George Romero is back with I believe his sixth zombie film. This movie takes place roughly just after (within weeks) the events portrayed in Diary of the Dead. I guess that would mean approximately two months after the dead started walking. Some things that immediately caught me off-guard, the world is not an apocalyptic wasteland. There's still electricity and Internet and in general, most of the world seems to be carrying on. On the other hand, there are no other cars on the road.The basic plot involves two warring families on a small isolated island off the coast of Delaware. One family believes the dead should stay dead and works to put them all down, while the other family believes the living and the dead should coexist happily. Mix in with this four AWOL soldiers and some teenager they picked up, looking for a safe haven in the storm of chaos(?) and things accelerate quickly toward confrontation. There's also $1 million and no real way to spend it. What is this movie really about? How many ways can you kill a zombie.
Now of course, I don't really expect much from a zombie movie, so I can't say I was exceptionally disappointed, but a sort of gallery of zombie killin' methods wasn't where I expected this to go. Well, okay, maybe I did, but I didn't want it to go there. There was some silliness and some bad lines and the acting was a little over-the-top at times. Then there were all the WTF moments where something happened that just seemed completely out of place with the context. I turned to my friends gesticulating "Why is this even in the movie?!" I guess there were things that seemed like fun, but had no substantive value to the movie. Or, maybe they just needed to fill time? I don't know.
After it was all done I don't really think there was much to be gained from this movie except, perhaps, all those zombie-killing methods. Which is sad, but probably enough to satisfy the zombie aficionados in the crowd.
