Night of the Living Dead (1990) Remake
in Movies ·
I guess I’ll follow suit and mimic Jason Chavez32’s little habit by dropping my blog review right here........... So, did you guys catch it, and what did you think of the movie??
This is a remake of Romero's namesake original from 1968, helmed by special effects legend Tom Savini, who worked alongside Romero on films like Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, as well as other horror staples like Friday the 13th and Predator. This version is essentially the same as Romero's original, just with better effects and, unlike the original, it’s actually in color 🙂 The opening is honestly pretty ridiculous, if not outright pointless. A brother and sister drive into town to visit their mother's grave, only to be ambushed at the cemetery by a zombie that kills the brother... the irony is that just a minute before the attack, the brother was trying to scare his sister by mimicking a zombie, haha. The sister survives the encounter and finds refuge in a nearby house. She ends up joining Ben, played by Tony Todd—the same actor who played Candyman a few years later. They soon realize a few other survivors are hiding in the basement, including the sleazy Harry Cooper, whom our hero Ben immediately shuts down with lines like, “I've only been around you a minute or two, but that's enough time for me to decide that I don't like you very much." The friction between them lasts until the end of the film, and it's actually quite well-executed; they have great chemistry, which leads to some solid one-liners, like when Cooper refuses to open the basement door and Ben tells him, “Cooper, I've got a shotgun out here. Open this door, you motherfucker.” The rest of the group includes a young guy named Tom, his girlfriend, Cooper's family, and a wife and her sick daughter who’s been bitten and is lying in the basement... well, we all know what happens to anyone the zombies get to, hehe. Honestly, I have no idea how they even managed to bite her considering these things move slower than a turtle—they are seriously slow, so when you watch this new Dawn of the Dead and then compare it to this, you really have to wonder... why are they so sluggish? Their pace is practically glacial; at one point, the camera shows the zombies approaching the house while the people inside are barricading the doors and windows, then five minutes later, the camera cuts back outside and they've only managed to crawl about ten feet. There are moments where Ben fights zombies in the yard, basically trying to escape, and I walked away feeling like they aren't even dangerous unless they're in a massive swarm, but the real issue with this movie is that they never quite reach that level of overwhelming numbers...
Tom Savini is renowned, or rather, he was, as one of the absolute masters of special effects. The masks in this film are truly impressive, though it feels somewhat inferior to the original in that specific regard, but there isn't nearly enough blood; there are scenes where Ben swings an axe at a zombie but we see zero blood, nothing... hmm, maybe the zombies already bled out somewhere else. There is irony baked into every corner, especially toward the end... but I suppose that's to be expected since Romero wrote and adapted the script.
The acting is the highlight of the movie; Tony Todd, aka Candyman, is legendary, and the actor playing Cooper is just as good... the lead, Barbara, feels more like a Resident Evil heroine in this version, handling a shotgun better than Cooper and fighting the zombies without the fear shown by Barbara in the original, but overall everyone is solid. The direction is decent, the script is alright, the gore rating is a bit weak, and there are some naive, predictable moments; you can tell Romero isn't a director, but all things considered, the film is good.