Dawn of the Lead

Zombie aficionados have got it good right now. In addition to Zombieland and Doghouse, here are a few others coming our way:

Survival of the Dead I alreay mentioned some weeks back. Funnily enough, while I only had stills to show back then, I now have a trailer. Funny thing is that I stumbled upon this trailer looking for something else entirely, and it’s on Youtube under the in production name of “… of the Dead”. Looks like a lot of fun, although what I said in this post still applies.

I posted about Rec 2 way back, and I finally ran into real trailers. From the looks of it, the movie continues the story of the first film with some kind of a SWAT team sent in to investigate. If you haven’t seen the first film, see it. And you may not want to watch the trailer below to avoid spoilers. That’s one lovely trailer, by the way.

For one reason or the other I’ve missed the movie Carriers altogether. To rectify the situation, here’s a trailer to enjoy. Seems like a wonderful post-apocalyptic scenario, and I like the cinematography of the trailer. It’s interesting that they chose avian flu as the disease to end society. If avian flu – or the swine variant – did what this disease does, we’d be in a whole lot of trouble.

With most of the zombie movie excellence of the past few years coming from Europe, maybe Hollywood is finally on to something here. The few recent zombie comedies I’ve seen – Shaun of the Dead and Fido – have both been wonderful and funny, and Zombieland looks like it’ll be added to the list.

From Columbia Pictures:

Zombieland focuses on two men who have found a way to survive a world overrun by zombies. Columbus is a big wuss — but when you’re afraid of being eaten by zombies, fear can keep you alive. Tallahassee is an AK-toting, zombie-slaying’ bad ass whose single determination is to get the last Twinkie on earth. As they join forces with Wichita and Little Rock, who have also found unique ways to survive the zombie mayhem, they will have to determine which is worse: relying on each other or succumbing to the zombies.

Don’t really know, sounds a bit unspectacular doesn’t it?

Now watch the trailer and rethink.

Man oh man oh man. I feel like a little kid waiting for Christmas!

Zombieland is coming out on October 9th, 2009.

http://www.zombieland.com/

I love what the British have done with the zombie genre in the last few years: 28 days later, Shaun of the Dead and Dead Set have been instant classics in my book, and upcoming movie Doghouse looks like it might join the club. While it doesn’t seem to be a zombie movie per se, it seems to follow enough of the genre conventions to be classed as one, just as 28 days later is.

From the official site:

Six men with mid-life anxiety set out for a weekend in the country in an attempt to reconnect with their masculinity. What they find is a catastrophe so horrible and bizarre that a mid-life crisis turns out to be exactly what they need to survive it…

Doghouse should be opening in cinemas in the UK on June 12th 2009.

http://www.doghousethemovie.co.uk/

I’m always on the lookout for new zombie movies, especially those with good production values. I’m not saying that production values make a movie, but sadly they can often break it. Anyway, two of the movies I’m currently waiting for are [REC] 2 and Zone of the Dead. Neither are American or British productions, which is always a joy – in the sense that it’s nice seeing that zombie culture is being created all over the world.

The Spanish movie [REC] is one of my favourite zombie movies ever. I like its documentary handycam style and the fairly realistic approach, not to mention that it’s creepy as hell. The movie had me and a couple of my friends – all of us used to horror movies – watching it hugging our knees and going “arghhh, ihatethisihatethisihatethis”  , so if you haven’t seen it yet, you should definitely check it out. There’s a Hollywood remake of the same film called Quarantine, but I suggest you go for the original. The foreign language, Spanish in this case, makes it somehow seem more real. Maybe it’s because I’m used to most movies being in English?

Anyhoo, they’re making [REC] 2, due for release this October according to IMDb. The teaser trailer doesn’t really tell us a lot – it’s probably why they call it a teaser, duh – but I’m still psyched!

Zone of the Dead is already out. This Serbian film is apparently a nice old school zombie flick, and judging by the trailer it looks like mighty good fun. And it stars Ken Foree of original Dawn of the Dead fame. I just hope it eventually gets released outside Serbia, too.

And as a final note a friend passed me a link about real life zombies. While it certainly is interesting and creepy, I couldn’t be bothered to write it an entry of its own, so I’ll just attach it to this one. It’s a small article about parasites that take over and control several different host animals. Just imagine the fun of something like this happening to humans! Is it just me, or does stuff like this really make you think about the whole evolution/intelligent design thing?