We all know it doesn’t usually end well for
the humans when a zombie outbreak strikes, but what about another important
part of society, our pets? From the minds of directors Andre and Diego Meza
Valdes comes PLAY DEAD, a surprisingly poignant short about how the creatures
who normally depend on us to survive learn to move on when we are becoming food
for the undead. It all sounds like MILO AND OTIS meets 28 DAYS LATER, and it
kind of is, yet it manages to work a lot better than you’d expect from using that
kind of premise as a jumping off point.
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If there’s any more proof needed that the undead have
conquered the mass media, here it is: The year’s best animated movie has
zombies in it.
Among the recent European comedies that warrant wider
exposure in the U.S., none deserve it more than the pair of NEW KIDS movies out
of Holland. And what a happy occasion that the second of them, NEW KIDS NITRO,
includes zombies amidst its manic scenario, thus allowing them a little
Fangorian love.
If it’s true, as many have said, that the current trend of
home-invasion movies reflects society’s unease over the potential of foreign
attack, REPLICAS also suggests that we can’t trust the people down the street
either.
After years of chemical warfare, a poisoned
planet Earth is now divided into two nations: The United Federation of Britain,
home of the ruling class and dictator Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston), and The Colony
(a.k.a. Australia), where a proletariat workforce live crammed together in
squalid conditions. Quaid (Colin Farrell) commutes daily from the tiny
apartment in The Colony that he shares with wife Lori (Kate Beckinsale) to the
UFB through a massive elevator called “The Fall” that pierces the center of the
Earth at rocket speed.
A NIGHT OF NIGHTMARES sounds like a rather generic title for
a movie coming from confrontational director Buddy Giovinazzo, the man behind
COMBAT SHOCK and the I LOVE YOU episode of THE THEATRE BIZARRE. But while this
film (originally known as GINGER) isn’t as graphically intense as Giovinazzo’s
past work, it’s a lot more distinctive than the general run of indie horror
fare.
Drive-in-style horror isn’t the only kind of cinema they
don’t make like they used to back in the ’70s. Charles de Lauzirika’s
psychological thriller CRAVE is the kind of tough, uncompromising character study
that Hollywood used to turn out with regularity, and should be supported and
treasured when it appears today.
One of the joys of this year’s Fantasia film festival in Montreal has been
seeing all the evidence of how successfully mutable the horror genre can be.
That’s literal in the case of ERRORS OF THE HUMAN BODY, which emphasizes the
dramatic over the shocking even as it deals with mutations of genetic
material—and more.