Without the war in Vietnam, the civil rights movement, Calgon detergent and Fred Rogers’ tonsils, Night of the Living Dead would not exist. And without Night of the Living Dead, there would be no The Walking Dead, no World War Z, no entire cottage industry centered around those “all messed-up” ghouls who crave and dine […]
Romero
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Day of the Dead
By the time 1985 rolled around, Romero had made one other Dead film: the brilliant Dawn of the Dead. Other countries, especially Italy and Spain, turned zombie movies into virtual cash machines and zombies, for the first time, were everywhere. So there was great anticipation for Day of the Dead, Romero’s third film in what […]
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Ghost Team One
The film opens Friday in select theaters, as well as digitally and on demand. Using a cameraman hired through Craigslist, two best buds — virginal Sergio (Carlos Santos) and horn-dog chucklehead Brad (J.R. Villarreal, Akeelah and the Bee) — attempt to capture footage of the ghost they believe haunts the home they share. The specter, glimpsed as an Asian female, […]
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Mimesis
Look, at least it’s not the new Night of the Living Dead 3D: Re-Animation, but that’s another review. There’s not much to Mimesis beyond the one-line summary above. Various attendees at a horror convention are invited to an exclusive, super-secret party that turns out to be the “game” — one in which they are stuck […]
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The Definitive Document of the Dead
By the film’s own opening-crawl admission, Document is intended as a teaching tool, so its nature is purposely freeform — and how! Narrated by the late Susan Tyrell (until the new sections), the film captures Romero and friends at work on 1978’s Dawn of the Dead, the now-classic sequel to 1968’s classic Night of the […]