I watched it today at an indie theather, and I’m trying to figure out if it’s just another arthouse movie that is too laden with allusions and symbolism for a dullard like me to get it.
Certainly there were moments that made me smile. Like the farmer’s hat and the dead lady muttering “Chardoney”. I liked the detention kids too, probably because they were the only ones behaving in a semi-relatable way. But that was it as far as entertainment…at least for me.
It seemed to me the two cop’s were trying to out “dead pan” each other. Chloe’s character’s kind of annoyed me with her wimpiness, but at least she had some emotions. And I know I was supposed to find it funny when they talked about the theme song and the script, but I did not. It just reminded me how insane I must be to have paid ten dollars to watch a movie like this. When the UFO came, I considered leaving. I felt like an idiot at that moment, truth be told. I instantly felt like the movie was made to frustrate people like me and that I was being toyed with.
I’ll admit it. I thought the movie was going to be good just because it has some great actors in it. So maybe that’s proof that I am stupid and I deserve to be toyed with? I thought it was going to be a so-bad-it’s-good movie like “Snakes on a Plane” or a funny-but-scary movie like “Arachnophobia”. I love me some camp mixed with horror. But I got none of these things from this movie. I also thought it might put an interesting twist on the zombie genre. So I was disappointed that the zombies weren’t even that zombie. Most didn’t even look like they’d been dead for a few days, let along years and decades. Their fixation on their favorite things was kinda funny, I guess. But they were still the same ole zombies you see in any other zombie movie, except not as dead looking.
Polar fracking is just a stand-in for all the shit we’re doing to the planet, and that shit is bound to come back to get us in a way that “doesn’t end well” but we still have to give it our best try. I may be an idiot, but I’m intelligent enough to be able to extract this message from the film. I’m sure there are other extractable messages too. But all the rando stuff–Tilda Swinton being a samurai master extraterrestrial, Geronimo getting the business from the muscle-bound guards at the detention center, the Prius and the Smart car, the farmer being a racist, the hermit finding Moby Dick in the woods, the three traveling friends–really seem, well, RANDO. And rando for no good reason. Unless, that is, I’m missing something.
I had never heard of this movie until now, but IMDB rates it at 5.8 and Rotten Tomatoes at 52%, so you’re not the only one who doesn’t like it.
If you thought it was a bad movie, then for you, it was.
I saw “Home Alone” in the theater with a friend when it was first released; I thought it was hilarious and she hated it, to the point where when she had kids, that movie and its sequels were banned from the house.
Heh, I once brought over a stack of videos years ago to a friend who was confined to bed for a while. We watched about four in a row together one day. Of the four, I loved Tremors and Wings of Desire. I hatedHome Alone. It actually put me to sleep in some places. I can’t remember the fourth, so it must having been a boring one.
The trailers misrepresent it as a standard zombie movie, loaded with stars. What it actually is your average Jim Jarmusch (sp?) movie- slow moving, “deep” talkfests. Same misrepresentation with his last film, “Only Lovers Left Alive” previews had one thinking it was a standard vampire movie, but no. I’m not even sure Jarmusch fans will like this one though.
No Cinemascore yet, which is odd, I am guessing C minus or lower, I could even see the rare ‘F’- reserved normally for bad horror and movies with trailers that misrepresent the movie.
I loved Only Lovers Left Alive, I had been looking forward to this movie but skipped it since the reviews have been so bad. It’s disappointing, since with the director and actors and it being a zombie movie it could have been fun.
I found it watchable, but those going in expecting a typical vampire movie might have felt misled- just as those who saw his Ghost Dog and were expecting a traditional samurai movie:)
I loved Only Lovers Left Alive, but this film was pretty meh. There were too many unresolved plot points, jokes that went on too long (like zombies mumbling words from their life, or everyone saying “a wild animal or possibly several wild animals”), stuff than never went anyway (the 3 Cleveland hipsters) or came out of nowhere (the mortician being an alien). I get the impression that the director was able to use his reputation to attract a great cast, but failed in the execution.
I did like the casting of Rosie Perez as a news reader. In a world where fracking can mess up the Earth’s axis and the logical consequence is reanimated dead people, then a news reader like Rosie Perez makes complete sense.
I’m bumping this old post because I just saw this movie over the weekend. It was movie #12 of a 13-movie, 30-hour, Sci-Fi Film Marathon I go to every year.
I didn’t read anything about the movie before I went in, and only knew the cast list and basic plot outline.
Honestly it was my favorite movie of the Marathon. My friend I was with agreed, it was his favorite too. We had seen that it had low ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB and afterwards posited maybe it was the victim of right-wing trolls and bots.
But, reading the IMDB reviews now and seeing monstro’s reaction, I am surprised at how much people hate this movie.
I’m no zombie movie fan, so maybe zombie movie fans were disappointed? I’m not a huge follower of Jim Jarmusch, so maybe his fans were disappointed? I can see settling in for a nice cool indie movie at the arthouse and being disappointed.
But, as a regular old random movie that came up in a list of other random sci-fi movies, with no expectations from me, I found it thoroughly delightful.
My wife, nephew, and I saw this in the theater. We left confused. Never seen one of the directors movies before. Not sure I want to see any of his other movies now.
It’s not the worst movie I have ever seen and a few things were decent pay offs to me. I do think that it needed to be shorter or edited a lot tighter. I nearly fell asleep a few times before they even got to anything interesting. Not action but anything interesting.
Basically, I don’t think this added anything to the genre. It plods along to a non sequitur ending and wastes everyone they got for it.
There was another thread about it. Some of us liked it, although I don’t think anyone liked the “script” fourth-wall breaking. And it definitely has its share of flaws.
