What, me worry?

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Night of the Dead


Well I have a confession, I watched another bad movie. What else is new? Not only that, but I have chosen to do a review on it before Vacancy, 28 Weeks Later, or even 300 (or as the marquee sign at the Movies 8 says 300 Hundred.)

I didn't have high hopes for this movie especially since the back of the box said it was the most shocking movie since the RE-ANIMATOR. There will always be a special place in my heart for RE-ANIMATOR so I had my doubts about their claims. I must admit this review does contain spoilers. Sorry. Just in case someone does want to see it.

It was written and directed by, Eric Forsberg, who hasn't done anything I've seen. It is a tale about a doctor/scientist who is working on a serum to bring the dead back to life! Sound familiar? Yep, a little. Here is the synopsis from IMDB:

Pregnant and frightened, Anais is not allowed to leave the specialized hospital where her husband, Peter has a medical internship with his uncle, Dr. Gabriel Schreklich, a man with a serum that can resurrect the dead. But things go terribly wrong and the Ghouls take over the hospital. Now, the only way for Anais to save her unborn baby is to get one of the Ghouls to help her to escape. Written by Eric Forsberg

We begin with the good doctor, well, bad doctor, Dr. Gabriel Schreklich, working in an obviously low budget film home lab. Come on, you can make a low budget film and not look low budget. The doctor is working on an experiment with a dead frog. He takes a piece of card board and pins the frog down to the cardboard. He takes a metal tray full of operating tools and cuts the frog open. Then he takes his serum, which looks a whole lot like pepto bismal, and injects the serum directly into the frogs organs. The frogs inards begin to undulate? A strange sound comes out of the frog and it begins to move around. The doctor kind of pulls out the inards. The frog bounces around the room and he smashes it to bits. Then he poors acid all over all of the bits. It's very scientific. Everyone knows that if your experiment goes bad you should just throw around acid all willy nilly. A knock sounds on the door. Its the doctors wife and child. They tell him they are going out. Of course this feels totally set up. He's working on a serum to bring the dead back to life, I said aloud while watching the film, I bet they are going to die somehow and he's going to use the serum. Of course I was right.

So Dr. Gabriel Schreklich didn't really have me believing he was any kind of doctor/scientist. Right off I knew it was no RE-ANIMATOR. I could see what they were trying to do. I could even sense some of the same sort of atmosphere. It just felt like a poor imitation. This film fell pray to what so many low budget horror films seem to fall to, bad writing, bad execution, bad acting. There were several continuity errors. Places where they obviously used the same re-animated people in more than one place in successive shots. They were at one point trapped in a hallway with the exact same extras coming from both directions.

It wasn't at all clear that the doctor really knew what he was doing. For a dying girl that came to his clinic he injected his serum directly into her blood. For another, he cut open his chest and injected it right into his organs. If there was some reason why he did it that way I don't recall. I think it was possibly for the gore factor seeing as you see the whole thing.

Some reviews I've read say this movie is better in some ways than RE-ANIMATOR. I think not. I didn't really care about any of the characters in this movie, I did with the other. Who wouldn't love Dr. Herbert West?

This is really all I have to say. The film to me was a pale imitation of RE-ANIMATOR as it was. It could have been a lot better had it been totally different. I guess I have one more thing. The end was actually really good. I must admit I kind of suspected that was where it was leading. I won't tell you the end though. If you have any questions just ask.