A fan review

[Fecunditatis]

"The film starts with action from the very first frame and never let's go. The characters are cool and the whole thing feels - this is weird - more like a good Carpenter than a good Romero".

http://www.horrordvds.com/vb3forum/showthread.php?t=39658

[krakenslayer]

Wow! What an incredibly positive review. Variety gave it a poor write-up but then we had the very positive Hollywood Reporter, and now a great fan review.

I'm almost daring to hope that this might a true return to form.

And another suggestion that the movie is an absolute action-packed gorefest too!

[capncnut]

Ah, a testicle tickling review. I just hope it isn't post-screening excitement.

[bassman]

It has the edge of Night, the grittiness of Day and the insight of Dawn, all in 2009.


Excellent.

http://journeyhomeburke.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/350729-mrburns.gif


Where's Livingdeadboy's review? I think he's already seen it at TIFF, if im not mistaken.

[MinionZombie]

The gore is great, minus the obligatory one or two bad CGI, and the humor is there, subtle but highly inventive. The political comment on this one is also very well worked within the plot and actually it is more dualistic than you think.

Even more amped for this flick! :)

Even if you dial down the love a smidge (e.g. festival hype), it's still a great fan review/comment on it.

Day of the Dead got rinsed by critics when it came out, and people bitched about it so much for "not being Dawn of the Dead" (:rolleyes:), and look how awesome that movie actually was.

Also - Land of the Dead was shot in 2.35:1, so it's not Romero's first in that aspect ratio. Having it as that in Survival, however, really does help make it look the part even more.

I didn't like GAR's flirtation with subjective camera - it had already been done perfectly with Cannibal Holocaust and The Blair Witch Project, so why did we really need anymore? Least of all when we have [Rec] and Cloverfield at the same sorta time.

So I'm really glad we're back to a 'normal' objective view again. :)

[Mike70]

I just hope it isn't post-screening excitement.

sounds like there is a bit of that going on. i realize this is all a matter of opinion and it sounds like this guy was excited by seeing the film but come on:


Finally, a good US horror film by an american director. I mean, FINALLY. It could be his second best film in the DEAD trilogy (I place NIGHT in the 1st place). this quote is from Choaster's second post in that thread.

you are going to have to go a LONG way to convince me of that.
i hope it is as good as this dude says it is but i've read this kind of masturbatory fan review before and many times they prove to be dead wrong (at least to me and that is all that matters).




I didn't like GAR's flirtation with subjective camera - it had already been done perfectly with Cannibal Holocaust and The Blair Witch Project, so why did we really need anymore? Least of all when we have [Rec] and Cloverfield at the same sorta time.


that is something that i hate with a burning passion. aside from .rec, which i loved despite the way it was shot, i really have a big problem with movies shot in the first person. i've always felt that shooting like that really destroys the way a movie ought to flow. you absolutely do not need a camera bouncing all over the place to add realism or tension to a scene.

[AcesandEights]

Loved one: "What kind of chances do you give him Doc?"
Doctor: "Well that depends, is he a fighter?"

[MinionZombie]

you absolutely do not need a camera bouncing all over the place to add realism or tension to a scene.

There is that, but it's also a really tough framework in which to work as it really limits a director's options. You can't do a lot of editing, you can't do a lot of cutaways, and you're bound to make a technical mistake (e.g. in [Rec] where they actually show you the tape being rewound to re-view a scene - that bugged the fuck outta me, I gotta say).

Or just anything about Cloverfield ... I wasn't a fan of that flick, it just annoyed me most of the time, and I thought it was WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY over-rated. Cannibal Holocaust did it far earlier, and far better.

...

2nd best GAR flick? Well, naturally there's a lot of scepticism around these parts and in general what with the split reactions to Land and Diary, but even still, the original three are just simply better than Land, Diary or even Survival (which I haven't seen yet, obviously).

It's unfair to judge them beside Night, Dawn and Day to be honest. Judge Survival next to Land and Diary, I think.

Almost think of it as "GAR before and after the 90s", if you will ... the 90s being quite a creative vacuum for the man, and a decade that really signalled the break from his Pittsburgh filmmaking family roots into more lone territory.

Fortunately he's now growing a new family of people to work with in Canada, but us all having grown up watching his Pittsburgh stuff, it's hard to live up to that - so expecting him to is unfair really, so you shouldn't - and that's one of the reasons why I was a big fan of Land when it came out.

I like Diary when all is said and done, but I had a variety of issues with it ... many centring around the subjective camera thing.

Maybe I should re-watch Diary again (seen it 3 or 4 times now) and really see where I'm currently at with it...

Anyway - I wanna see Survival, damnit!

[krakenslayer]

It's showing in Toronto tonight, so expect to see more fan, as well as critic, reviews appearing on Sunday.

[Danny]

hmm....

im not a big fan review kind of guy, which i realize is an asinine double standard, but this reeks off "OMIGAWD-OMIGAWD-SQUUEEEEEE!" leaving the screening ultra-hype yknow?
I've always found a romero fans take on a new romero movie is very different between "just watched" and "saw it last month", and id much rather rely on the "saw it alst month" review than something right out of the cinema, which is always more than a little hyped.

[MinionZombie]

and id much rather rely on the "saw it alst month" review than something right out of the cinema, which is always more than a little hyped.

You're always going on about movies you've just seen at the cinema hours beforehand ... more often than not you seem to be moaning about them, but still. :p:elol::p

[Danny]

You're always going on about movies you've just seen at the cinema hours beforehand ... more often than not you seem to be moaning about them, but still. :p:elol::p

hence the asinine double standard, but like you said, its rare i rave about a movie, the last for me being moon and district 9, which i think later on is still good, though honestly i prefer moon, but i very rarely out and out rave about something and then later get cold to it.

at least in terms of movies yknow.

[MinionZombie]

hence the asinine double standard, but like you said, its rare i rave about a movie, the last for me being moon and district 9, which i think later on is still good, though honestly i prefer moon, but i very rarely out and out rave about something and then later get cold to it.

at least in terms of movies yknow.
Nah, you just straight up hate from the off. :elol::p

[Danny]

Nah, you just straight up hate from the off. :elol::p

probably.

[Monrozombi]

i'm currently in Toronto awaiting the screening tonight, will post a review either tonight or tomorrow morning. Absolutely cannot wait for this

[capncnut]

...you are going to have to go a LONG way to convince me of that. i hope it is as good as this dude says it is but i've read this kind of masturbatory fan review before and many times they prove to be dead wrong.
Ditto.


i'm currently in Toronto awaiting the screening tonight, will post a review either tonight or tomorrow morning. Absolutely cannot wait for this
Lucky so-and-so. Will look forward to it, chap.

[krakenslayer]

i'm currently in Toronto awaiting the screening tonight, will post a review either tonight or tomorrow morning. Absolutely cannot wait for this

Please. If it sucks - let me down gently. :)

[Monrozombi]

from what i'm hearing and gauging by the reaction in Venice and the press (minus that one review) I think we're talking better then Land and Diary.

[MinionZombie]

from what i'm hearing and gauging by the reaction in Venice and the press (minus that one review) I think we're talking better then Land and Diary.
Ooh you lucky bastard - and you got to play a zombie in it, correct?

Ooooooooh!!!! *screws up into a little, jealous ball, and buzzes around the room like one of those vibrating knobbly children's toys*

[Monrozombi]

Ooh you lucky bastard - and you got to play a zombie in it, correct?

Ooooooooh!!!! *screws up into a little, jealous ball, and buzzes around the room like one of those vibrating knobbly children's toys*

yes sir, I'll find out tonight if all of my scenes made it in, so i may be writing the review covered in the nerdgasm i'm sure to have in the theater

[MinionZombie]

yes sir, I'll find out tonight if all of my scenes made it in, so i may be writing the review covered in the nerdgasm i'm sure to have in the theater
*jealousy explosion!* :D

Kick ass though dude, hope you have a kick arse time. :)

[Monrozombi]

thanks man, I'll have a blast regardless of how the film is. I'll post pictures on here probably tomorrow night when i get back in the states

[krakenslayer]

thanks man, I'll have a blast regardless of how the film is. I'll post pictures on here probably tomorrow night when i get back in the states

AWESOME! I'm so excited for you man! :D

Just don't post any photos of your "nerdgasm". I can do without those particular money-shots. :lol:

[Monrozombi]

loved every single second of it, better then Land & Diary, will do full report Sunday night when i get home

[Neil]

From AICN:-


I was lucky enough to catch Romero's Survival Of The Dead, and Joe Dante's The Hole, at the Venice Film Festival last week and, seeing as nothing seems to have turned up about them on the site, here's my thoughts.

First off, Survival Of The Dead. I love George Romero. I would have liked to have given that big bear of a man a big bear hug. I enjoyed Diary Of The Dead, but was left a bit cold by Land Of The Dead. It came across a bit rushed to me and it felt like it had been interfered with. Diary played like a fun experiment and I could go along with that, but it also seemed a bit below such an icon as Romero. After watching only one clip of Survival online, a less than great scene of the guy catching a zombie on his fishing line, my hopes were low, but the film is a pleasant surprise or unpleasant, depending on where you stand with gut munching. If anything, it's his first western.

The story revolves around two feuding families on a small, east coast island and some mercenaries who turn up there to find a safe haven. The mercenaries were the guys in Diary who dressed like they soldiers or maybe they'd gone AWOL - you might remember them stopping and stealing from the kids in the Winnebago. The main guy with the beard is the lead character here. Anyway, the islanders and families have different approaches to the epidemic. One wants to keep the Zombies alive, train them to eat animals and give them some sort of quality of existence until a cure can be found. The others want to shoot em. The mercenaries are now looking for a home and after seeing an advert on the internet about Plum Island, they set off. They pick up an annoying hipster on the way when they rescue him from a bunch of looters who keep zombie heads on sticks for fun. When they get there, the island has degenerated into a sort of asylum for survivors and zombies alike. Which is an idea I'd like to have seen played out more. The zombies are chained up and repeatedly try to post letters or chop wood. Like I said, the island stuff plays like a western. The end has a definite Wild Bunch feel to it and there are probably other references that I didn't catch as Westerns have never really been my thing. There's even a zombie on horse back, which is better and spookier than it sounds.

The film is not without it's faults. There's a twist about the zombie on horseback that seemed like a bit of a cheat to me and the guy who wants to keep the zombies around out of respect for the dead goes a little gun crazy in the middle of the film. The audience loved it, though. They gave George a five minute standing ovation before and after the film and politely applauded the big kills. Flare gun and fire extinguisher stand out, but there's plenty of chomping, splattery gunshots and gut chewing at the end. It's the film Romero should have made when Universal were throwing all that money at him to make Land and I think it's his best since Day Of The Dead. With the glut of sub-par zombie stuff around these days it made me really happy to see the man who wrote the rule book so appreciated.

[MinionZombie]

So after that Variety dude bitching about it (wasn't expecting anything else, to be honest), we're now getting some good responses, which is nice.

I'm optimistic, and have been since hearing "it's not going to be subjective camera". As always - bring it on. :cool:

[krakenslayer]

Reviews that I've read seem to be split 50/50 between telling us that it's by far the best and most old-school-like of the new Romero films, and telling us that it's the weakest of a tired series. This even extends to professional industry reviews, with Variety calling it weak and uninspiring and The Hollywood Reporter calling it a blast and a potential box office hit.

I've read over most of the reviews and identified the trends. The negativity in the reviews tends to focus on:

1. Awkward acting and uninspired dialogue.
2. Less emphasis on social commentary
3. One dimensional characters

Whereas the positive reviews focus on:

1. Lots of action and gore
2. Strong central character (Sarge)
3. Overall inventiveness and Romero-esque feel and shooting style

Personally, I can live with some hammy performances and bad dialogue from the supporting cast - think Wooley in Dawn or some of Jamaican John's OTT dialogue in Day, they're corny but we love em. You know, there's "bad", and there's "BAD". An example of "bad" from Diary is the professor - a stereotypical English gent prone to going off on poetic monologues, he was silly but entertaining, and he made his scenes amusingly watchable - and an example of "BAD" is the annoying bimbo Texan chick whose accent kept slipping and whose scenes were really embarrassing (I'm glad to see that the rumours were wrong, she's not in the new one).

As for social commentary, I think it's similar to Day in that it's really just about our unwillingness to listen to each other. I don't have a problem with it - it's simple, meaningful and should give us something to think about.

Finally, one dimensional characters are pretty much a hallmark of the series. With the exception of the four in Dawn and Ben/Cooper in Night, pretty much everyone in all of these films is fairly 1D, but we still love em. Saying that, the short viral clips of the Sarge seemed to hint at some depth to his character, distracting chain-smoking notwithstanding.

The bad reviews haven't done much to dent my enthusiasm for the film, and the good ones have helped build it up. I'm not going in expecting Dawn all over again, but I think it will be good.

It's the first independent, straightforward zombie film Romero has made since Day of the Dead, that's pretty exciting in itself.

[Monrozombi]

as funny as this'll sound, my review is being looked over as its going on a website hopefully and as soon as I get it back from being proofed, I'll post it here.

Oh, by the way, I enjoyed the hell out of this film. Better then both Land and Diary