Rhapsodies

For the second week of my Halloween film marathon, I decided to go with the genre that I’ve been avoiding for me in the year, zombie apocalypse. 

I thought I’d start at the beginning, or more accurately close to the beginning, with the second film of George A. Romero‘s zombies series, Dawn of the Dead. It’s been a couple of days since the events of Night of the Living Dead, and the raising of the dead has led to the collapse of civilization as we know it. Fleeing the chaos of the cities, a small band of people finds shelter in an indoor shopping mall. But how long can they last as the dead hammer on the doors? 

I can’t say that I liked this film quite as much as Romero’s original film. Perhaps it’s because that since I know quite a bit about visual effects, or maybe because I heard just how much Romero likes to be overly theatrical in his directing style, that  I did not find this film as gory as most people do. Because of this, I found myself paying much more attention to its satirical elements. Technically, it’s not a parody of the zombie film since Romero was inventing the genre virtually from whole cloth. Because of this, it becomes a satire of 80s consumerism with the zombies doubling as the jaded masses.

For the most part, I had some trouble even considering this a horror film. Since the zombies are so slow and so stupid and hardly a danger at all. I had trouble imagining how they could’ve destroyed civilization as shown in the movie. In fact, I kept imagining that after the initial panic they would be very easy for the civil authorities to deal with. 

Still, it was funny and very well done in its own bizarre way.

From one of the first films of this genre, we go to a more recent example, where all of the clichés have been identified and labeled and ready for parody. This is the Zombieland. 

The zombie plague has occurred and amongst a mob of carnivorous zombies, all that remains are a small number of survivors. One of the survivors, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg)(Nobody  ever wants to learn anybody’s names so as not to get too attached to potential victims, so everybody is identified by the city they were born in.) missed the outbreak simply by being in his apartment playing Warcraft and has survived since by sticking to a long list of rules for his own survival and has been gradually drifting  back to Ohio in a desperate attempt to find his family. He soon runs into some companions, the ax crazy Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson having the time of his life hamming it up) and cute con artists Wichita (Emma Stone )and Little Rock. (Abigail Breslin). He learns that Columbas, Ohio has been destroyed by the Zombies and how having no other destination, he joins the others to travel to  Pacific Playland the greatest amusement park in California. Rumor says it’s zombie-free. (no it’s not) 

This was a fun stupid romp that’s all about bashing zombies. It’s actually surprisingly well thought out, though the problem with the genre is that if you think about them too much is they fall apart faster than superhero films.