The Dead Hate the Living!

I'm so tired of supposedly clever, overly self-conscious horror films. I know there are generational differences and a lot of people find this type of thing humorous and hip. In the early 90's, there was a film called "There's Nothing Out There" which was about a slimy green monster from outer space killing vacationing teens at a house in the woods over Spring Break. There was a horror movie nut who bothered everybody by making references to other horror films. At the time, that seemed funny and the movie itself is a ragged, messy charmer. I believe this is the film Kevin Williamson used to help him along in writing the script for "Scream", which while I did enjoy it, has hurt the horror genre through it's lazy deconstruction of modern horror. "The Dead Hate The Living" is a bandwagon film that only goes to show that even with a larger than usual budget and good intentions (but obviously pandering to the "Scream" demographic), a horror movie you cannot make.

I do have a theory that maybe people who like horror a little too much and are too eager to please cannot make a decent, serious horror picture. I do have a problem with people who like references to Warbeck and Campbell and Fulci. Do you like being patronized? I don't think you do. Why do you make special concessions for filmmakers who obviously take the easy way out by making you feel superior because you can pick up on what are basically pop-culture references? All the horror films of the past we champion have none of these obvious references. Are we so devoid of creativity or original thought (or filmmaking prowess) that we cannot make(or get to see) a good horror film anymore? I think they got us in a box and we can't get out.

Okay, so those of us that love Horror movies: we understand that even the best directors and screenwriters are influenced by the Greats - Fulci, Argento, Carpenter, Savini. What we also understand is that a great Horror movie is more than the sum of it's parts. It's more than in-jokes and snappy lines and `homages' to the above mentioned Greats.

These reasons are exactly why this movie doesn't work.

In a nutshell, this is a movie in a movie - because *that's* never been done before. A group of film-makers attempt to make a zombie movie in an abandoned hospital. Along the way they find an actual corpse, and because every film student knows that using an actual corpse as well as and breaking and entering make for excellent movies, they incorporate it into their film. Because there isn't a brain among them, and somehow the director convinces them that this is what dedicated filmmakers do, they accidentally re-animate the corpse and open a portal to a `zombie' dimension. People die, lots of blood and cranberry sauce gets spilled, and the movie ends without any real resolution.

Somehow, the director/screenwriter, Dave Parker, thought that horror fans would appreciate the absolute littering of obscure names of people in the industry and the constant barrage of scenes ripped off from other movies would make us happy. He got it into his head that we would enjoy watching re-hashed scenes and brain-numbing dialogue. Yes, Dave, I like watching characters doing stupid things because I, like you, have nothing better to do than sit in my mother's basements watching reel after reel of crappy horror movies before dashing off to our jobs at the local video store. Here's a thought, Dave - Horror fans want a movie that's scary, original - and dare I say it - fun! Not some asinine piece of crap jigged together from movies that we haven't seen in 20 years.

Then, because furthering torturing myself seemed like a good idea at the time, I watched the movie again with the commentary track, thinking that I would get some insight into why someone would waste perfectly good film on something like this, and instead I get what amounts to a circle jerk of the stars and the director patting each other on the back.

Pardon me for being harsh.

What I discovered, to my true horror, was that the director intentionally set out to make a horror movie that was bad, and assumed that his savvy audience would appreciate the cheesy lines and nods to the people he was ripping off. There were so many nods, his head was blur.

I generally like movies produced by Full Moon Pictures. After all, they gave us such tongue in cheek gems as PUPPET MASTER, DOLLMAN VERSES DEMONIC TOYS, the beautifully haunting MERIDAN, and my all-time favorite, PIT AND THE PENDULUM, starring Lance Henrikson. There is a difference between an original movie that's corny and fun and a movie that can't distinguish between `homage' and pure cat yak.

Watching this movie is the equivalent to digging out your own eyes with a dirty spoon.

I liked SCREAM as much as the next guy, but it's all but ruined horror films from 1996 and beyond. It's a shame to see it rub off on so many young horror filmmakers and an even bigger shame that they allow an overabundance of film references and endless blabber about various horror films to take the place of a plot and REAL dialogue. It's really a lazy way to construct a movie and really just a way to demonstrate the filmmakers know their s**t. Who really cares? And if they DO watch and love the horror films of Romero and Fulci, they'd know that nothing is worth sacrificing atmosphere, scares and a true sense of humor over. This movie is also derivative in its style- it is well photographed and richly colored in different shades, but even THAT aspect is just copycatting Dario Argento.

Everyone has already summed up the confusing "plot," of this Full Moon feature, so I won't waste time on it, just to say that THE DEAD HATE THE LIVING is made up of so many different elements from so many other zombie/horror movies that its OWN identity becomes lost in the shuffle and it doesn't quite make it as a comedy, a parody OR a horror film. However, I think some of the cast members (Jamie Donahue, Brett Beardslee..) have the potential to make an impression in the horror genre given the right opportunities.

Score: 3 out of 10.

I am still wondering what I was thinking when I rented this. I read about it in Fango and remembered them talking about how their zombies didn't eat human flesh, they just wanted to rip humans up, due to the fact that "it costs too much" to show cannibalism. I guess the premise of some filmmakers making a zombie flick in an abandomed asylum/hospital/whatever it was only to find real zombies there seemed sort of neat. MAN was I wrong. I knew I had made a huge error in judgement by renting it when early on, there is a scene where a supposedly 'hot' blonde babe wearing all black or course, goes into a convenience store for supplies. The cashier leers at her while ringing it up, then says, "that'll be $36.97" and she simply takes the sack, glares at him, and walks off making some rude comment. He just stares at her. You know what they forgot to include in the scene? See, there's this tradition when you make a purchase where after you find out the total, you **actually give the salesperson some form of currency in exchange for your items**. And the guy doesn't remark in any way about her not paying (or make any remark at all), so you know it was just sheer sloppiness on the part of the filmmakers. It just got worse from there. The worst make-up effects I've seen in quite some time, and that's saying a lot. THe previous reviewer was right, the stupid "skull" makeup on some guy playing a zombie actually gets less realistic when he turns into a zombie for real. I would like to give them a little credit for using air bladders instead of CGI (yeah, like they could afford it), but they actually parts of a guy's skeleton stretching like it was made of rubber. Little hint when you use air bladders guys, try to restrict them to parts of the body that actually stretch. One particularly bad effect was fake teeth, supposed to be part of the skull showing through, that actually were visibly glued on top of his upper lip (there was a second set underneath). Please note that I am making the effect sound more realistic than it was. The acting was slightly above average, but with lines like, "I think we've slipped into some kind of, like, netherworld, man" what can ya do? The plot seemed like it was being made up as they went along. There were elements that just plain insulted the audience's intelligence, such as a zombie whose main feature was that he visibly lacked any semblance of a nose, sniffing someone to see if they were human. I could predict everything before it happened. Don't even get me started on the much better films that they ripped off blatantly (and DON'T try to tell me they were homages, I know the difference) such as Fright Night, Alien 4, Dusk Till Dawn, all the Evil Dead Movies...those are just off the top of my head, too. At one point, the Rob Zombie character says, "Make them die...slowly" and I guess we are supposed to be impressed that they tossed in a reference to the cannibal flick of the same name. As far as the ending, they seem to have just ran out of money and film as many threads were left hanging (I have a horrible feeling this is because they were planning a sequel). Oh, and the credits were lifted from se7en. God, I wish I'd read the reviews here before I wasted 3 bucks and 90 minutes of my life on this stupid peice of s***!

I write this review with serious doubts that anyone will have kept reading through all the 50-odd previous comments to get here. There is, however, the problem that this movie is getting some seriously mixed reviews here. In order to do my part, I cast my vote for "It Sucked!" and hope I can save someone the depression that follows renting a movie with glowing quotes on the box, only to wonder if those quotes weren't from the people who actually made the film.

I'll give it this; it's an educated film. Made for horror fans, by horror fans (who have a shoestring budget and no sense of continuity). Throughout the movie you'll see various references to influential directors (I saw the "Stab" poster, and as far as I know "Nails" cigarettes don't exist outside Kevin Smith movies) and various homages to previous zombie movies (like, all of them). This is, unfortunately, one of it's downfalls because much of the movie is extremely predictable. Also, the director tries to run with what works in the genre (anxiety, extra gore, handy power tools {Where the hell did that chainsaw even come from?}), but it is often executed poorly, regardless of budget. I didn't expect Citizen Kane here, but I also didn't expect a home movie made in a weekend.

For horror fans who think they can look past the directorial mishaps, think again. The zombie volume is next to nothing (2 henchmen zombies and a couple dozen shady figures in cobwebs), the special effects just remind you how crappy the film is (if someone is getting electrocuted, sparks will do nicely, we don't need this crappy cgi fireworks display that looks like a screen saver), and the death scenes are mostly tame (1. character vanishes in mist, throw bucket of blood from off camera. 2. Character has head removed, off screen. Carry crappy fake head back into scene. etc.). The irony here is that the characters in the movie were in the process of filming their own horror movie which actually looked better than the one they got caught up in.

So why did I give it a 3/10 and not a 1/10? Well hell, I can't make a movie. The effort alone is always worth something, no matter what the outcome.