dmcebabb

It's a remake of Night of the Living Dead. But Barbara is replaced with Adam, who seems to be based off of stereotypes of gay men from 80's comedies, and is called "boy" and "kid" (despite being in his 30s) and treated like he has an intellectual disability or something (at least Barbara was clearly in shock). Ben has been about 15% "urbanized", as evidenced by his dialogue (I miss Duane Jones, or Tony Todd channelling Mr. Jones, and wish Aswan Harris's take skewed closer to one of those). Harry's made even worse than before by making him racist and homophobic (in case it wasn't clear we're not supposed to root for him), turning a creepy guy who might be concerned for his family into a two dimensional prop. And of course, you can't have a Christian villain in a horror movie not curse, but Harry is practically a fountain of profanity (when he's not menacing our gay anti-hero). So yay? Preppy Johnnie is now Face Tat Johnnie, Helen... Helen actually gets some depth and an actress who can carry the material, and is honestly one of the few high point of the film in terms of quality and creativity. The remaining characters are just kind of there filling the original roles, with a new "not all old white men from the country are jerks" character, that otherwise serves no function than to remind the audience that not all old white men from the country are jerks (which, aside from "Tucker and Dale vs Evil" hasn't really been done much).

As for the zombies... they're slow, they're killed by headshots, they growl in a way that'd be more effective if the sound balancing was better. And their eyes glow for some unexplained reason, which I'm fine with in theory. I'm not going to argue over how many buttons a leprechaun's jacket can have, and I won't argue over whether or not fictional monsters can have glowing eyes. In practice though, I think it was done to try and help add menace to zombies compensation for their often (but not always!) mediocre make up effects. Seeing a bunch of zombie eyes "blink on" as they close to attack is almost creepy. The movies "Demons" and "Demons 2" made it work okay through practical effects, shame it looks so cheap here due to CG.

But character tweaks aside, this is the kind of zombie movie that couldn't afford zombies smashing windows (or heroes barricading said windows). The kind of film where right before the heroes open a door to see how many zombies are outside, one of them looks out the windows of said door (meanwhile, in a later scene we discover the house has a balcony, so there's that). The kind of film that really needed someone to ask the director/writer "do you really need this shot?" and "why do they throw away their torches when they know the dead are scared of fire" and "do we really need to be reminded that Adam is off screen being worthless, again?" Honestly, a good chunk could be forgiven if Ben turned to Helen and explained "I have a cousin who is gay, they just need a little help. Hey buddy, would you like a juice box? I got the straw ready for you."

Seriously though, there's some genuinely good ideas here, but the execution would've benefitted a lot by someone doing good storyboards beforehand (even stick figures are fine!), and then allowing someone to come in and challenge the weaker aspects of the film. And that's ignoring the issues due to budget limits.

The good: I watch a lot of cheaply made indy horror, and this movie is very professional in terms of cinematography and sound (granted, I watch with subtitles, but still). The use of little thematically linked vignettes was an interesting experimental touch, as was making the radio announcements a world-expanding expository extra "character". And I even liked the spore idea itself; the practical effects for it were (mostly) decent for such a low budget production.

The bad: the dialogue is often stilted leading to it being delivered without any convincing emotion. The constant insistence people have on touching the infected borders on comical (that it's used to drive the "plot" of these vignettes is no excuse). The final form of the spore (you'll know it when you see it) was also rather comical, and unnecessary given the earlier (and more effective) mutations shown. Probably a case for "don't show the monster" arguments.

All in all I don't regret watching this movie, and I'd like to see what the writer/director can do with some more growth, but I would just barely recommend it to someone.

Okay, so it's got lots of female nudity. And weird inverted crosses. And pentagonal roses? And the coolest laser guns I've seen since laser guns were put in movies. And sweet space ship designs. And a monstrously impressive sound track. And absolutely no coherent script to explain much of any of this. Something something machine revolt? Feminist power? I don't know.

It's like a 14 year old dropped acid and made his fantasies into a featurette. Except with a better FX budget and musical score.

Well worth a watch, just expect a long form experimental music video instead of an actual story. And what a music video it is.

(I'd also recommend people check out the music video for Turbo Killer elsewhere (you can guess where) to get more-of-the-same, but in a SFW and shorter form)