Return of the Living Dead was comedy, not horror. George Romero’s shuffling, staggering zombies are more horrrific for three reasons: 1) They evince pity as much as terror; it’s incredibly sad to think of what was once a person being this shambling, mindless thing. 2) Although slow, they gather with the relentless inevitability of a nightmare. 3) They seem almost possible; that is, one can almost believe in a force that could get a dead body moving around in some sort of pseudo-life, just enough to walk slowly and eat human flesh.
An important note about zombies, at least as they exist in the Romero movies: you don’t “catch” being a zombie, like an infection. It’s not like a virus. It’s true that if a zombie bites you, you’ll develop a terrible infection and die – but the point is, if you die for any reason – heart attack, cancer, car crash, overdose, slitting your wrists – you’ll rise as a zombie, as long as your central nervous system is sufficiently intact. The premise works best if there’s not kind of explanation for why it’s happening – if it just seems that something has gone terribly wrong with the world.
I haven’t seen the trailer yet, but if it’s that different, they should have called it something else.
Then we’ve run into a situation where a genre stagnants because nobody is willing to try anything different. This is one of the reasons why most vampire movies suck. <ahem> I’ll be here all week folks. There are a lot of things you could do with a zombie besides following the Romero model.
I’m with gobear: that was a freakin’ awesome trailer. Don’t know if the movie will live up to it, but it was still very well done. Liked the end, when the film “breaks” and you can see all the figures pushing against the screen.
Apparently, John Mullets saw a different trailer than I did, because I didn’t see any super-agile or super-fast zombies in that: just zombies that had the speed and agility of a regular human, which makes sense if the zombie is recently dead. I read his post, and I was expecting zombies doing Matrix-fu.
You know,way back when the original came out, I saw it with friends at a local midnight movie. Although it was initially repulsive and horrifying, we all came to see it week after week at the theatre. We pretty much had the movie memorized, we totally got the whole “consumerism” subtext, and treated it as a dark comedy/satire that just happened to have a ton of gore. I even got a chance to meet the original makeup artist Tom Savini(aka head motorcycle guy) and have him autograph my original movie poster.
That was 20-some years ago.
Now, I have a daughter about the same age as the little girl at the beginning of the trailer. Believe me, it was all I could do to finish watching the rest of the trailer. I am going to have nightmares just based on a one minute trailer.
I thought you were supposed to get get braver and wiser as you get older, but apparently that’s not the case with me.
Okay, now I’ve seen the trailer, and I have to admit, it’s pretty effective.
I just don’t understand this. Why? Did people all get more squeamish over the last quarter century? What happened to all the nudity and gore I saw as an impressionable young man? Or is it just that the MPAA has been taken over by a Baptist church group?
I saw this trailer on the big screen. (It’s running before “Big Fish”.)
Let me just say that I was creeped out.
The end visual of the film melting and the figures against the screen might just be the kind of visual interest and innovation needed to kick start the zombie genre.
But this is coming from someone who thinks Resident Evil wasn’t bad.
Y’know, it seems we need to have another look-see at the original DotD. The more recently dead were faster than the shambling half rotted things that had been kicking around for a while.
In the beginning of the flick, the fresher zombies at the apartment complex under siege moved pretty quickly. And the two kids who jumped… what’s his name, that were locked in the closet at the little airport were awfully damned spry.
And consider the very first Romero Zombie ever seen. He was smart enough to grab a rock to try to break the car windows with, to get at Barbara. They ain’t all mindless, just most of 'em.
Of course, that’s not to say that this remake won’t suck, as a fair number of remakes do. Well, for fans of the source material, at least. But I’m with those willing to withhold judgement 'till I’ve seen it. Savini’s remake of the the original NotLD surprised me. The fact that at the end of the film
the characters who lived and died were different
didn’t bug me near as much as I’d expected it to. In fact, it was a rather nifty bit o’ storytelling, I thought.
And I think I postulated this in another thread a while back, but I’ll re-iterate it here:
I’m betting the ‘zombie-baby’ thing that shy guy mentioned is gonna turn out to be a nightmare/dream sequence.
What you see as the “main flaw” of a slow zombie I see as one of the more frightening aspects of them. Yes, they are slow, and on a one to one basis, they aren’t a big deal. That means people get cocky, and when that happens, they get sloppy, they get bit, traped, or end up surrounded and in WAY over their heads. I thought the remake was okay, but the one scene that I absolutely loved was when the girl was making a run from the house and just walking threw the field. When that one woman just kept bumping into her and she was pushing her away, that was just fucking creepy…and the look on her face when she screamed?!
As for the other changes to the zombies, the idea that people turn into zombies almost immediately is rather silly, because the whole point of zombies is that they crave living flesh (or freshly dead). This means a zombie starts munching on someone, and before they’re even done chewing their first bite, they’ve got another guest for dinner and nothing on the table. Ruins the opportunities for small get-together feasts on one of the beloved, yet unlucky characters. For B, it makes a bit of sense the way they worked it, but from what I remember of Romero’s films, fresher zombies had to aclimate more to their bodies than older ones. Imagine them as adults who’ve suffered some sort of brain trauma and forgotten everything they’ve learned, including the ability to walk. It’s going to take time for them to get their motor skills under control again, and that’s why fresh zombies usually tend to be rather clumsy and sloppy, while older ones are more aggressive and agile, despite the fact they’re rotted more. Again, for me, this is more terrifying, because when it seems like things should be getting better because they’re falling apart, they’re even more dangerous.
And as for C, I heard that in order to kill the zombies in this version, you had to completely destroy the body, not just the brain. Also, I read in a review on Ain’t It Cool.com that whatever it is that causes the transformation into zombie is species specific. Meaning, if a human zombie bites a dog, the dog stays normal, and vice versa. Dogs can only become zombie dogs if bitten by another zombie dog, and humans can only become zombies if bitten by other human zombies (I think if either dies of their wounds, they become a zombie either way, because once you’re dead, you’re a zombie, but if you survive the bite, you’re fine). This just seems rather silly to me, but apparently they’re using it for a plot point.
If you can find the review, read it, because it actually had some positive things to say about the film, and I think I feel the same way as some of the other posters here have said…if it weren’t called Dawn of the Dead, I’d probably be more excited about it, because it would look like a pretty sweet zombie movie. But because of the name, it’s going to get compared as a remake, and not a genre revigoration, and that’s going to effect people’s opinions. I don’t mind zombies who can run at normal speeds, or ones that possess enhanced human strength (because we’re often limited by the awareness of pain that tips us off that if we push ourselves too hard, we’re going to harm ourselves, and seeing as how zombies don’t feel pain, they can push themselves beyond those limits). I have to admit, I did like the shots of the zombies running and throwing themselves up against the window, and the closing shot was really cool…but those seem like standard zombie practice to me, so who knows? I know I’ll go see it, but my enjoyment level is going to be effected by how much I can separate this film from the original and not compare. If I can do a good job of that, I’m sure it will be a good movie (but only if the zombie baby is a nightmare).
I hate remakes. The new Dawn of the Dead isn’t likely to equal, much less top, the original, so why bother making it? I only hope George Romero gets some money out of it.
Changes in society, mostly. When the original DOTD came out, there were still a large number of independent theatres out there who didn’t answer to any large corporations as far as distribution, or what they’d show, or whether they’d show a film without advertising, or whatever.
Romero released DOTD without a rating. He got away with it, too, although it meant many theatres would not advertise it, and others would not show it.
Nowadays, nearly ALL theatres are owned by theatre chains, and most theatre chains won’t show X-rated movies – too many local laws and ordinances to deal with.
“But wait!” you cry. “Zombie movies and porn are two totally different beasts!”
Well, you’re quite right, of course, but try convincing theatre chain executives of that. As far as they’re concerned, unrated = X-rated… and most newspapers won’t carry advertising for unrated films…
…which provides yet ANOTHER reason why large theatre chains won’t want to fiddle with them…
…which means if you want a blockbuster hit, or even a modest success in American movies these days, you kiss the MPAA’s ass and get your movie RATED, one way or another, and the worst you’re likely going to want is an R. Nowadays, “unrated” generally means “released straight to video.”
Besides, all us film geeks have been conditioned to know that the good stuff’s gonna be on the DVD, anyway…
Oh, yeah… I also find this business about “instant infection” frankly tough on my "willing suspension of disbelief.
I had a tough time with that in “28 Days Later,” too. Howthehell does a disease totally disable your higher brain functions in two minutes or less? And now, being bitten by a zombie turns you INTO one in a few seconds?
I’m no doctor, but I find that REAL hard to swallow…
I’m one of those people who feel you don’t need a ton of gore to have a good zombie film. Fulci’s movies revolved around that aspect, and those were shit in my opinion. There wasn’t much in the orginal Night of the Living Dead, an I still feel that’s one of the best zombie films out there. Of course, it’s kinda tied on my list with Braindead/Dead Again, so what does that say?
But Wang-Ka is absolutely right, so all you people who feel the need for super-amounts of gore should be prepared to be let down. Anyone see The Cell? Bit of a spoiler here for those who haven’t, but remember th scene where the villain’s pulling the guy’s intestines out? There’s not much blood, and it’s not done over the top at all, but they had to fight tooth and nail to keep that scene in the movie and still maintain an R rating. If that little scene caused so many problems, I don’t think we can expect to see the swarm tearing fighting over anyone’s intestines and munching on their stomachs.
