Doc of the Dead

Cough, sorry about that, talk of zombies makes me hungry.

The zombie fascination has reached pandemic levels and Doc of the Dead examines how fans have reached voracious fixation from humble beginnings in the 1930s.

Examining the evolution of the zombie with a decidedly American perspective, Doc of the Dead researches the horror sub-genre in just 80 minutes.

This is not a historical documentary, nor should you expect an anthropologically critical probe into zombie lore. The film glosses over the true beginnings of human reanimation of the dead and how it came to be this inherent sensational fear within humanity.

Doc of the Dead is a documentary of the modern American zombie film. It starts with the widely acknowledge first zombie movie, 1932′s White Zombie, and then quickly skips right to George A. Romero's 1968 Night of the Living Dead. Romero is the focus of most of the film history perspective and he is attributed as the seminal father of the zombie flick. It then jumps ahead to the funny zombie of the 1980s with Return of the Living Dead and by the 20 minute mark we are at the modern day zombie of the 2000s as in 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead, The Walking Dead and beyond.

As the film delves into the zombie variations as a species it tracks back to other pivotal films like The Evil Dead and Re-Animator. Doc of the Dead investigates the fast versus slow zombie, the charming versus bloodthirsty zombie, and the arguments for different sides.

My greatest criticism of the documentary is its unnecessary focus on how zombie culture has evolved into this integrated and participatory immersion. 45 minutes are wasted highlighting the different zombie walks, products and consumerism. It completely veers off its clear direction for the second half of the documentary. Rather than charting zombie history chronologically as it does for the first twenty minutes, this preoccupation with pop culture causes the documentary to lurch about through time aimlessly.

Without that filler, the film's writers and director Alexandre O. Philippe and Chad Herschberger easily could have utilized the knowledge of the experts involved. Max Brooks, Tom Savini, Greg Nicotero and countless others' zombie insight is vastly underutilized. Further, the movie can not claim to be a comprehensive zombie documentary while ignoring foreign contributors such as Lucio Fulci and Italian zombie cinema, French zombie and Asian zombie horror.

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I'd seen The People VS George Lucas and 78/52 in the past, both done by the same director behind Doc of the Dead. Neither were perfect documentaries, but both proved very satisfying and at least stuck efficiently to an interesting topic for their whole duration. This one starts strong, and features a brief but entertaining and informative breakdown of the zombie sub-genre throughout film history. It starts with the 1930s, and then explains how the genre really blew up and developed through Romero's trilogy that began with Night of the Living Dead. I also enjoyed the range of relevant people they managed to interview, including Bruce Campbell, Simon Pegg, as well as the late and great George Romero himself. But once it deviates from the film side of things, the quality starts to waver, and overall it becomes incredibly inconsistent.

The impact that the zombie sub-genre has had on the world at large is interesting, don't get me wrong. But I don't think it should have been the focus of the documentary here, especially when the filmmaking-related stuff that's discussed throughout the first third or so is as interesting as it was. And based on the director's other film-related documentaries, film analysis is clearly a strength of his, and the thing he should've doubled down on here too, in my opinion. Is it worth mentioning crazy things like zombie walks, and maybe briefly mentioning the people who perhaps take it too seriously? Sure. But spending time on interviewing a sex therapist about people's strange attraction to zombies, as well probable nut-job survivalists, who think a zombie outbreak is inevitable? Not so much, especially if you're not going to focus on them- the film does this awkward thing where it tackles less interesting subjects and does much more than simply mention them, but doesn't do enough to fully explore them and make them interesting.

Come for the first 20-30 minutes, tolerate the next 20, and be prepared to have your patience tested in points throughout the last 30 or so minutes. There's too much good stuff here to ignore this documentary outright: information and opinions about the Romero trilogy, its influence, the way zombie films have adapted to reflect certain fears and pressing societal issues, as well as giving Shaun of the Dead a great deal of credit for being a legitimate and classic zombie film (Romero giving his approval for it being the best zombie film he didn't make was a highlight, as I've always maintained that both his "Dawn" and Edgar Wright's "Shaun" are the two greatest zombie films of all time) is all great. And the broader cultural stuff is moderately interesting, but again, ultimately not as engaging. It either needed more focus to establish a good reason for me to be interested, or less focus in order to make room for the stuff that definitely was interesting.

Also somewhat unfortunate is the way that zombies have somewhat died off in the last five or so years. It makes many of the interviewees' claims regarding the craze continuing into the future unintentionally funny. Nowadays, there seems to be a definite fatigue that's set in regarding The Walking Dead (I personally know many people who enjoyed it thoroughly but gave up around season 6 or 7), and World War Z is propped up as an example of zombie movies getting huge budgets and going mainstream... yet since then, it's had neither a sequel, nor has it inspired anything of a comparable scope. Not marking the documentary down as a result of this; it's just worth mentioning as something that's slightly amusing.

If you love zombie movies, you might get a few new tidbits of information out of the documentary's more entertaining sections. If you haven't watched many zombie movies and want a breakdown of what all the fuss is (or was) about, I could definitely recommend the first half or so of what's already a relatively short documentary. Otherwise, this is far from essential viewing, albeit not a terrible experience if you do decide to give it a shot.

The definitive zombie culture documentary? Brought to the screen by the makers of "The People vs. George Lucas".

My biggest issue is that this film seems to want to cover both the zombie culture and the film history. There are segments where a first-person camera angle has a man in a zombie outbreak that was completely unnecessary.

The film says we all "collectively agree" the zombie film started with "White Zombie" (1932). That seems a bit late to me, but I cannot think of an earlier example. There is some good discussion of Haitian zombies, though it might have been nice to have a clip from "Serpent an the Rainbow".

As we all seem to agree, George Romero changed everything, even though his creatures were introduced as "ghouls" and not zombies. His creature introduced the idea of being turned by a bite. And, of course, "Dawn of the Dead" is the pinnacle of zombie film. And we must recognize the parallel between Bub (Howard Sherman) and Frankenstein's monster (Boris Karloff). Sadly, he went downhill after that.

One commentator suggests the idea of a widespread apocalypse got more popular after 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. Is this true? Perhaps. But I think it also just became more and more affordable to make films as we have switched to cheap digital.

Another reviewer pointed out there is a complete lack of Italian horror in this film. Good point. How influential they were to the overall culture today is debatable, but certainly Fulci's "Zombi" is among the biggest of its time and worth mentioning alongside Romero.

In the last decade or so zombies have left the underground and become mainstream. It's a somewhat strange state of affairs and one that this documentary tries to explain. It looks at zombies in two main ways – their evolution in the movies and their appearance in recent culture. The film history part is the more interesting. It looks at the old style somnambulist zombies of the 30's and 40's typified by the likes of White Zombie, through to the more modern incarnation invented by George A. Romero with The Night of the Living Dead. It would only be fair to say that this latter film is truly the year zero in how the vast majority of people in western culture understand zombies, i.e. shambling, rotting, flesh-eating ghouls who attack humans at every given opportunity and can only be killed by a bullet in the head. The old-style Haitian type of zombie is much less seen these days, nor the Japanese variant which…hops! No, its Romero all the way these days, which is what makes it rather a strange phenomenon to become embraced by mainstream culture considering how grotesque and frightening his concept for the living dead actually is. While the film history part is the strongest it doesn't have time to reference a lot of the most loved entries in the genre, particularly the work of Italian director Lucio Fulci. But the reason is simply that the focus is on the zombie idea in general and not just on the movies and there simply isn't time.

It did lose steam a bit once it leaves the film history side of things though and moved onto the wider cultural impact. It becomes a bit bitty and spends time looking at aspects that aren't terribly interesting. Not only that but, a very brief passing reference aside, it inexplicably fails to focus on the one true moment when the zombie truly tapped into mainstream culture, namely Michael Jackson's Thriller video. Chronologically it's all over the place and there isn't a feeling of understanding the progression from how we really got from NOTLD to the recent craze for zombie walks. I don't really believe in the assertion that it's to do with the September the 11th terrorist attacks which was suggested. But, whatever the case, the documentary does show that zombies really are everywhere now. It is a fun, if flawed, film. There are several very funny moments too. But unlike the undead themselves, it doesn't have a single purpose it relentlessly pursues and instead kind of splits its focus too much.

Why are zombies popular right now? How did they get so far? This is what this documentary is about. So if you expect to see many bits from horror movies, you'll be disappointed. This also isn't a history of zombie movies in general and you won't find much about the games here either. One omission I really thought should've been in there, is the "bath salt" thing that happened. Something that the media connected with zombies for some crazy reason. This might be in the extras on the DVD though, as the director said at Frightfest, where the documentary was playing.

One of the surprising things watching, was Romeros stance on zombie walks (another phenomenon that keeps getting bigger and bigger). The "Godfather of the zombie genre" (as he is called by many, with Fulci not available obviously for comments) has a big part in this. He is as normal as always, bedazzled/surprised himself about the success his undead (he wanted to call them Ghouls initially) have right now. Not the best documentary made, but if you like to look a bit behind the current hype (with not much knowledge beforehand), you could do worse