I’m always pretty excited to talk about short films, especially all the short horror you see running around online. You never know what you’re going to get when you tear into one of these little pieces of short film–it’s like nonstop Christmas.
So today we’re looking at Life Cycle, and it’s one movie that’s probably better called How The Zombie Apocalypse Might Begin.
Basically, some guy’s out walking on an empty stretch of beach when he finds a corpse that washes up. But this corpse has a lot more life in him than anyone saw coming….
It’s always kind of interesting to consider how a zombie apocalypse might look in its very earliest stages, so this one definitely qualifies as interesting. Of course, it being a short film, it’s over LONG before anything actually happens, so it’s not like we’re going to get a whole lot of entertainment out of it.
The Screenhead Ten Scale hands this interesting, well put together, but ultimately disappointing zombie title a six out of ten for doing what it could with what it had to work with well inside its rather sizable limits.
…okay, seriously, not really. But for what happened for one guy in an Iowa City restaurant, it sure looked like the Zombie Apocalypse to him for a minute.
Essentially, a man was mistaken for a zombie really early Sunday morning (1:17 AM kind of early) because he was “shambling about” and had been attacked by some other guy.
On the University of Iowa Campus, someone approached the shambler and then punched him several times, all the while screaming about how the man was, in fact, a zombie. The victim tried to get his phone out, but his attacker socked him a couple more and then bolted.
It’s a bad sign in this country that, when someone’s smacking you around and calling you a zombie, your first instinct is to call for help rather than defending yourself, but considering how many people have been jailed for doing just that, it’s not much of a surprise. File that under sad but true.
If you’re not already getting AMC, on cable or satellite, you may have a good reason to coming up in the next few months–they’re hard at work on a new series based on Robert Kirkman’s comic The Walking Dead.
Zombie fans out there, you know how singlemindedly awesome this is, and the thought of a Walking Dead television series is enough to almost give you hope until you remember that THIS IS TELEVISION, and television often falls under the purview of the FCC, the biggest nanny-state outfit on the face of the earth. But not to worry, folks, apparently the boys at AMC have already put a standard on Kirkman’s work–no profanities at F-bomb rank or higher.
Considering that they just turned a foot into pudding on Mad Men, and that show airs during prime time, they might just be able to pull off a little zombie gore and authenticity. But even with some off-camera gore, a zombie based TV show is still a pretty awesome idea.
Night of the Living Dead: Origins. That’s a thought that should both astonish and horrify all at the same time. While there was already one remake, and as far as I’m concerned it’s the gold standard of remakes, I’m not too sure about a new “remake“…especially one that’s billing itself as, get this–an American-style anime.
Like I said, it’s called Night of the Living Dead: Origins, and they’re meaning to have it explore some of the characters’ backstories. On the one hand, that’s kind of an interesting idea–I like the thought of figuring out everybody’s backstories myself. Sure, we know the Coopers got to the farmhouse, but do we really know how? And which version of Cooper will they follow: the jackass from the remake or the helpful one from the original? I don’t know, and that’s what this movie should help explain. What about Tommy and Judy Rose? And what happened to Ben in Evans City? How did he KNOW it was a “war zone”? There are some good questions here that a remake could help explore, but I find myself skeptical of Hollywood’s ability to handle the remake. Especially since they’re handing the remake over to a couple guys that don’t have much of a filmography that I’ve even heard of. But seeing as how Night of the Living Dead is now public domain, if I remember correctly, it’s not like there’s anything stopping anyone else from doing the job right.
No word on release dates just yet, but hopefully we’ll be hearing more about this in short order.
It’s not every day that I fault a movie for its sheer ambition, and in fact, it’s the thing I least like to fault a movie FOR. Much better too ambitious than not sufficiently so, and so to ding a movie for being overly ambitious feels downright hypocritical.
All hell breaks loose when, in the middle of a lamaze class, Zombie Apocalypse suddenly breaks out. And for one young couple, it’s going to mean a whole lot more than they bargain for.
Like I said, this movie has a lot more ambition than it should; they’re almost trying to wedge what could have been a ninety minute movie in a space meant for a short film one thirtieth that size. You can only fold a piece of paper so many times before it can’t be folded further, and this movie illustrates that point nicely.
It’s a great movie, lots of zombie-blasting fun for all, but everything seems to happen so fast that there’s no room for coherent narrative. But even I acknowledge that the ending is just AWESOME.
The Screenhead Ten Scale, in turn, hands over an eight out of ten to this movie that would make an awesome feature had it just slowed down, caught its breath, and told its story correctly.
Well, it’s Hallowe’en week this week, so most of us are starting to consider watching a horror movie or two. For those of us who have no interest in the torture porn of Saw 5, or the inferior remake of REC, called Quarantine, UK cable channel E4 has taken the initiative. Starting tonight, and continuing through to Friday, is a zombie mini-series entitled “Dead Set“.
The premise is that a run of the reality-TV show Big Brother is interrupted by hoards of reanimated dead, or zombies as we know and love them as. The series follows the contestants and crew as they realise what’s happening, and their tightly run show turns into a struggle for survival.
The show is created by Charlie Brooker, a comedy writer and journalist for the Guardian. And the comedy background seems to have paid off in terms of this show’s outset, which sort of acts as a satire against reality TV, while of course featuring vast amounts of gore and shocks. But at least the social criticism is present, considering its lack in some recent horror films.
…okay, seriously, not really. But for what happened for one guy in an Iowa City restaurant, it sure looked like the 
If you’re not already getting AMC, on cable or satellite, you may have a good reason to coming up in the next few months–they’re hard at work on a new series based on Robert Kirkman’s comic The Walking Dead.
Night of the Living Dead: Origins. That’s a thought that should both astonish and horrify all at the same time. While there was already one remake, and as far as I’m concerned it’s the gold standard of remakes, I’m not too sure about a new “