand his increasingly impressive career. (Motherfucker's only been in three films nominated for Best Picture over the last two years, as well as appeared in both "Boardwalk Empire" and "True Detective.") Splinter was not one of his first major roles, but rather an interesting stepping stone for him along the way. He was far enough along in his career that he could have easily not taken part, but I'm glad he did, as the film is all the better for it. And despite all the bad-asses he'd already played, and all the bad-asses he'd yet to play, I guarantee he'll never do anything as bad-ass as shooting a shotgun one-handed, since his other arm has long been torn off, tossing it in the air to load another shell, and shooting it again. (Don't get me wrong, Wagner and Costanzo as the kidnapped couple forced to align with a "bad guy" in order to survive do just fine with their roles. But this is Shea Whigham's film.)

Speaking of smart casting, enjoy the appearance of the opening gas station victim, played by Charles Baker. Perhaps you know him by another name: Skinny Pete, from the pop culture phenomenon that is "Breaking Bad."

Toby Wilkins' direction over Splinter is just fantastic. The chaotic camera does a nice job of masking the assuredly cheap and simple creatures while also creating a deep frustration within his audience, because we just want to see this thing – every ugly nook and cranny. And among the many great set-pieces on hand, one in particular – which has one main character, er, let's say impaired, and making his way toward a getaway car – which will literally have you screaming at the screen for him to move his fucking ass. It's a sequence designed explicitly to have you wondering if he'll make it, and it works like gangbusters.

Toby Wilkins, where the fuck did you go? I mean, okay – The Grudge 3 didn't work out, and I don't at all blame you for hopping on board that franchise and working alongside Hollywood heavyweight Sam Raimi, even if the film was always fated to go direct-to-video. And I don't at all fault you for The Grudge 3 turning out kind of...well...shitty. Let's just pretend it didn't even happen. I don't look at such a film and even remotely think "a Toby Wilkins film." At best, I consider it a minor diversion on the road that will eventually lead you back to the world of horror features, where I know you'll once again give us something worth a damn.

KNIGHT OF THE DEAD (2013)

Get it? Like Night of the Living Dead? You know, that $50-budget film from the '60s that filmmakers have been ripping off ever since? I guess it doesn't matter. Gimmicky title or not, any horror fan worth their weight in cinematic excrement knows any movie about the walking dead who infect via bite/scratching and can only go down for good with a shot to the head has been directly inspired by that hemp-smoking Pennsylvania native in the safari vest. 

It is the mid 1300s and the Black Plague is ravaging the land. Nearly 1/3rd of the world's population is in the process of dropping dead (thanks a lot, rats!), but that is not stopping one ragtag group of crusaders from escorting the Holy Grail (?) to a place unknown, but in actuality perhaps to hide it from that blonde Nazi who talks in her sleep from The Last Crusade. Along the way they encounter blood-spattered mindless humanoids who saunter toward them with nothing in their eyes, but their eyes on the men's delicious epidermis. Finding themselves surrounded at every side by a growing army of the zombie persuasion, the knights prepare to battle, and get gooey guts all over pretty much everything.

Perhaps inspired by the popularity of HBO's "Game of Thrones," a show that combines traditional fantasy/King Arthur-esque storytelling with mature themes, icky monsters, and all kinds of violence (though doesn't share nearly its budget of one episode), Knight of the Dead, if nothing else, at least takes itself seriously. Thematically similar to Christopher Smith's The Black Death (starring that headless "Game of Thrones" guy), the tone is bleak, the men seem haunted, the film stock is bleached, and things seem hopeless. (It IS the plague we're talking about here.) That's pretty much where the similarities end, as The Black Death was a great film made by a great filmmaker. While Knight of the Dead isn't terrible, there's nothing about it that injects the viewer with any sense of intrigue.

I have seen a lot of fellow reviewers tear down this film and I guess, while I can see why, I don't feel as obligated to do so myself. In the pantheon of zombie films, it's certainly not at the very bottom, but it is most certainly down there somewhere. I say without hesitation it's superior to the majority of the Resident Evil sequels and any remake of Romero's Night sans the Savini version. (And it's definitely better than the other Black Plague horror travesty Season of the Witch, but that's not really saying all that much, is it?)

Knight of the Dead tries to offer something new – zombies eating dudes during the Dark Ages – but the stark landscapes and the condemnations of witchcraft and the wailing, moaning soundtrack makes this all feel so damn familiar that the fact there are zombies included now doesn't really raise the stakes at all. This new trend of take-new-setting/add-zombies/shake-well sometimes results in some truly great films (see Exit Humanity), but sometimes it results in something like Knight of the Dead. What CGI that's utilized ranges from spotty to "Jesus, that's bad," but in a film where knights do back-flips and it's apparently possible to split zombies perfectly in half from head to hips, it's the most minor of qualms. Though inoffensive, competently assembled, and including zombies being eviscerated by battle axes, there's nothing particularly memorable about it.

Also, despite that cover, there is not ONE scene featuring a knight in a suit of armor battling an army of ghouls. I mean, come on...that scene writes itself.

Come the next day, when you're rinsing out your coffee mug in the break-room sink and someone asks if you saw any good movies recently, not only are you not going to name-drop Knight of the Dead, you're likely to have forgotten you even watched it.

LET’S RAISE SOME HELL: ‘PET SEMATARY TWO’ IS A MASTERPIECE

[Spoilers follow for the entire Pet Sematary series.]

Oh, sequels. On paper, you’re so weird. You’re a continuation that was never meant to be. You’re glorified fan fiction sanctioned into existence by a producer or studio eager to continue a profitable story that was only ever meant to be just that story (unless, of course, your characters wear capes, because then we need thirty-seven of those, I guess). By now, it’s become common knowledge that most sequels are inferior retellings of their originators. Subsequent writers and directors who hop onto an existing franchise try to make their sequel as different as they can, but ultimately, they are still going to exist within the structure that’s already been established. No matter what else the sequel might try, we know that Terminators are going to travel back in time to protect or destroy, Michael Myers is going to kill, and Jigsaw is going to impossibly exist and rattle off dime-store philosophies while ripping money from your pockets and laughing maniacally.

Director Mary Lambert knows this better than anyone. With her 1989 adaptation of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, she nailed the holy trifecta of horror filmmaking: scaring the shit out of audiences, striking gold at the box office, and scoring a positive critical notice or two. Even today, it’s still considered newsworthy when a woman is put in charge of a major tentpole release, and though Pet Sematary wasn’t considered tentpole, it was still highly anticipated. It was, after all, the next in a long line of extremely successful King adaptations, this time inspired by what was deemed the scariest book he’d ever written. Could a—gasp—female director make a film every bit as dark, graphic, and taboo as the book written by a lovable man with a few loose screws? That answer was a resounding yes, and no one knew that more than Paramount Pictures, so when it came time for them to greenlight the sequel, they made sure Lambert was along for the ride.

I’ve had a strange relationship with Pet Sematary Two ever since seeing it at a young age. As weird and kid-inappropriate as it may sound, the first Pet Sematary was a childhood institution. USA Network used to run it back to back with another King title, Silver Bullet, and I would watch them every single time they aired. I was unrealistically scared of Pet Sematary, and never more than when Rachel’s bony sister, Zelda, was on screen. I eventually saw Pet Sematary Two a few years after it hit VHS, and even as a child, I could tell it was stupid. Beyond stupid. It had sacrificed anything legitimately creepy about the first film in favor of slasher-flick antics and sensational violence…but I can’t pretend I wasn’t scared of it at times, because I was. 

After recently shrugging my way through the pallid and lifeless Pet Sematary remake, I felt compelled to revisit this 1992 sequel I’d long ago dismissed in hopes of finding some new merit and satisfying the itch that the remake failed to scratch.

I’m so glad I did.

Pet Sematary Two is one of the strangest, darkest, and uncomfortably funniest horror flicks ever produced by a major studio—one directed by a woman, headlined by a 13-year-old kid with more star power than the guy playing his father, and which had absolutely no problem killing multiple children… and mothers… and kittens. (Though I didn’t find any of it remotely scary watching it with adult eyes, the parts that used to frighten me as a child still filled me with slight apprehension.) Originally, Lambert had intended on directly continuing the Creed story with a teenage version of Ellie (played by Blaze Berdahl in the first film), but in a stunning act of boundless misguidance, Paramount was leery about making a teenage girl the lead character in a horror film...even though the studio had just completed a successful eight-film run of the Friday the 13th series, in which the lead in nearly every single entry was…a teenage girl. In response, Lambert and screenwriter Richard Outten (Van Damme’s Lionheart) created an entirely new crop of characters, though obviously the action remained in the town of Ludlow—the site of the pet cemetery and the Micmac burial ground beyond it.

Meet the Matthews family: there’s Chase (Anthony Edwards, Miracle Mile), patriarch and veterinarian; his wife, Renee (Darlanne Fluegel, Once Upon a Time in America, which makes a cameo), actress of cheap looking gothic monster movies; and their son, Jeff (Edward Furlong, Terminator 2: Judgment Day), looking as exhausted and barely into anything as the actor normally is (or isn’t). A freak on-set accident sees Renee being fried to death by some “oops!” electricity, so Chase takes his son back to Ludlow to bury her in their hometown’s cemetery—and to hopefully start anew. It’s there that Chase encounters a cold Gus Gilbert (an all-in Clancy Brown), Ludlow’s sheriff and a former flame of his deceased wife, who's quick to remind the bereaved widower—after her funeral, no less—that he and Renee used to bang something fierce. Despite this, Jeff eventually befriends Gus’s stepson, Drew (Jason McGuire), and after his dog, Zowie, meets the wrong end of Gus’s rifle, the boys bury him in Ludlow’s whispered about burial ground. 

Things…escalate quickly. 

Tobe Hooper struck his own gold with 1974’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, so when Cannon Films came knocking at his door to direct the sequel, Hooper agreed, but decided to make as different a film as possible while remaining true to the basic components that the prior film had established. If the first Chain Saw were an exercise in pure terror, the second would be an exercise in black comedy quirkiness featuring ironically used Oingo Boingo and a duel-chainsaw-wielding Dennis Hopper. Lambert seems to have taken the same approach, because while Pet Sematary Two is a direct sequel in terms of concept and character dynamic, it’s not at all a spiritual follow-up with respect to tone, sincerity, or any attempt at mature horror (of which there is zero). Pet Sematary was trying to be a good film, whereas Pet Sematary Two is trying to be a fun film—and boy, it isn’t just fun, it’s fucking looney tunes, a gonzo masterpiece of weird characters, ace gore effects, befuddling dialogue, and with the purest, most palpable sense of, “Can you believe Paramount is giving us money to make this?” 

The screen story never strays too far from established structure, involving a family looking for a fresh start, a person burying a cherished pet in the cursed burial ground, and the ante being upped as dead human beings begin to replace dead animals as burial ground fodder. Pet Sematary Two even maintains the established archetype of the patriarch, but with a slight twist, turning him from a medical doctor to a veterinarian, which maintains the prior’s institutional and sanitized philosophy of death as normal and necessary (read: better) while doing it in a more on-the-nose way. (One of Chase’s first scenes has him gently putting a dog to sleep, telling its crying owners, “It’s better this way.”) (Read: dead.) And speaking of death, Pet Sematary's most defining, catalytic moment comes from the death of Gage Creed, the adorable four-year-old son of Louis and Rachel, which ruins what remains of Louis' sanity and directly effects the tragedy that befalls the Creed family by film end; though the visual presentation of this was considered a major taboo at the time, his demise derived from a total freak Orinco truck accident, a horrible but sadly realistic incident. Meanwhile, Pet Sematary Two straight up murders two children while aging them up a little so the act of doing so feels less soul-crushing and more deranged. Basically, when Gage Creed bites the big one in the first film, Lambert wants her audience emotionally pulverized to more easily buy into father Louis’s descent into madness, but in the sequel, when Drew and the local scarf-wearing bully, Clyde (Big’s Jared Rushton), both meet their untimely ends at the hands of a resurrected Gus, the audience isn’t that upset. Sure, it’s unfortunate to see Drew and his mother (Lisa Waltz, The X-Files) lose their lives, but as sad as that makes us, we’re even more glad about Clyde’s face being chewed off by his rear moped tire because he was such a dick. This, seemingly, is part of Lambert’s design: she wants her audience to embrace the gory death of that 13-year-old bully, and her design is correct, because we do. Clyde sucked! 

Wes Craven once mused about the difference between directors who scare their audiences legitimately, and those who make the audience believe that said director is “dangerous,” and willing to show them anything to elicit that desired scare. How far is this director willing to go? That’s the beauty of Mary Lambert and her approach to Pet Sematary Two: its goal is to break rules and encourage pure insanity; it goes freely with the flow and adopts every halfcocked idea someone on-set could muster. If there were any suggestions proffered during production that Lambert decided would be going too far, dear lord, I would love to hear them, considering the things we did get:

Monster/humanoid wolf-head nightmare sex — check.

Zombie rape — check.

Flesh-melting, pun-hurling, undead mothers — check.

A leading role for Clancy Brown — hard check.

Speaking of, no one has ever had more fun playing a psychotic undead murderer than Clancy Brown. He is Freddy Krueger, swapping out the Christmas sweater for a pair of sheriff beiges, but certainly keeping his knack for dark-humored kill-lines and vile sense of humor. (“Why did you dig up my dead wife?” Chase asks him during their final confrontation, to which Gus responds with a growl, “Because I wanted to fuck'errr.”) Brown seldom gets the chance to enjoy a lead role, so while that could be part of the exuberance behind his performance, it’s really because—as many actors will tell you—it’s so much more fun to play the villain, to be let off the proverbial leash and to go as big as you want. (Brown would go on to star as the villain in another King-inspired project soon after this one—The Shawshank Redemption—and I like to believe  director Frank Darabont saw his nutso performance in Pet Sematary Two and said, “Oh, definitely that guy.”) As the resurrected Gus Gilbert, Brown chews on every piece of scenery not nailed down, and it’s his legitimate testament as an actor that he doesn’t always have to go big to imbue his undead Gus with the strangest of personalities. One of his best scenes is a total skewering of the generic dinner table set piece, during which his undead muscles barely function and he ends up dropping a bowl of veggies on the floor. When his annoyed wife mutters and stoops to clean up his mess (and who, I might add, he’d necro-raped in a previous scene), he very subtly glares at her with narrowed eyes as if wondering what she's so sour about. Still, when Brown goes big, aw hell—what a blast to watch. The Cheshire grin he flashes while chasing down his family to kill them, sliding on his sheriff’s hat before he delivers their deathblow, is the stuff of cinemagic. 

Pet Sematary Two is filled with this kind of craziness—a collection of scenes so inspiring that they force you to stop and reconcile that, yep, you’re really seeing all this in a film made by Hollywood. Take the scene where Chase kills the undead Zowie and then finds Gus inside the modest Gilbert home, asking him, “What are you doing, Gus?” The resurrected sheriff looks down at the shot-dead Zowie, and then says, with detectable wryness, “Well, I was building a doggy door.” Sure, it’s a stupid line, throwaway in nature, but what makes this such a magical moment is that this hulking, demonic, undead corpse actually was building a doggy door for his hulking, demonic, undead dog. Forget all the warm-blooded people that demon Gus definitely wants to kill—that all momentarily stops to build a tiny door for his corpse dog. 

You guys, this is a movie where a young boy is being murderously pursued by his undead stepfather, and with the zombie-maniac hot on his heels, the boy races into his house, shuts and locks the door, and then CALMLY HANGS HIS HOUSE KEYS ON THE KEYHOOK BEFORE LOCATING A GUN TO SHOOT THE GHOUL MAN TRYING TO KILL HIM.

WHO WROTE THIS?

And that ending, holy shit. What morbid mastery. What unabashed fuck-it filmmaking. The fiery finale that concludes in the attic of the Matthews’ house, which features not one but two resurrected bodies trying to kill father and son and turn them into the walking dead, is a carnival sideshow of horror chaos. Undead Bully Clyde doesn’t just show up, but he shows up with a voice five pitches deeper, very little face, and grasping an ax, which he swings with the brute force of an able-bodied stuntman (you know, the one obviously playing him). The real showstopper of this scene, however, is the return of Jeff’s mother, which actually starts on a sad and creepy note: she beckons her son to join her in the afterlife, a moment that threatens to touch hands with honest-to-gosh pathos…but that’s before things descend into utter madness, which happens pretty quickly. The fire spreading around the attic soon begins licking at the ends of her burial dress as all the work her mortician had done begins to melt off her face, and she begins repeatedly screaming “DEAD IS BETTER!” in absolute, chill-inducing, operatic, Argento levels of unhingement until she turns into a fucking STANDING, BURNING, SHRIEKING SKELETON. 

Frankly, it’s the ending we needed and deserved.

No matter how much King’s output has declined in quality over the years, he’s never written anything as farcical as Pet Sematary Two, but that doesn’t mean the sequel doesn’t manage a handful of Kingisms. (King actually requested that Paramount remove his name from any marketing having to do with the sequel, so he was obviously not a fan.) First, there are the two shaky relationships between fathers and sons, which he’s explored in more than one of his novels (The Shining comes to mind), and then there’s the unrealistically evil bully who could give IT’s Henry Bowers a run for his milk money any day of the week. The first film was about a parent losing a child; meanwhile, the sequel is about a child losing a parent and navigating the grieving process, which King later explored in his excellent short story, Riding the Bullet. There’s also a nod to The Shining when Gus busts a hole in Drew’s bedroom door with a hammer, but instead of sticking his face through the hole and bellowing  “Heeere’s Johnny!,” he verbally ponders if Drew understands the Miranda rights he’s been rattling off, or if he’s “too fucking stupid.”

Ever since its release, critics and fans have derided Pet Sematary Two, and it’s a sure-fire inclusion on many “worst sequel” lists. (Amusingly, Variety “praised” the sequel, calling it “about 50% better than its predecessor, which is to say it's not very good at all.") Pet Sematary Two isn’t a patch on the original, and it’s so tonally different that the two don’t appear to be part of the same family beyond their titles, but I’ll be damned if Lambert and co. aren’t going for it, and that’s what makes it so special. Whatever Pet Sematary Two may be, it’s all part of Mary Lambert’s gloriously gonzo plan, and that’s all that matters. One thing is certain: 2019’s useless Pet Sematary redux proved it’s better to be a goofy, red-headed stepchild but still have your own identity than to be completely without one.  

BLOOD IN THE TIME OF INTOLERANCE: THE SAD NEW RELEVANCE OF ‘EXIT HUMANITY’ (2011)

“Courage did not come from the need to survive, or from a brute indifference inherited from someone else, but from a driving need for love which no obstacle in this world or the next world will break.”

— Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera 

The phrase “beautiful zombie movie” is probably all kinds of things: an oxymoron, a contradiction, and if you want to get really philosophical, a paradox. But that’s exactly what 2011’s Exit Humanity is. It’s gorgeously written, envisioned, photographed, scored, and realized. It just so happens to feature the undead ripping apart human beings.

Say the word “zombie” over and over and it eventually loses meaning. The oversaturation of zombies in film and television has long been threatening to do the same: showing you the same undead carnage over and over until those rotting, shuffling ghouls lose their power to make your blood run cold. Following the Resident Evil film franchise and the television dramas The Walking Dead, iZombie, Z Nation, and probably more of which I’m not aware, zombie horror has become spread so thin and overdone that a zombie doesn’t mean anything anymore. Twenty years ago, watching a zombie crack open a skull and reach inside for its gooey treat was just for horror fanatics. Now it’s for grandmothers. Even the zombie comedy – always the telltale sign that a previously terrifying concept is on its last leg – has become overdone. Once your horror is Abbott & Costello’ed, that horror is no longer horrific.

Recent mainstream attempts at adding horror elements to a pre-existing institution, whether it be a real human being (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) or a fictitious event (Pride & Prejudice & Zombies) were made by filmmakers with their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks, afraid to take their concepts seriously for fear of being laughed out of theaters. Exit Humanity, about a war-torn America contending with the marauding undead, is another kind of historical mash-up – one that’s not afraid to embrace its concept without hiding behind a curtain of cheekiness. It doesn’t re-imagine any real historical figure as a secret monster killing machine, and its immersion in the past is not done for kitsch value.

George A. Romero’s initial zombie quadrilogy had a bonafide purpose – to ask a pertinent question about the human condition, and society’s ability to steer clear of corruption. Exit Humanity has a question among those lines, but one a bit more specific: what if, during the most tumultuous time in American history, there were a greater danger that wasn’t choosing sides? Didn’t care about your man-made conflict? Was going to destroy and consume you regardless of your uniform’s colors? Would America stop warring with itself? Would it forget this initial conflict that amounted to nothing more than a petty squabble in the face of real and absolute destruction?

The year is 1865. Edward Young is a confederate soldier, caught between the union enemy trying to put him down for God and Country, and a single undead soldier slowly trickling through the trees toward him. We don’t know why the dead walk. At this moment, we’re not given a reason. Instead, we’re immediately thrust into this horror. Edward battles this monster and survives the encounter, but it will prove to be the first of many, and soon it will eclipse this other thing we’ve heard spoken of and seen written down so many times before in our history books that its significance and implications have lost all meaning: we’re in the midst of the American Civil War.

Six years later, it’s 1871. The war is over, the country remains in shambles, and the dead still walk, but those soldiers and civilians who survived the battlefield do their best to live their lives anyway. Edward returns home from hunting to see that his wife has been reborn as one of undead. With no choice, Edward kills her and departs to find his missing son. It’s not much later that he does: young Adam shambles toward him with full-dark eyes and pale, dead skin. For a second time, Edward is left with no choice. He returns home a tortured soul, and the muzzle of his pistol soon hovers beneath his chin. However, he realizes he has unfinished business. He remembers the promise he’d made to Adam – to take him to Ellis Falls, a waterfall miles from their home. Deciding to keep that promise, Edward gathers the boy’s ashes in a small tin, hops on his horse, and sets off on his journey – one he’s not sure he’ll survive. But what a one he’ll have.

Exit Humanity is Day of the Dead with a dash of The Outlaw Josey Wales by way of Terrence Malick – think The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford re-envisioned as a zombie film. Written and directed by indie filmmaker John Geddes (Hellmouth), Exit Humanity is a thoughtful and introspective take on a subgenre that’s been done to death…and it just might be the weightiest addition to the genre since Romero’s foursome. And like Romero’s films, the zombies are always present as a looming threat, though they’re often not in the foreground – or background. The dread and foreboding created by them is what drapes over the running time, but indeed, for a good stretch, there are none to be found. Because, Exit Humanity isn’t a movie about people barricading themselves into a house and fighting off the walking dead, and it’s not about gore effects and carnage. It does, however, very much contain that original Romero sense of purpose: to hold up a mirror to society and ask, point blank, “What’s your fucking problem?”

Exit Humanity is about the human spirit, but also about what humankind are willing to do to each other. It’s about a country split in two because of political ideology, and how it makes enemies out of former friends and neighbors. At this very moment in reality, 150 years after the end of the Civil War, America has been re-divided. Hate is soaring. Trust in media has been called into question. Everything is politicized – right down to the American flag. Look no further than the 2016 election – the most divisive and ugly presidential campaign in this country’s history. Clinton (vs. Sanders) vs. Trump changed relationships, and in more extreme cases, destroyed friendships and marriages; it upended faith in the political process; it took all the progress made over the last decade and dismantled it, slowly, little by little. The very thing we held onto as the backbone of our republic – the democratic process – had been abused and manipulated and bastardized by forces here and abroad. In the wake of the election results, hateful groups with hateful thoughts and messages suddenly felt emboldened. These people were going to take back their country, believing it had gone somewhere dark and sinister, and only they could save it. As a result, well-meaning messages and movements striving toward racial equality were rewritten as anti-patriotism and terroristic to neutralize their power. And hate crimes increased 5%.

When the new normal (this is not normal) is to wake up in the morning and see city squares overtaken by hordes of white supremacists – see them take the life of a peaceful protester – and hear our president call some of them “fine people,” Exit Humanity doesn’t just become depressingly relevant – it becomes a teachable moment.

In our less surreal political past, friends and family at ideological odds could always take comfort in knowing that, even when they disagreed most vehemently, each was doing so because of the profound love they had for their country, and felt whatever stance on whatever position they had taken was because of this love. But now – in a country where the word “science” has become tantamount to witchcraft, where people get their news from Uncle Bob on Facebook, and where it looks more and more likely every day that our president has committed treason to gain his position of power – that reasonable barrier of political disconnect is gone. We’re in a whole new world now, Twilight Zone-ish in its unfamiliarity, but very unfortunately not a place of science fiction. The unyielding trust that a large portion of the United States continues to put into a president who has done absolutely nothing to earn it is surreal, and scary, and extremely sad. Just this week, a Trump voter said this about his loyalty toward the current commander-in-chief: “If Jesus Christ gets down off the cross and told me Trump is with Russia, I would tell him, ‘Hold on a second, I need to check with the president if it’s true.’” (Source: CNN.) (Source: FAKE NEWS.)

This has become the new normal (this is not normal), and it makes absolutely no goddamn sense.

During a time when politicians still had class and honor and a sense of duty, Bobby Kennedy, in the speech “the Mindless Menace of Violence” that he gave following the shooting death of Martin Luther King Jr., once implored us to look at each other not as strangers, but as members of a community with a common goal for good:

When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies – to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered. We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear – only a common desire to retreat from each other – only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this there are no final answers.

It’s scary to read those words now and think that’s a place toward which we can never return – that this idea of all Americans co-existing in peace is still obtainable. With each passing day, it starts to feel like a hazy dream, the details of which are wisping away like smoke.

Exit Humanity argues for hanging onto that dream, but it also presents the same conundrum as it examines the continued division among men within the confines of the overall bigger walking horror: “What divides us in such times? What brings us together?”

Interestingly, director Geddes never makes any blanketed denouncements against the confederacy movement. He doesn’t go the redemption route and take a moment to introduce Edward as a brash and hotheaded racist whom incrementally discovers his inner George Bailey. Except for the brief battle scene opening, we never see a single union soldier – no one representing the north in any fashion later appears to challenge Edward’s ideology. There are no conversations about the chasm between abolitionists and anti-abolitionists. The words “slave” or “black” or any period-appropriate derivatives are never uttered. Even though the Civil War was very much about this, Exit Humanity isn’t. Again, it’s thinking bigger picture. So yes, our protagonist is a confederate soldier, whom history has taught us to be the enemy, but on screen, we don’t see someone with enemy qualities. We first see a soldier fighting in a war – with neither judgment nor condonation spared for him – and later, we see a husband and father going through the worst kind of emotional turmoil in the most unforgiving of landscapes. And it won’t be until a later act where he encounters the villainous confederate General Williams. “You used to fight with us?” the general asks him while a gun is pointed at Edward’s face. “Looks like we got a new kind of fight on our hands,” Edward responds. “The war is over…I’d rather live amongst the living dead than with men like you.” It’s clear: whatever loyalties he had to the spirit of the south are gone.

Mark Gibson makes his film debut as Edward Young – frankly, a role that could have only been played by a newcomer. Gibson’s desire to prove himself as an actor results in a performance unafraid to embrace the unusual premise; he bares his soul in what most people would write off as simply a genre film. At times, Exit Humanity threatens to overindulge in schmaltz through his character, some of it having to do with a few too many anguished bellows, but Gibson then reins it back with a focus on Edward’s humanity.

For such a low-key production, the film boasts a cast of well-known genre faces. Dee Wallace and Bill Moseley appear in supporting roles, one representing decency (Eve, the “witch” who was banished to the woods), and the other depravity (General Williams, for whom the war will never end). Stephen McHattie also appears as a conflicted (and consistently drunk) surgeon/scientist named Johnson who is tasked with fulfilling the general’s hopes in finding the cure for “the scourge” – one that requires the purposeful infection of the kidnapped civilians imprisoned in their underground bunker. Finding someone immune means controlling the infection, and that means weaponizing the dead… at which point General Williams can take back the South, “restore order,” and finally win his war.

Connecting everything is the narration by acting legend Brian Cox; it both propels the story and embodies Edward’s inner self – not to mention that Cox’s involvement achieves an air of legitimacy for a film otherwise cast with unfamiliar or genre faces. His off-screen character of Malcolm Young, descendent of Edward, reads entries from the journal that Edward kept during his journey across the zombie-infested lands of former America, some which complement a handful of beautiful animation sequences that bring Edward’s own journal illustrations to life. In a film already taking risks, this is just one more aspect that makes Exit Humanity daring and different.

Perhaps the best aspect to Exit Humanity is the gorgeous musical score by Nate Kreiswirth, Jeff Graville, and Ben Nudds, which can oftentimes sound so soaring and intimate and pregnant with swelling strings that it feels like it doesn’t belong anywhere near a horror film – music that would sound at home in a dramatic sweeping epic about star-crossed lovers or some such mother movie. (One track in particular, called “Edward and Isaac Bond” on the soundtrack [which you can download for free from Bandcamp], is so good that it’s used a second time for the closing credits.)

In a first-act flash back, Edward’s wife asks him what he wants in life. “I just want to be a good man,” he replies. “Good to you…our son. That’s all I want in life.” And throughout Exit Humanity, he confronts his own personal horror – that he didn’t live up to that want. Whether it’s his time spent on the confederate side, or the brutality he’d go on to commit against the living dead, or simply that he continued to live while his family did not, Edward spends much of the film believing himself to be a bad man – unworthy of love or companionship or peace. Because, throughout Exit Humanity, his resolve is tested. Edward Young loses everything. He loses the war. He loses his home. He loses his wife and son. At one point, he even loses the will to keep going. But he doesn’t let it destroy him. It takes time, but he seizes on the thing he believes will resurrect his happiness. He’s existing in a country that no longer resembles itself, and he’s lost his familial bonds, and he’s at odds with the very people with whom he once fought alongside, but he can see through all of that and know what’s really important. 

“It’s never too late to heal the soul,” one friend once told another. 

Exit Humanity is about the hope for humanity. It’s an artful message begging us not to give up – not to ever give up – not in the face of war, or death, or division, or the crumbling of this thing once known as social order. And as suggested during the film, the scourge of the undead seems to plague the worst of mankind throughout history – even as far away and isolated as a slave ship in European waters two hundred years before the war. The living dead aren’t just reapers that have come home to sow; they’re our reckoning. They’re our executioners. They’ve come to restore the natural balance. They’ve come many times before, and if need be, they’ll come again. In the film’s opening moments, Malcolm Young warns us that his ancestor’s journal from which he is about to read should be taken, for every generation, “…as a warning on how we should govern ourselves in such times.”

Exit Humanity is an allegory for the spirit, a warning for the future, and a reminder of what can be lost. It’s a living painting. It’s cinematic poetry.

It’s, dare I say it… important.

[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]

LAND OF THE DEAD (2005)

The name of George A. Romero will always carry weight with horror fans. That's just the way it is. Colleagues of mine have suggested that he often gets a pass from reviewers who glow about his new films, even if we're talking dreck like Survival of the Dead. The theory is, because he's given the world two bonafide classics with Night of the Living and Dawn of the Dead (and a minor one with Day), his less-than-desireable output will always be celebrated because he's earned it.

I can't really say I agree. While his name will always carry weight, no one gets a pass. We're dealing with the human race, after all - the only species to have both learned and mastered cynicism. 

Perhaps the only other name in the genre with George's amount of clout is John Carpenter, and that man hardly ever gets a pass anymore. His last few efforts (outside of the very good "Masters of Horror" entry Cigarette Burns) have been eviscerated - as far back as 2001 with Ghosts of Mars. People, almost joyfully, lambasted his newest release, The Ward (defended here), as if their harsh criticisms were tantamount to orgasm.

That said (and yes, in a typical IMDB message board disclaimer), I recognize that film is a subjective medium. It's art, after all, and everyone will have their own opinion and approach it in their own way. But I cannot stand idly by and read positive reviews for Diary and Survival of the Dead. Those are not good films, plain and simple. Diary gets by for being at least exciting and never boring, but Survival is so terrible that I'd rather sit through that awful Day of the Dead remake again. 

Positive reviews for Land of the Dead, though? That I can get. What I can't get is the hate. Because it's out there, and who knows why.

Exactly twenty years after 1985's Day of the Dead, Romero's fourth zombie opus stormed its way into theaters in the wake of Resident Evil, Shaun of the Dead, and a remake of Romero's own Day of the Dead, to reclaim its title as King of the Zombies. Romero had done his press, fine-tuned his script for a post-9/11 world, and sucked it up to work with a major studio. He even used Universal's original opening logo as opposed to the current one, in a statement I like to think equated to: "Motherfucker, I've been making this shit since before your father was big." He is the big cheese who created the modern zombie, after all, so I'll allow him the proclamation. 

The excitement in the horror community was palpable. Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz's Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright eagerly provided cameos as chained-up zombies. KNB FX worked for a fraction of their usual prices just to be working with Romero again and to help support his project. Someone high-profile, perhaps Eli Roth, equated the new sequel as being a new addition to the Star Wars series for horror fans. And he was right. After twenty years, Romero was doing another zombie film, and this was a big deal.

But the movie was released...and nobody came.

Not realizing horror films don't do big business in the middle of the summer, squished in between all the hundred-million-dollar-budget releases, Universal sadly chose to release Land of the Dead at the end of June, and it simply got lost. (Not by me - I saw it three times.) While I knew Romero had been a revered figure in the horror world, I was shocked to pick up USA Today or the local paper and read positive reviews for this, his newest Dead film. A horror film getting good reviews? About zombies, no less? Isn't that impossible? (Let's not forget one crucial thing: Both Night and Day opened to critical drubbings, and it wouldn't be for years until they were duly appreciated.)

But I had my focus on the wrong place. It wasn't the film critic I had to worry about - it was the film fan. And oftentimes, that's so much worse. So-called fans hated it. "We waited twenty years for this?", etc. It even has the dreaded "WORST MOVIE EVER!" message board post. (Not hyperbole, this chick means it!)

And the fake complaints came rapid-fire, chief among them being "The acting was terrible!" (Sorry, have you not seen Night of the Living Dead?)

Romero's earlier zombie films have always relied on the power of the ensemble (Dawn proved this), and while that's still somewhat applicable to Land, this time the focus really seems to be on Riley Denbo (Simon Baker). Riley is a sort of messenger boy for Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), ruler and ultimate landlord of Fiddler's Green, a posh utopia allegedly free from zombie tyranny, but also divided into social class systems.

Despite Land being part four of an ongoing zombie saga (and though, mercifully, Land would end this particular series), each entry never really carried on anything beyond the zombie problem. No characters returned from one film to another and no events are mentioned - not even in passing. The only thing that was consistent was the worsening of the zombie problem. But in Land, Romero does choose to carry on one particular development established as far back as Dawn: the "walkers" are capable of learning, using tools for simple tasks, and communicating. What was solidified with Bub from Day has been passed onto Big Daddy (Eugene Clark), Romero's requisite strong minority character. (In Night, it was Ben, in Dawn, it was Peter, and in Day, he switched sexes for Sarah.) His trend continues, only now he's not just switching sexes again - he's switching to "the other half." Romero decided it was time to take the idea of this zombie race revolution seriously, and with no better way than his usage of a strong black male lead. 

Romero, working with a big studio again (a rarity), has all sorts of toys to utilize: better actors, better production design, and an abundance of CGI married into KNB's normal wonderment of red stuff. It's not just the producer or the producer's wife talking about cannibalism, but Dennis Hopper, lord of the acid era and all-around cinema legend. Fucking guy who made Easy Rider, people - he's kind of a big deal. Simon Baker as Riley does a fine job keeping a straight face amongst the sea of ghouls surrounding him, but he knows when to have fun, too. For some reason his performance comes off more Sam Spade than John McClane (maybe that's just me), but it works all the same.

By his side is Robert Joy, who also worked with Romero back on his ill-fated adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Half. He's saddled with uncomfortable looking burn make-up, but in turn receives all the best lines. ("I normally don't need that many.") He provides most of the film's much-needed comic relief and seems to have the biggest heart of anyone, but he also bears the brunt of society's cruelest treatment. As far as realism goes, that sounds about right.

John Leguizamo as Cholo (an actor for whom I don't normally care), likewise, cheeses it up all over the map. He knows what kind of film he's in and he enjoys going off the deep end in his normal John Leguizamo way. I'm actually a little surprised at how enthusiastic he was about being involved in such a project; I often wonder how A-list Hollywood regards not just the horror genre, but the fiercely independent side with which I sometimes think only hardcore horror nutballs are familiar. Speaking of horror nutballs, Asia Argento (daughter of the famed director Dario) shares the majority of the screen time with Riley as Slack, a former soldier and now prostitute forced to work the streets for Kaufman. She does pretty okay, as she was never the strongest actor, but she looks more at home than anyone else swinging weapons into zomb faces and delivering some pretty questionable dialogue. Also, her short skirt and body fishnets aren't the worst thing on Planet Earth.

(Lastly, check out the 0:47 minute mark for a cameo by a three-foot high version of Catherine Keener. Wah-wah!)

The political subtext, without which Romero's films would be admittedly less interesting, is ever present; it was pretty relevant in 2005, but has never been more relevant than right now. The super rich live high and mighty and safe in their golden towers, shielded from the outside threat, while the poor live with barbed-wire-thin security from that same threat. Are they safe? Perhaps. But there's not much between them and total bloody chaos. Romero takes it one step further and says when shit really hits the fan, it doesn't matter how many zeroes are in your bank account: your ass gone get et.

Strictly on a technical level, Land looks great. Romero, who has been making zombie films for nearly FIFTY YEARS, lacks nowhere in enthusiasm. "I love these guys!" he once said about his zombies, and it shows. He's definitely not conservative with the gore gags, even within the stifling confines of a major studio's restrictions. The scope of the film can sometimes feel stunted, as we never get a real feel for the scope of Fiddler's Green, but it looks gorgeous - even the night shoots, which are hard to pull off. And the scene where Big Daddy's zombies slowly emerge from the foggy river waters is the stuff of goosebumps.

Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil, whose most recent and amazing score for Cloud Atlas captivated audiences, provide a very percussion-driven anthem for Romero's tapestry of destruction. Gone are the days of Goblin, John Harrison, and library music; Land's music is big and jarring. The stand-out track (called "To Canada" on the official soundtrack release) is so fucking good that it appears three times.

And another thing: Earlier, when I said Romero never carried over older characters from one sequel to another? I lied:

Additionally, Romero's ability for black comedy is ever in place: listen during the zombie invasion for the automated voice of Fiddler's Green reassuring its occupants that Kaufman will always be there for them in times of danger...as he flees with his chauffeur to his car, his bags stuffed to the gills with all the cash he could carry.

In the Romero zombie pantheon, he hit the ground running with Night, peaked with Dawn, continued with the less-impressive-by-comparison Day, and went out somewhat unceremoniously but still nicely with Land. Even among those fans who consider Land to be quite strong, methinks they would still rank it last, and that's okay. Being the last in the race doesn't necessarily mean you suck; it just means you're the least good.

If I were to have an issue with Land of the Dead, it's this: from Night through Day, the zombies were always the main threat, and under it played out the mini and man-made conflicts to make the story socially relevant. But in Land, for the first time, the zombies are the back drop. Don't get me wrong, rotting ghoul faces fill the majority of the frames, and their absence is never more than brief. But Cholo's theft of the Dead Reckoning and Riley's vow to get it back in exchange for a one-way ticket out of the city is the main conflict, relegating the zombies to supporting players - as things to be simply dealt with while the fight over Dead Reckoning continues. Because of this, and for the first time, I sometimes wonder to myself as the closing credits play, "What was the point of this film?" I know, I know: Such a confession kinda makes all of the above and below null and void, right? "Except for the film not having a point, I really liked it!" And that's...kind of a problem. That's the last thing you want your audience to wonder as they file out of the theater.

But then again, Romero wanted to make a point about rich vs. poor, and he certainly did. In the process, people were ripped apart, decapitated, blown to crispy critters - all done with a wink and a smile. In the climax, when the zombs storm the Green and eviscerate the high-falootin rich - people, mind you, to whom we have not been introduced - we enjoy seeing them get ripped apart. And not in the "I'm watching a zombie film!" kind of way, but in the way that secretly satisfies the blood lust in us, and scratches that itch we have in terms of the hate we have for the top "1%". In this country, the rich belong to the most exclusive social club in the world, and, like Cholo, we'll try our whole lives trying to get in, only to be denied. They consume most of the country's wealth, so let Romero's army of the undead consume them in kind.

Romero may not be on top of his game anymore, and if Land were to be his last..at least debated-over film (as to its quality), I say fine with me. Twenty years later, his successful trilogy became a successful quadrilogy, and that's pretty fucking cool.