January 29th, 2008

I should probably deal with each of these individually, but I'd rather lump them all together like an uninspired sloth so I only feel obligated to do one graphic. Such is the breadth of my dedication.

Land of the Dead

I have a weakness for fellow Pittsburgher George Romero and his awesomely tacky goreographer, Tom Savini, also a Pittsburgher (and the only man in Hollywood who's worked as an actor, stuntman, director and makeup artist). I even saw Romero present his awful Bruiser in a small venue at the University of Pittsburgh, becoming gradually more crestfallen as I watched, beginning to suspect that this genre originator had no good work left in him.

So I was pleased to see Land of the Dead, a film that did pretty well critically in a genre that's rapidly being reduced to "Slow zombies are boring; fast zombies are sweet; zoom zoom!"

If I start talking about the original slow zombie formula and how that was a different, new kind of claustrophobic mechanism, I'll write fifteen paragraphs, forget my point, and wrap up with a tenuous analogy involving capitalism or the Bill of Rights or something. So I won't.

Instead I'll just say that I enjoyed this film despite its faults, even though I'm aware that most people didn't. Part of it is certainly Romero's local inside jokes, like naming his authoritarian villain Kaufman (after our city's former patriarch) and using fireworks as the plot device that awes his Steel City zombies (Pittsburghers are notoriously captivated by fireworks, and employ them at every conceivable opportunity). There's a very specific target audience for whom this film is fun--Pittsburgh zombie buffs--and I include myself in that category.

The film itself doesn't feature the unrelenting ferocity of 28 Weeks Later or the ingenuity of Night of the Living Dead. But Romero's trying to extend the theme he started in Day of the Dead, and for what it's worth, he's probably the only person other than Danny Boyle who's exploring the psychology behind the subgenre he created.

For the people who share my sense of humor, in the end all I need to say is this: Land of the Dead starts out with a small, unenthusiastic zombie band standing in a gazebo. Only the tambourine and French horn zombies appear interested in haltingly and confusedly playing their instruments. The dejected trumpeter zombie merely strikes the side of the gazebo halfheartedly with his trumpet. Over and over, for all eternity, like the catatonic test audience that must have been produced by screening Alone in the Dark.

The Last Winter

It's unfortunate that The Last Winter follows the typical film convention of, you know, actually resolving the plot, because you can almost never do that in a tension-building horror with an unseen force at work and end up feeling fulfilled by it. Visualizing the thing is never sufficiently greater than the sum of the individual moments of terror it comprises. But in this case, if you close your eyes, clap your hands over your ears, and go "La la la!" during that part, this is a remarkable sophisticated and intelligent entry in a genre that's usually pretty infantile.

Mainstream critics tend to disapprove of horror, and there's a counter-movement of critics who adore horror to balance them out. I'd like to think they'd enjoy The Last Winter, because this is for the most part a well-acted, well-directed film about isolation and despair, rather like John Carpenter's thoroughly underappreciated The Thing. I'll allow that it's slow; If you fall asleep fifteen minutes in, I'd understand that. If the crux of the film feels thoroughly ridiculous, I empathize. But I'm willing to forgive a great deal if a film is otherwise very good, and this is one of those cases. Also it features Ron Perlman, whom I have for some reason always considered awesome.

Incidentally, Wendigo's Larry Fessenden directs this film. You know what else he does?

> Co-writes
> Edits
> Produces
> Plays a bit part
> Sings backup vocals in the end credits
> Plays the saxophone

If I tried to do even one of those things I'd probably just make a mess and start crying.

Resident Evil: Extinction

Resident Evil: Extinction begins with Milla killing a guy by kicking him once and an action sequence involving dogs who have very tenuous control over their own momentum. Nearly every shot-countershot during this sequence shows the action, then cuts to the reaction of a hideous fat woman. These cutaways happen with such regularity that you become uncertain whether the main character of this film is Milla Jovovich or this cackling blob harpy.

Shortly thereafter, we switch characters, and make a very important point about pop culture in the process. Hey, filmmakers: trying to establish that your multicultural parade of random stereotypes is badass with "Ina Gadda Da Vida" doesn't work anymore. It hasn't worked since before your target audience was born. All it tells us now is that you're old and you wear loafers without socks, and you were probably a pretty big fan of acid for a while there.

Probably the most preposterous thing to happen in this film--and let's keep in mind that it's an apocalyptic video-game-based action/horror movie--happens in a meeting. A scientist proposes to a room full of men that it would be a smashing idea to make the vast zombie hordes roaming the planet intelligent. "You're a lunatic," the men do not say, and instead all agree that crafty undead would be a fucking great idea.

In a continued demonstration of their cleverness, some more of these scientists engage in the requisite scene where they lock themselves in with a zombie and trust implicitly that its restraints are unbreakable. Obviously, this is always a terrible, terrible idea. You are one hundred percent guaranteed not to be able to contain the damn zombie. And of course you're scientists, so not one of you is capable of holding a gun, and you'll just squeal in terror once the zombie has escaped and is killing the other scientists, either recoiling ineffectually or clawing frantically at the sealed door. Your experiments will yield no helpful results and you'll all get eaten. This never doesn't happen.

But back to Milla, because let's be honest, she's the only reason to see any of these movies; we all realized upon watching the first one that they weren't going to have a damn thing to do with the games anyway, which is probably just as well. Milla, considerate heroine that she is, carries around a notebook that contains the plot. It's filled with lots of painfully overexplained observations and prodigious trite commentary reminiscent of Jewel.

Milla captions a picture of a man and a horse with the word "carefree," perhaps indicating that they are carefree.
Later she's written a little... I don't fucking know what to call this. It's... It's just... aaaaargh

To be as fair as possible, this film really isn't completely abysmal. And by this point I hope it's clear that when I say that, what I mean is "this film is better than Alone in the Dark," which it is. I mean, it's pretty bad, and it contains a completely uncalled-for theft from The Birds, but it also contains Milla Jovovich in a surprisingly well-designed and cool-looking costume, jumping around and killing zombies. Which is pretty much all you can reasonably expect from a sequel to movie only nominally based on a game.

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