Review of The Living and the Dead (2007) by Heist ! — 14 Jul 2007

Shit blew up in Live Free or Die Hard. Lots of shit. And people jumped around or got thrown in the air a lot. Hurray for action spectacles.

[QUOTE]Flight of the Living Dead reminded me of Snakes on a Plane (I know, shocking) but not because of its premise, but because of how it's handled. Where SoaP felt awkward because of the inserted material to make it R, FotLD feels awkward because it feels like it's been edited to be milder. There's this general sense of awkwardness present in both movies, from the editing, directing, writing and especially acting that you get because it seems like no one has any idea of what they're doing. Where SoaP failed to achieve cult status because it felt overzealous, FotLD fails because it underachieves. Once the zombies break out, the film loses all narrative drives and becomes this string of spaceless (I say spaceless because you can never really understand what is going on where) zombie attacks on characters who were never introduced. And the attacks aren't particularly fun to watch, since they're all basically people getting bit in the neck (and all this relatively goreless).[/QUOTE].

[QUOTE]I saw The Tripper yesterday (editor's note: no, that was not yesterday) and I'm confused as hell. The film is supposed to have political meanings, but I can't honestly figure if it's supposed to be liberal, conservative or gray. The films just emits an aura of being the work of a first-time director with limited resources. But then again, David Arquette said that his only goal was to make a fun movie, which he does. The basic premise is amazing on its own and it has some really good kills (some of which echoed of Wes Craven's early unflinching work).[/QUOTE].