Steevh

Nobody reads long reviews here, and nobody's ever got a job through writing a witty or insightful thing on IMDb. So, what is there to say about Survival? It's fantastic! Very funny, very clever, very gory. A great plot, which is significantly different to what Romero has given us before, populated with characters I actually wanted to spend time with. An audacious plot-twist partway through spins several of the characters on their heads and the zombies continue to bleakly follow what they did in life- a Romero staple, here shown more vividly than ever before.

It looks beautiful, is jam-packed with splashy grue, made me laugh like a drain in parts and inhale sharply in others, and whether or not you liked Diary (I did) I strongly advise you to see it.

Oh, and the score is magnificent. Best one since Day.

Now please, George, can we have a third film set in this "new" continuity- preferably following the remaining characters from Survival to wherever they end up next?

Well, I'd waited a long time for this. With retrospect, however, I really shouldn't have worked myself up into quite so much of a lather. Brian Yuzna has never, with the possible exception of 'Return of the Living Dead 3', made a decent movie. Always he has hung on the coat tails of the infinitely more talented Stuart Gordon, directing poorly imagined, diluted versions of what his mentor may have done. 'Bride' was no exception, and neither's this.

Everything about 'Beyond' is wrong, and cheap, and lazy, and a waste of time. Coming so quickly on the heels of the similarly Euro-funded 'Dagon', 'Beyond ReAnimator' really does show up Yuzna's ineptitude as a filmmaker. Where 'Dagon' was fresh and exciting and chock full of dark visual delights, 'Beyond' flounders in a sea of half-hearted production values, lame plotting, 'acting' that is really just reading words aloud and mostly hitting marks, underused and unimaginitve effects works and so many other needlessly depressing things that it casts a big black cloud over my head just writing them in a review of what should have been one of the most appreciated horror movies of the year. Seriously, this movie really got me down. That we could be made to wait thirteen years for a third film and then be faced with this entry-level piece of drivel... Argh! Why were they so shy to do one before this? Don't tell me they were waiting for Yuzna!

Jeff Combs as Herbert West is always going to be one of horror's great characters, but he deserves better than this. If anyone puts up the money for a further installment, let's hope that they do so only on the proviso that Brian Yuzna is kept away from it at all costs.

Deeply depressing, dull and pointless. Not a decent effect, funny line or memorable scene in the whole thing. And my copy of the DVD was buggered too, skipping and stalling. Shoddy, shoddy, shoddy.

As a long-time fan of the original, I fully expected to hate this with the vehemence with which I hated the last 'remake' they made- the appallingly titled and just plain dreadful 'TCM-The Next Generation'.

Instead I walked out of the cinema elated that I'd seen, for the first time since 'Blair Witch' four years ago, a movie that had actually scared the hell out of me.

The Hooper original was one of the first modern horror movies I saw, way back in about 1985 which, along with American Werewolf, first turned me on to the genre. Long have I championed it's cause to those who haven't seen it and heavy do my shelves groan under the weight of Chainsaw-related stuff. Well, a few videos, some DVDs, some books and a dusty Leatherface model anyway. This new one though... wow! Like some skewed night-terror version of familiar events we've experienced a hundred times, the 2003 TCM twists off the established track and takes us places we would rather not go. The controversial face-reveal, the unexpected demise of the hitcher, the dust-dry bright Texan farmhouse of the original replaced by the dripping, dark, underground slaughterhouse, the lack of a dinner scene, the nods to 'Psycho', the revenge-fuelled climax that distracts from the movie's core, only to disarm us against the knockout final jump scene... it was all pitch-perfect. Loved the Leatherface backstory, not because it gave him "depth" or "justification" but because it felt so *wrong* and once again served to create unease in a film where the unease is piled on thicker than headcheese.

I could go on. It has some flaws. That fat geek from that movie website turning up as a severed head was unnecessary and weak and merely serves to fuel his alarming ego. It suffers from the lack of an unsympathetic disabled character- a brave move in '73 conspicuous by its abcense in these politically correct days. The leads were too Hollywoody and maybe Mr. Face's mask wasn't *quite* as effective as the original. Maybe the labrynthian plot distracted from the slimline, no-nonsense linear nature of the original, but hell, I don't care. It gets a perfect ten from me and I demand a sequel. Best horror movie of the year and for several years.