Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Dead & Buried, Dylan Dog

Dead & Buried

This is a little different kind of zombie movie.  First of all, it's more of a mystery than a horror movie.  We see a number of people getting killed in a small town by emotionless mobs.  The bodies are found later, and all of them have been badly brutalized.  In fact, we see a man being burned alive in the very first scene.  The local sheriff is trying to figure out what's going on.  The rest of the town seems to be in on it, but the sheriff is left in the dark.  So he starts investigating the murders, and things keep getting stranger and stranger.
And then we start seeing the dead bodies from before...only now they're members of the town.
So they're zombies, but not modern day zombies.  They're basically Haitian zombies (think White Zombie or Sugar Hill) as they serve the commands of their zombie master.  However, they don't shuffle around and look brainless like Haitian zombies usually look...they are functioning members of society...they just happen to kill people when their master tells them to.

It's not a fast-moving movie, but it's an eerie movie.  It's one that demands your time and attention.  It's a little different for a zombie movie, but it's fantastic.  It kind of feels like a Twilight Zone episode.

Random actor sighting: Robert Englund

Rating: 4 stars

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night

This movie was playing at the dollar theater, so Daniel and I went to go see it tonight.  I didn't really know what to expect, but I hadn't heard good things about it (it's currently at 3% over at Rotten Tomatoes).  Needless to say, I wasn't expecting much.
This movie was a little...confusing.  I didn't read the graphic novels, so maybe they nailed the feel of it.  To me, it felt like they were going for a noir feel (the main character was a P.I. and he did a voice over and everything), but they didn't quite capture it.  It was pretty goofy at times, but I'm not sure they always meant it to be goofy.  I don't know...it's hard to describe.
The plot: Dylan Dog used to work as a kind of consultant for the legions of the undead living in New Orleans (vampires, werewolves, zombies, etc.), but something went wrong, he got kicked out, and now he's a P.I.  Except he took a case that puts him smack-dab in the middle of that world again.
Also, his assistant was killed and came back as a zombie (he was the best part of the movie, by the way...I loved that guy).

Anyway, I enjoyed it.  I was talking to Daniel afterwards, and we came to the conclusion that we liked it...but we're not sure if we can ever really recommend it to anyone.  It's not a serious movie, and it's not even necessarily a good movie...but it's a pretty fun movie.  If you're just looking for something entertaining, you could do a lot worse than this movie.

Rating: 3 stars

No comments: