So this one is a bit of a different take here from the previous Romero Dead movies. It hits the reset switch, starts the story off in the ‘modern’ times of 2008, 40 years after the first. Through the camera lens, this one’s theme is media, both traditional and the nascient lens of the new media cropping up at the time. Bloggers, kids on the interwebs uploading video unfiltered, showing glimpses of the truth of the happenings to the internet. That part? Okay. Unfortunately the rest of the movie is kinda shitballers.
Some college students are shooting a horror film in the woods for class credit. It’s not going well. Then there’s some news that hits the radio. They drive back to the campus and shit’s basically empty already. Weird. They take the production RV from there to try to get to their homes. The filmmaker insists on documenting it all, to show the reality of the situation. Good thing he didn’t have Smell-O-Vision hooked up to his camera, because this one is a pile of burning cat hairballs in a dog turd. That’s like even one worst than that Anchorman panther cologne. It stings.
I appreciate what Romero tried to do here, unfortunately it’s with a particularly bad script, middling actors and some plot points that are just kinda stupid and stupider. I don’t care how much of a film buff you are, you ain’t worried about documenting jack shit while the world hits full Zombie Apocalypse mode. I saw this in the theater when it came out to support Romero. I remember walking out disappointed. Still am, after re-watching. There are a few moments of good gory deaths, but they are few and far between in this POV zombie melodrama. The Walking Dead debuted a couple years later, and like a true zombie, slowly deteriorates steadily as time goes on. I have one more Romero Zombie film to go. I hope it ends on a high note. But considering how this one ends, the utter shitty koontery of the last scene? I...well, we’ll see here shortly. Damn.
