Editorials
How 2018 Proved That There is Still Life Left in the Zombie Genre
*Keep up with our ongoing end of the year coverage here*
If there are two things that can summarize the horror genre in the 2010s, they are the rise of think pieces using the term “elevated horror”, and people complaining about the horror genre being overdone. When The Walking Dead first aired on AMC it paved the way for genre shows to become huge cultural phenomena like Game of Thrones. It also paved the way for thousands of hot takes that declare that the sub-genre is dead and there are no more stories to be told with zombies.
The past two decades have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of zombie films, which is not a surprise given the political and social climate of the past two decades. Director Julius Avery thinks zombies are popular because they are simple, yet primal. “They embody our fears of death and that on the other side there is nothing but suffering and more hunger.” The 21st century also made the threat of zombies as real as it had ever been. Zombie films draw from our fear of other people – you must avoid crowds to survive, as an infected could be hiding among us at any time – and the threat of a biological attack with unforeseen consequences, so we live in the best time for zombie stories. Of course, like any other genre that becomes popular, there are enough zombie films made constantly to make the bad ones stand out, causing audiences to dismiss the entire genre (funny how no one thought of saying “superhero fatigue” until bad films like Fantastic Four came out).
But it only takes one Shaun of the Dead or a Train to Busan to prove that the sub-genre is anything but dead. This year has seen a wave of high-quality zombie films that put unique twists on old tropes. One Cut of the Dead, Anna and the Apocalypse, Overlord, Rampant, Cargo – these are not only the breakthrough zombie films of the year (some already out, some seen in the festival circuit), but they show us just how little ground we have actually covered when it comes to the undead.
The undead can also be funny
The revival of the “zom-com” is attributed to Shaun of the Dead becoming a box office hit. So it isn’t surprising to see most of the best zombie films of the year try to at least homage it. Of the films listed above, two stand out as the clearer heirs to Shaun’s laugh empire. The little Japanese film that could, One Cut of the Dead is already replicating the success of Edgar Wright’s modern classic. After opening in just two theaters back in June, it just passed 2 million tickets sold in over 300 screens and received multiple audience awards at film festivals around the world. The other film is the Scottish Christmas High-School Zombie Musical Comedy Anna and the Apocalypse, which had its world premiere last year and has had a successful tour of the festival circuit.
The best zom-coms work because they juxtapose the carnal horror of your loved ones coming back to feast on your flesh, with funny gags to deflate the tension. One Cut of the Dead and Anna and the Apocalypse use zombies to cast a shadow on situations that on the surface seem light-hearted and cheerful but are also anxiety-inducing and in the process, they bring plenty of laughs. A small film crew trying to make a zombie film that finds itself in the middle of a zombie uprising, or a group of high-schoolers that must fight both their teenager issues and the actual undead on Christmas morning. Both use zombies as reflections of the characters’ real problems, and their setting.
Writer-director Shinichirou Ueda uses the zombie as a metaphor for a film crew. The camaraderie and reliance you have towards your fellow apocalypse survivors reflects the bond created between members of a film crew. The fear that a zombie could be at any corner, and the fear that an actor isn’t on cue, or that the camera crane breaks minutes before shooting stop sounding so different. Zombies are scary, but the stress of being overbudget and on a deadline can also be terrifying. And yet, One Cut of the Dead and its titular 37-minute-long one-take also shows how fun it is to be in the middle of a film shoot, how exhilarating it is to come out the other end alive and having made something of your own with your fellow filmmakers. If you’ve read anything about this film, you’ve read about how tired the beginning is, as the initial long-take sequence looks like just another schlocky riff on the genre. But then this marvelous matryoshka doll of a film reveals its true intent, and it becomes a satirical tribute to DIY filmmaking and how the walking dead have always been the no-budget horror filmmaker’s best friend in ways no other zombie-comedy has done. Then the film goes beyond meta to comment not only on the zombie genre or horror films, but became a satirical testament to filmmaking in general and even on itself, as it makes you re-examine just what the hell you were watching this whole time with sight gags that reference earlier scenes in the film. By the end, you will want to pick up a camera, call some friends, and make something of your own.
Similarly, Anna and the Apocalypse uses “the most wonderful time of the year” and the glee of the holidays to showcase the horrors lurking at every corner of a teenager’s life. Anna and the Apocalypse may not be the first horror musical, or the first zombie Christmas film, but it may well be the first to combine all those sub-genres with a little Scottish flavour and a high-school setting. Director John McPhail thinks it’s the mixing of colors that make Christmas horror films so popular: “Even as it is freezing cold outside, people are smiling because it’s Christmas, but then you add those vibrant reds and people screaming and you’ve got a whole new thing going.” Like One Cut of the Dead, this film uses the zombies as an external representation of the titular Anna’s problems. Her bully of an ex-boyfriend, of course, turns out to be the stereotypical macho zombie-killer, and the headmaster of her school turns out to be the actual psychopath they always joked he was. The use of the Christmas setting sets this film apart from other comedies or musicals, as McPhail uses color to juxtapose the white snow and the bright holiday yellows with the blood-soaking reds of a zombie apocalypse. The film also takes advantage of Christmas traditions to introduce new riffs on classic holiday songs that you will instantly want to add to your annual playlist. It is when all these elements come together – the Christmas setting, the catchy music, the high-school plot, and the zombies – that you realize how easily Anna and the Apocalypse balances its different genres and becomes more than the sum of its parts, but a whole new twist on known tropes.
Zombies can make you cry too…
On the opposite end of the “fun” spectrum, is the tear-jerker zombie film Cargo, which fellow Bloody Disgusting writer Matt Donato pointed at in his piece about parental horror. This Martin Freeman-led film about a father having to care for his infant daughter while fighting the walking dead speaks not only about fears too real to any parent but is also a damn good zombie film. Sure, you have your standard zombie tropes make an appearance, mostly anything involving not trusting other humans. But the real standout is the father-daughter relationship at the center of the story. Writer-director duo Yolanda Ramke and Ben Howling make an interesting addition to the zombie mythos like having the undead literally burrow their heads in the sand, and having the infection take control of your body in exactly 48 hours. The result is more than just Australian The Walking Dead – though it does share a lot of plot points and tone with the show, but done better – but a loving story about parental sacrifice. We have seen zombie dramas before (remember Maggie?) that really make the effort to make you care about the characters, but Cargo makes the entire film revolve around that core relationship in an intimate way we haven’t seen before.
And now we turn back the clocks…
Making a completely original zombie film is not impossible, but it is really hard without at least touching upon things already done by older films. What the best ones do is take those old tropes and give them a fresh perspective in order to breathe new life into them. We’ve seen zombie films about WWII before, and other period pieces like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but those lean more towards camp, and don’t have nearly the same level of craftmanship (or budget) as these two 2018 productions. The idea of a film featuring Nazi zombies or medieval Korean zombies could easily fall flat, but Overlord and Rampant both make their settings into the starts of the film, which makes for more serious films that make the descent into chaos even more entertaining. While Overlord takes a while to embrace its outlandish premise by being a war film first, Rampant goes for epic scale Lord of the Rings-inspired set pieces and enough characters to rival Game of Thrones. Yet when the period setting finally gets mixed with zombies, they make for highly entertaining and fresh takes on the genre.
Overlord achieves its dramatic tone by making the zombies take a backseat to the trials and tribulations of war. From the start, we are thrown into a gritty viewing experience – and that’s even before we see a detached head in a jar talking. The opening scene alone is a nerve-wracking display in craftmanship, as we are placed inside an aircraft about to drop in Nazi-occupied France on the eve of D-Day, before the planes start getting shot down in brutal fashion taken straight out of Saving Private Ryan. Director Julius Avery uses this opening scene to make you care for the characters, which was important for him. “You have to care for your characters before they step into a crazy world, before John McClane hangs off the side of the building, we know about his family situation.” He does the same in Overlord through its opening scene. By prioritizing wartime intensity over B-movie shenanigans, Overlord tricks you into thinking you’re seeing a compelling war drama through its first half, and by sticking to its gritty and serious tone it makes the more fantastical elements of the story feel like a natural progression. When the zombies finally show up, we don’t consider it a left-turn because they serve as an instinctive extension of the monstrosity of the Nazis – think Predator and how we don’t bat an eye at how it goes from being Rambo into a full-blown sci-fi bro-fest.
Likewise, Korean period zombie film Rampant sets the stage by focusing on its period setting. After a thrilling opening scene featuring the naval boarding of a pirate ship, a group of medieval Joseon soldiers find a not-so-dead crewmember that bites one of them. For better or worse, the film kind of forgets about the zombies for a while, in order to explore a complex political conspiracy involving the monarchy and an attempt to take over the kingdom. Director Kim Sung-hoon makes Rampant feel like a prestige epic drama, with grand sets, elaborate costume designs and gorgeous cinematography. More akin to a biblical epic than say, Day of the Dead, once the zombies start attacking the medieval Korean castle, the film’s setting truly shines. If there is one thing we haven’t seen in a zombie film before is a big-budget The Two Towers-style siege of the royal palace with swarms of exquisitely dressed zombies being hacked and slashed via stunning choreography and very, very sharp swords.
A bright future
The thing about zombies is that they are quite versatile, you can make a film and add zombies as a metaphor for almost anything, and it wouldn’t be too outlandish. Likewise, as a horror villain, zombies can be easily explained in any circumstance, from films going back to the beginning of time, across cultures, to even the distant future. The simplicity of the concept gives the genre infinite potential, and as seen with the commercial success of films like One Cut of the Dead, the only thing making the genre feel overdone are bad ideas. It only takes one good and original film to breathe new life into the genre that refuses to die and make us believe in the walking dead once more.
Editorials
Larry Cohen’s ‘It’s Alive’ Still Towers Over a 2009 Remake That Maybe Should’ve Stayed Unborn
When I write about remakes, I often bring up the word “justification.” What’s the impetus for the remake’s existence? Reinventing icons for a new generation, or benefiting from a few decades’ worth of special effects advancements? Often, there’s a reason that you can acknowledge and say, “Alright, I see what you’re going for.” That holds in Josef Rusnak’s It’s Alive, which tries to reinvent Larry Cohen’s mutant baby B-movie of the same name in what I consider the worst possible way.
I didn’t say it had to be a GOOD reason.
I’ll start with Cohen’s own reaction to Rusnak’s 2009 update: “It’s a terrible picture. It’s just beyond awful … I would advise anybody who likes my film to cross the street and avoid seeing the new enchilada.” A blunt take, but I agree. Rusnak justifies his remake by diverting drastically from Cohen’s exploitation-y flick about a newborn monster killinPreview (opens in a new tab)g Los Angeles residents, but it’s such a bafflingly weak reimagining. Cohen remains faithful to tenets of creature features while tugging at our hearts with commentaries about parents caught between morality and adoration, whereas Rusnak asks, “What if we punished a mother for trying to have an abortion?”
As Cohen says, cross the damn street.
The Approach
It’s Alive (2009) is one of those women-focused horror projects that make you scoff, derogatorily, “This was written and directed by dudes, wasn’t it?” Cohen’s original screenplay isn’t airtight, yet it does well to respect Sharon Farrell‘s “shaken mother of a monster,” Lenore Davis. Paul Sopocy and James Portolese, on the other hand, pen a screenplay that reductively focuses on Lenore protecting her bitey offspring, with a bent-out-of-shape abortion subplot thrown in. That’s not to say Cohen’s Lenore doesn’t display the same protective maternal instincts, but Rusnak plays in a sandbox of lame-duck tropes, dooming Lenore for the supposed sin of a mother’s love.
Teenage party-girl turned actress Bijou Phillips stars as Lenore Harker, a New Mexico college student who quits to live with her architect boyfriend, Frank (James Murray), and raise their incoming baby. She’s ditching pizza nights and girl talk with bestie Marnie (Ty Glaser), moving into the Albuquerque woods, where Frank has a secluded homestead with brother Chris (Raphaël Coleman), who is wheelchair dependent. Lenore goes in for a pregnancy checkup, where she learns her unborn child has doubled in size, requiring a cesarean section birth. So the surgical team opens her up and extracts “Daniel,” only to be murdered by the newborn, found resting on Lenore’s stomach, taking a post-slaughter rest.
The immediate deviation is how Daniel is found nuzzling Lenore in the hospital, and doesn’t look “freakish” at first glance. Daniel comes home with Lenore and Frank, setting up the happy lil’ family dynamic. It’s no longer a conspiratorial hunt-and-hide scenario; the “home sweet hell” take on Cohen’s original. Which, frustratingly, dissolves the core suspense that Cohen achieves. For Daniel to kill, victims have to come knocking on Lenore’s door, which becomes a repetitive cycle of visitors and hidden bodies that remove any excitement and surprises.
Does It Work?
Rusnak earns points for trying something new. Remakes have historically been less willing to put unique spins on existing stories (see: Cabin Fever). But there’s also a question of retaining the essence of the source material. Why remake a movie if you’re going to spin so far from the original that you don’t even need to use the title? It’s the Child’s Play of it all. If you wanted to make a killer AI toy movie, why use the Child’s Play legacy to do so (outside of market familiarity)?
It’s Alive doesn’t fully abandon Cohen’s ideas, but it does feel thinner than expected. There have been plenty of killer baby movies since It’s Alive—Cohen hardly has the concept trademarked. What’s fun about Cohen’s It’s Alive is how Frank chases his mutant kin around Los Angeles, eventually into the sewer system, culminating in the Los Angeles (drained) river. Rusnak directs what’s essentially a one-location thriller that minimizes the scope to meet not only its lower budget, but lesser ambitions. Where Cohen pushes farther, Rusnak pulls back, losing the idiosyncratic quirks of Cohen’s superior It’s Alive.
There’s nothing wrong with a good chamber piece, but the psychological torments Sopocy and Portolese opt for are soft as fresh-out-the-bag marshmallows. So much of the film hinges on Lenore’s cover-up tactics when she realizes her wee one is a maneater, which becomes one-note in the process. Frank wanders around, ignoring red flags, and Chris is removed from the picture for a small bit to keep the massacre going. In both films, Lenore has trouble turning against her child—but Cohen is much more thoughtful about Lenore’s state through it all. Rusnak’s direction is short-sighted, rudimentary, and flat, as it has nothing interesting to say about the fears of parenthood that drive Phillips’ Lenore to nurture the vengeful child she once wanted to terminate.
The Result
In It’s Alive (1974), Cohen makes a point of referencing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, as John P. Ryan’s Frank recalls having the epiphany that Dr. Frankenstein is the villain, not his creation. It’s what drives Cohen’s screenplay, as we learn how the doctors tried to kill the original baby, since its deformities made it look like a melon-headed, fang-toothed freakshow. There’s none of that in Rusnak’s remake, which diminishes the creature’s origins and motives to anger. It’s an uninteresting modification because the point of Cohen’s picture is to question what makes a monster, and how its creators process their hand in the chaos. Rusnak’s not interested in such explorations, except when the screenplay shoehorns what foolishly appears as an anti-abortion undertone when we learn about Lenore’s sketchy internet baby-be-gone pills.
Even worse, the technical merits of Rusnak’s It’s Alive are unfortunate. Credit to the original’s cast, because Ryan and Farrell bring dramatic acting chops that accentuate their film’s tragedy; a legitimate heartbreaker. None of Rusnak’s cast are hitting on such a high caliber of talent, especially since there’s nothing meaty about Sopocy and Portolese’s character designs. It’s very Horror 101: ignore the obvious, act gobsmacked when the obvious happens, and bring it home. Phillips has been better in films like Bully and Hostel: Part II (maybe even The Wizard of Gore), while Murray is your average 2000s straight-to-video throwaway boyfriend. The rest of the supporting cast, sadly, barely even register.
There’s a charm to Cohen’s monster SFX, whipped up by Rick Baker—but also an opportunity. Cohen decided to use this three-mirror-blur vision, seeing through the baby’s eyes to show the beast as little as possible. If Rusnak wanted to make a stronger impact, he could have gone all-in on Daniel’s appearance to say, “Hey, at least we developed a rad creature!” But, alas, Rusnak might show even less of Daniel. When he does appear in the basement, or leap out of a trash can in the film’s climactic finale, it’s CG augmentation that distorts a puppet reportedly crafted by SFX superstar Tony Gardner. Cohen accomplishes infinitely more by putting his then-girlfriend Elaine Parkyn in a full-head monster mask, a pair of pointed gloves, and a partial body suit that benefit from optical tricks—because practical always wins.
The Lesson
It’s not hard to wonder why Millennium Films lost faith in Rusnak’s It’s Alive and opted for no theatrical release. In a time when horror remakes were all the rage, Millennium buried It’s Alive so deep that it’s not even watchable or rentable on streaming (ain’t even worth Tubi). No hyperbole, this remake stinks with the stinkiest of ’em. It’s slight on innovation, filled with awful genre generics, and is a slap in the face to what Cohen accomplished. There’s something so fresh about a killer baby flick that focuses on the suit-and-tie-wearing father, who is forced to challenge the stern, macho gender roles of the 70s, and something so disappointing about a 2000s horror movie that falls right back into outdated mindsets.
So what did we learn?
- Yes, for the hundredth time, some of those 2000s horror remakes are as bad as the haters made them all out to be.
- Ex-David Lee Roth, Ozzy Osbourne, and Alice Cooper bassist Todd Jensen plays Lenore’s doctor for some reason (which I wouldn’t have known without the internet).
- You can appreciate a remake for trying something different, but you can also detest a remake for how poorly it does something different.
- Why does Daniel look like a baby shark (doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo)?
Watching both It’s Alive flicks back-to-back gave me whiplash. When John P. Ryan (as Frank) confronts his cowering, terrified child-monster in the bowels of Los Angeles, I nearly shed a tear. That whole scene really, as Ryan realizes he’s become the Dr. Frankenstein of sorts, and his miserable, deformed boy craves his father’s affection in a time of need. Then you have Rusnak’s film, which brutally kills the pro-abortion character, insinuates Lenore is being punished for trying to abort Daniel early in the pregnancy, and deserves to die with her demon spawn engulfed by the worst CG flames this side of Birdemic: Shock and Terror. I just … kudos to Cohen for richly developing a sci-fi curio with a tremendous sense of emotional understanding, and nothing but thumbs down for Rusnak’s remake, which comes off as plenty boneheaded and hella halfhearted in the process.
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