For me, a great horror movie produces similar feelings, though the fear is less visceral and the thrill more cerebral. Some of these on-screen simulations have the power to instill us with a sense of dread and despair that lasts long after the movie is over, but most don’t manage to live up to the hype. If the original [Rec] was as ominous and satisfying as my first rollercoaster experience, [Rec] 2 was like the wait in line before it – plenty of suspense but it left me wanting more.

It takes place immediately after the events of the first film as we follow a SWAT team that’s been called to the site of the infected apartment complex. After arriving on the scene they’re told to escort Dr. Owen (a virologist from the Ministry of Health) into the building as they carry out an “inspect and recognition” sweep of the building. It’s clear from the start that these men are doomed as even the SWAT chief isn’t sure who he’s taking orders from; but it doesn’t take long before the true nature of their mission is revealed.

We get a few different perspectives this time around since the SWAT team is equipped with cameras on their helmets, and there’s also a split in the narrative halfway through when we’re introduced to three teenagers who manage to sneak into the complex with a camcorder. These two storylines dovetail seamlessly but it doesn’t really go anywhere.

All of this does little to further the story and it feels more like a novelty trick to cover up the paper-thin characters and shoddy writing, as we see people we know nothing about get killed on-screen. Dr. Owen (played by Jonathan Mellor) was the only character I found interesting but we don’t learn enough about him.

Many of the details about the infection that were hinted at in the first movie are fully utilized here and this sequel uses almost relentless suspense and frequent shocks to keep the viewer glued to their seat. All this builds to a twisted, if slightly predictable, ending but I missed the slow burn and mysterious nature of the first film, which was the best thing about [Rec]. Once the secret behind the infection was revealed, the movie took on a far more sinister tone and didn’t give you a moment to catch your breath before the suspense was ramped up and the film sent you headlong towards the harrowing climax.

To be fair, I don’t think the duo behind [Rec] 2 (director’s Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza) were looking to leave the viewer with any lingering unease but, judging by the enormous critical acclaim they got for [Rec], I guess I was expecting something with a little more substance. Instead, this movie comes off more like a carnival ride, where the cheap fun stops soon after the film ends.

Even though I’d recommend it to anyone who’s seen the first film (which was much closer to the “real” thing), this is more of a crowd-pleaser with some predictable scares and plenty of twists and turns. It’s not as subtle or intriguing as the first movie but the thrills and scares from the first film are multiplied to create a suffocating atmosphere that rivals what we get in many modern horror films.

The desolate London setting is eerily evocative as Colin embarks on a series of bizarre episodes – he survives an attempted mugging, unwittingly ventures into a gruesome cellar in which a nutcase is keeping female zombies captive, survives the violence and brutality of a vigilante gang dedicated to the destruction of his kind, and is eventually kidnapped by a gang who turn out to be led by his sister. Throughout these episodes Price and his dedicated crew ladle the gore around liberally to ensure that Colin doesn’t pull its punches when it comes to scenes of violence. After his initial bemusement Colin is more than happy to join in with his fellow diners, but his attachment to an MP3 player suggests he is not entirely a lost cause. By the halfway stage the film lurches from its meandering episodic narrative structure to suddenly emerge as a highly emotive and touching exploration of familial breakdown. Colin becomes a tragic figure of epic proportions as he pathetically scratches the window to attract the attention of a sister who will soon succumb to the zombie disease. The film then bravely shifts to a flashback which shows all the events leading up to Colin’s fateful encounter with his brother in their kitchen. The narrative comes full circle as Colin trudges through the snow to the flat of his girlfriend, as he finally achieves his placement in a suddenly chaotic universe.

Only on occasion does Price deviate from the perspective of Colin, and these moments are among the weaker aspects of the film. A rather strange scene for example sees a number of people trapped in a house full of zombies, it is a nonsensical scene only there for purposes of graphic bloodletting. Fortunately such concessions to the marketplace are few and far between and Colin generally speaking adheres to its own set of internal logistics. The lack of dialogue, the profusion of poorly lit sequences (the night time scenes especially suffer), and the general poverty of the film may put some viewers off. But the importance of Colin lies in its relationship to the sub-genre it sits in, rather than the means of its production and distribution.

This is a remake of a relatively unknown Romero film of the same name and features an interesting storyline that, no doubt, influenced movies like [Rec], 28 Days Later and even the Resident Evil video games. This updated version wears its influences on its sleeve with several shots that reminded me of some classic sci-fi/horror films and there was also a half-hearted attempt at socio-political commentary, which doesn’t delve as deeply into the climate of paranoia as effectively as it could have (I thought this worked better in the original).

The film begins with an opening sequence depicting a deserted downtown district in flames and foreshadowing the chaos that will come to Ogden Marsh Township – a tiny community of 1,200 in rural Iowa. It then quickly shifts gears and shows the town two days prior with people going about their business, farmers preparing cornfields for the spring, kids riding their bikes (all tastefully set to Johnny Cash’s version of We’ll Meet Again).

It’s at a local baseball game, however, that things start to go awry after a man walks onto the field armed with a shotgun and has to be shot by Sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant). He initially believes the man was intoxicated but Dutton soon learns that this wasn’t the case and discovers that the local water supply might be contaminated. What caused the contamination and why is it causing people to act dangerously? Dutton finds out that the problem is much bigger than he imagined.

Even though this movie will appear derivative today (how many zombie movies have we seen about a virus infecting a town or community?) it’s still got enough tension to keep viewers engaged. In fact, I thought director Breck Eisner did a great job at pacing the film and having it build towards the climactic finale. A lot of movies today fail to deliver in the end but this was really satisfying.

The script isn’t bad but there were some moments when I thought the dialogue was pretty poor and the performances were similarly hit-or-miss throughout the film (though they did a good job with the casting). Joe Anderson was consistently excellent as Deputy Russell Clank, though. Many horror movie clichés we usually let slide were pushed to their absolute limits (almost to the point of parody), and the way some of the characters cheated death were ridiculous – I’m all for suspending disbelief but towards the end they pushed it a little too far.

If you’re a fan of zombie flicks or are just looking for an exhilarating movie that’ll keep you entertained for an evening this might be worth checking out.

The movie opens by introducing the freshly married Denise (Tracy Coogan) and Danny (Graham Sibley) as they joyfully skip away from the wedding chapel, eager to enter the honeymoon stage of their marriage.  The two lead actors have real chemistry.  Coogan’s performance is exuberant, at times downright giddy. This nicely complements the energy of Sibley as Danny– a more mellow, laid-back vegetarian surfer type.  Unfortunately, their blissful honeymoon is interrupted by an unwelcome, undead guest.

While relaxing on the beach, what should stagger out of the waves but an honest-to-goodness zombie. (You can’t have a movie called Zombie Honeymoon without one!)  Clad in a wetsuit, covered from head to toe in seaweed, the staggering zombie catches Danny unaware.  It lurches over, grabs him violently and spews a foul, viscous brown liquid into his face and mouth.  The precise nature of Danny’s death is left a bit vague.  Amidst the chaos, the zombie disappears, leaving a dying Danny and his hysterical wife on the beach.  Cut to the hospital:  Doctors make fervent resuscitation attempts and fail.  Just as Denise is about to resign herself to widowhood, the miraculous happens.  Danny’s eyelids flutter open and, much to everyone’s astonishment, he has recovered from his ten minute “death”.  The shocked doctor warns them that Danny will need time to readjust.  This turns out to be the understatement to end all understatements.

For the first day, Danny seems okay. He and Denise make vows to live for the present and celebrate his rebirth with lots of passionate, rough sex.  The only sign that anything is at all out of the ordinary is Danny’s flaking skin.  “Baby, you need a better sunscreen,” Denise chides him.

Danny’s condition rapidly deteriorates after that.  The former vegetarian goes on meat eating binges.  His memory is shaky and his skin takes on a deathly pale pallor.  When Denise finds him crouched in the bathtub gnawing on the entrails of a bloody corpse, the truth sinks in– this is not the man she married.  She’ll have to decide whether to stay with him through better or worse and whether their wedding vows still apply:  “‘Til death do us part.”

Zombie Honeymoon does not fit into a typical genre mold.  Zombie purists may be put off by the fact that the movie is really about only one zombie– who at first seems more like a simple cannibal– and the origins of his condition are extraordinarily vague.  In fact, Zombie Honeymoon is more about Denise and Danny’s relationship than the threat of brain-devouring undead causing carnage and mayhem.  There’s blood and gore galore, with a bit of female nudity sprinkled in for good measure.  It’s interesting that some of the more romantic and sexually charged scenes occur after Danny has been zombified but before either of them fully realize it.  Many zombie films focus on a large group of zombies as a monstrous enemy, yet tend to forget that zombies were people once, too.

Zombie Honeymoon may be low-budget, with some uneven acting and sound editing issues, but the meat of the story– how a couple deals with unexpected loss of humanity– is very novel indeed.  There’s also enough off-beat dark humor to classify Zombie Honeymoon as a dark comedy.  Classic lines include gems like: “I guess vegetarians don’t make very good cannibals, do they?”

Even fans of romance movies can find something to like in Zombie Honeymoon, assuming they aren’t too disturbed by the gratuitous gore.  Zombie Honeymoon truly does have something for everyone.

Pontypool (which is based on Tony Burgess’ book Pontypool Changes Everything) relies heavily on its storyline, a great script and strong performances from its cast instead of the more traditional emphasis on scenes of flesh-eating zombies. It isn’t very violent – blood and guts are used sparingly – and the body count is probably the lowest I’ve seen in any movie about the living dead.

But there’s something deeply satisfying about Pontypool and part of it is its concept for the virus infecting the town, which (though a little half-baked) is truly original and gives the film political undertones. The setting of a radio station in the midst of a snowstorm adds to the feeling of isolated claustrophobia, as we watch the crew try and make sense of what’s going on outside; it also calls to mind the paranoia generated by Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio hoax. Stephen McHattie deserves a special mention for his excellent performance as outspoken, world-weary radio show host Grant Mazzy.

The film begins with a monologue that will sound like poetic nonsense, with words blending into one another in a kind of stream of consciousness conspiracy theory tirade, but this is an important clue as to what will happen to the town that day.

Grant Mazzy, a hard-drinking morning radio host for the small Canadian town of Pontypool, is on his way to work in the early morning hours of Valentine’s Day, when he encounters a strange woman who keeps repeating everything he says before mysteriously disappearing. Like a true professional, Mazzy decides to use the experience as a topic for his show and poses the question, “When do you call 911?” to his listeners.

But it soon becomes clear that this isn’t an isolated incident and things aren’t quite right in Pontypool. There are reports of a strange “hostage” situation involving drunken ice fishermen and reports of a mob attacking a local clinic. As the show’s producer, Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle), and radio technician Laurel-Ann Drummond (Georgina Reilly) try to verify reports, they begin to find some unsettling facts. The radio station’s weather reporter, Ken Loney (a great voice-acting performance by Rick Roberts), is one of the only reliable, outside sources for the radio crew but even he struggles to find words to describe what he’s seeing.

There aren’t many conventional scares in this movie, but the way director Bruce McDonald builds suspense and an air of mystery during the first hour is much better than any jump-out-your-seat frights he might have served up. The film also has a good sense of humor and the tension between Mazzy and Sydney provides some hilarious moments, like when Grant is told that Ken plays sound effects from his truck to make it sound like the “Sunshine Chopper”. I think it lost some steam during the last half hour and details about how the virus could be stopped were never fully explained, but the apocalyptic ending made up for it.

This is a movie about the power of words – what they’re capable of and how they can be manipulated into something that does or doesn’t have meaning. With the ongoing “War on Terror”, this could be read as a statement warning us of the perils of labeling people and destroying what we don’t understand as a quick fix for a problem we can’t be bothered to deal with any longer. However, all of this is subtly implied in this well-crafted movie and it’s not until the climax that the political angle is made clear.

Pontypool won’t be to everyone’s liking, especially for viewers expecting buckets of blood. But for anyone looking for a zombie movie with brains (that don’t get eaten), this could be the perfect movie for a quiet night in.

With that strangely memorable sound bite, screenwriter John A. Russo and director George A. Romero redefined a genre and permanently laid to rest the living, breathing, voodoo-empowered zombies depicted in the 1932 independent film, White Zombie.   Night of the Living Dead lurched into theaters on October 1^st, 1968.   Almost 40 years and five sequels later, the creatures born of Russo and Romero’s collaboration continue to be the most popular representation of Hollywood’s least expensive – and thus most bankable – movie monsters.  No matter whether they’re shambling through the latest celluloid nightmare, lurching from one comic book page to the next, or trying to devour Xbox 360 players in a spurt of pixilated blood, today’s zombies owe all that they are to Night of the Living Dead.  Still, it takes a lot more than chocolate syrup and 1960’s ingenuity to scare audiences these days.  This is doubtless due to the fact that today’s audiences are over-stimulated.   Blame this on the internet – that proverbial information superhighway where anything is just a click away – or on today’s popular culture that glorifies gratuitous violence and sexually explicit material.  Hell, blame it directly on Hollywood, where endless strings of “action sequences” are tied together with a few lines of lower-shelf dialogue and released as “movies.”   Scenes that would have terrified movie-goers a few decades ago barely elicit a shrug in 2010.  It’s not enough for a Millennium-Age zombie to come back to life and stagger off in search of human flesh.  Puh-leeze.  Nowadays, he’s got to come back and sprint after his victims, because staggering is not only soooo ‘70s, it also takes way too long (as, apparently do story arcs, character development, and plot devices).

And it’s with that thought in mind that, in 2004, the then-relatively-unknown Zach Snyder introduced his audiences to a more “modern” take on the second film in Romero’s Dead series, the 1978 classic, Dawn of the Dead.  While the original Dawn was a critique of American consumerism, the 2004 remake – dubbed a “re-imagining” of Romero’s initial concept – was no doubt influenced by the critical and commercial success of Danny Boyle’s 2002 film, 28 Days Later, with its high-octane approach to a cadaverous concept.  Loosely based off of Romero’s original script, the James Gunn rewrite ditches just about everything except for the shopping mall (the film’s primary location) and takes what has become the traditional zombie lore – unknown circumstances cause the recently dead to rise with a hankering for human flesh – and combines it with a love for the 100-yard dash.  These zombies – unlike Boyle’s monsters – may be dead, but don’t try to tell them that.  They fly across the screen like a team of Olympic runners, hurdling obstacles in death with a grisly ease that they never attained in life.  (Who knew that rigor mortis would shave ten seconds off your best time?)

Granted, zombies are make believe, just like elves, gnomes, and Eskimos (D’oh!), so it’s ludicrous to debate which cinematic interpretation is the most realistic.  Nevertheless, at the end of the day, it’s this silly business and not the caliber of the acting  – which, with the exception of leading-man-turned-unlikely-hero, Jake Weber, is exactly what one would expect in a movie headlined by Ving Rhames  and Mekhi Phifer– that is the downfall of Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead.  After all, movie monsters HAVE to have some sort of inherent weakness or there’s absolutely no hope for the good guys to survive, especially when their scripted actions show not even a shred of common sense.  Seriously, pit a bunch of characters like Ty Burrell’s idiotic Steve – who wanders away from the door he was instructed to guard during a pivotal scene in the film’s climax to go hang in the parking garage – or Lindy Booth’s moronic Nicole – who leaves the safety of the mall to rescue a dog that doesn’t need rescuing, because zombies don’t eat dogs – against a ravenous horde of undead who can truly haul ass, and then see if they survive past the opening credits.

Perhaps too much allegorical interpretation has been laid at the doorstep of Romero’s startling debut picture. Within its narrative it also addresses, with no subtlety whatsoever, the question of race relations and the civil rights movement. The lynch mob imagery which populates the second half of the film creates a mood of nihilism uncommon for the horror genre, and the death of the black hero (an inspired casting move) at the conclusion offers only despair and desolation. The zombie disease is a disease of whiteness and part of the terror of this condition is the conformity and mindlessness it breeds. This is vision of a white Middle America controlled by a single impulse, the impulse in this case is to eat. But what it ultimately suggests is a pliable population – one that can be duped and controlled, and in the light of Watergate several years later this emerges as a prescient observation.

In other ways however this film is not that successful. The performances are generally dreadful. Its attitude to gender is far from progressive, offering us two women in extreme positions of culturak cliché. The one is romantic eye-candy, the other in a state of mute catatonia. Romero often finds himself relying all too frequently on Hitchcockian devices, and the sound design is amateurish. For the horror genre this film represented a major breakthrough in screen violence, offering us the sight of internal organs being eaten by blood crazed zombies. It is arguable whether this has ultimately been of benefit to the genre, especially in light of recent claims which suggest modern horror films are all gore and violence and nothing else. However these are minor grievances but ones that need to be aired to provide a little balance. Ultimately this film remains a white hot distillation of cultural anxieties in late 1960’s America, and led eventually to a franchise of five films, that each took a turn to address moments of ideological crisis in America’s history. This first entry remains the most interesting, both at the level of its political commitment, and at the level of its challenging fusion of documentary style aesthetics with the more exploitative aspects of the horror film.

The first notable thing that emerges from this film is the desperate need media representatives have to record or document something out of the ordinary. This is initially illustrated by Angela’s (Maunela Velasco) burning desire for something to happen in the city beyond that will call on the services of the Firemen that she is following. Once in the apartment the fear that she and her cameraman Pablo (Pablo Rosso) feel is easily assuaged by the prospect of filming something exclusive and never-before-seen. This general theme permeates much of the film, and paints a rather unflattering picture of the lengths television crews will go to gain an audience. This naturally leads to discourses surrounding questions of truth and reality, and the validity of the images that we are surrounded by, in a world that seems to lack an adequate lexicon of truly original images. This aspect is aided by a suitably confined and claustrophobic location that turns out (surprise surprise!!) to be a microcosm of the society outside its four walls. We therefore bear witness to the simmering racial tensions that exist in Spanish society, but also our own. We see that in a moment of crisis it is far more likely for people to drift apart than pull together.

The network of apartments are used judiciously and effectively by a directing partnership who are clearly very conversant with the codes and expectations of the horror genre. They also cleverly reduce the sightings of the infected zombies to a minimum and in many cases rely on rather traditional techniques to achieve the scares (much of the success of this film is due to the framing of the shots, camera position and angle). This is particularly impressive because the filmmakers have opted to remove music, a device which creates a lot of the mood and tension in horror movies. It is in their approach to soundtrack that the film reveals some innovation. Whilst the sight of marauding zombies passing a blood infection on to people is nightmarish enough, the truly terrifying aspect of the film is in the response of the authorities to the crisis. This brings me on to the second major position of the film, which is to ask us to consider the covert nature of the government and the military and the myriad number of research units and branches that make up its network.

In other areas the film is not a success. I personally do not like the unwieldy puke-inducing camera movement of these ‘pseudo-documentaries’, they give an illusion of reality, which is quickly dissipated by the headache and nausea you get ten minutes into the film. The characterisation in this film is virtually non-existent, and the dialogue sounds as thought it has come from the pen of a Baboon. However, despite these and several other flaws [REC] genuinely succeeds in creating an atmosphere of lurking terror, and this reaches an unbearable crescendo of tension when our duo of reality TV morons are forced to move to the night vision facility on the camera. This is a pared down and snappy little horror film which bodes well for the future of European horror, and if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then its clear with Hollywood’s derivate remake Quarantine (2008) that [REC] was thought very highly of in some stuffy Hollywood boardroom.

In the small town of Dunwich, a priest hangs himself in a cemetery unleashing forces beyond our comprehension and setting forth a series of events that could very well be the end of the world as we know it. Thousands of miles away in New York, a young woman has visions of these events during a seance and the effect is so powerful that she collapses and is presumed dead. Luckily for her, the gravediggers in New York are lazy and the reporters are nosy, so she is discovered alive just in the nick of time. Telling the reporter of her visions and the horror to come, the two team up and head to Dunwich where they have to find the priest that started it all before midnight on All Saint’s Day or else the gates of Hell will be opened.

If you’re looking for a linear, coherent narrative then you might want to look elsewhere. City of the Living Dead plays out more like a montage of loosely connected scenes that present us with a surreal and nightmarish environment. And just when you think you’ve got a grasp on it, Fulci throws you a curve ball. The zombies aren’t your run of the mill walking dead, they have strange powers like the ability to project visions into people’s minds, teleport, and rip the back of your skull off. These guys are freaky because they’re conscious of their actions and are out to kill as many as they can as horrifically as they can. The gore is inventive without going too far over the top, the two notable moments being the gut vomit and the notorious head drilling. What I like about Fulci is that he uses his gore to create disturbing imagery that resonates with you rather than just using it for shock value. Of course, everything is enhanced greatly by the unsettling synth score from Fabio Frizzi. It’s droning and it’s repetitive, but that’s what makes it so effective. As a result the film has an oddly stylized quality to it and that helps give it that nightmare feel.

This film, and Fulci in general really, is not for everyone; you need to have a certain appreciation for something that more concerned with absorbing the viewer into the experience than it is with story. I’ll admit that the experience does start to drag, but the film picks up a little bit by the end and delivers a deliciously ambiguous final shot. Although, that’s not quite enough to satisfy the empty feeling this film gives me. It uses all of these visuals to build a strong sense of tension and as a viewer you hope that it’s actually going to lead somewhere, but when it doesn’t it’s a major letdown. It’s like 90 minutes of foreplay and then none of the good stuff.

It’s funny that the first time I tried to watch this I couldn’t stay awake to save my life, but upon a second viewing it sucked me in to the extent that I didn’t sleep a wink that night. I couldn’t get the images or the music out of my head, so if this was Mr. Fulci’s intention, I commend him. This film is honestly the closest cinematic representation of a bad dream I’ve experienced to date. My scariest dreams make little sense (check), surround me in an ominous atmosphere (check), and they never have a satisfying ending (double check). If you look at City of the Living Dead in the context that it’s a set up for The Beyond, then I think it does the job fairly well and it almost excuses the disappointment of the weak climax. As a stand alone film it personally works for me, but I can see how some people would be completely frustrated by the meandering and nonsensical nature of it all.

The fact that veteran filmmaker Lucio Fulci was hired to direct the film is indication enough that the producers wanted a no nonsense and traditional horror movie. One that steeped itself in the traditions and history of Zombie folklore, rather than be totally dismissive of it as in Romero’s series. The film also manages to distil many of the various sub-genres or currents in Italian popular cinema at the time. Therefore it has a dash of the exotic travelogue about it, combined with cannibalism, zombies and the imperious and scientific gaze of the mondo movie. Fulci was a director of great generic utility, and its surprising to discover this was his first attempt at a horror film. The result is a director willing to experiment and have fun. One only need to look to the astonishing underwater battle between zombie and shark to see the bizarre touches of the surreal invested in the film.

The opening sequence is a prime example of guerrilla film-making Fulci style. Illegally shot around Staten Island, Fulci uses a handheld camera to create a sense of nausea which is then fully realised by a monstrously overweight zombie who is clearly still hungry. Much of the atmospheric resonance is created through a plodding synthesised score by frequent Fulci collaborator Fabio Frizzi. The deep electronic notes of the main theme capture both a sense of the primordial and of the slow shuffling march of the undead. However, the real marvel of this film is the incredible make-up effects which were achieved on a tenth of the budget of Dawn of the Dead (itself a low budget film). The sickly blue and grey faces of Romero’s zombies gives way here to cadaverous skeletal corpses, replete with maggot ridden eye sockets and rotten broken limbs. In the films most successful moment we even get a subjective shot from a zombie as it clambers out of the earth. The gory effects set a new precedent for the horror genre, and in the films most notorious moment are literally eye popping. Fulci would use this film to kick start his career for a second time, as he went on to direct a series of increasingly surreal, challenging, and unique horror films in the early 1980’s. Here, the director shows what he could do with a straightforward and linear narrative, and the result represents a high watermark in popular Italian cinema.