In 1978, George A. Romero released Dawn of the Dead as a follow-up to his 1968 classic, Night of the Living Dead (the forerunner of all modern zombie films). While Romero gets a writing credit for this movie based on his original 1978 screenplay, and there are definitely some similarities here, it’s not the same movie.
Directed by Zack Snyder, and still taking place in a shopping mall as the zombies start to make their presence felt throughout the world, there is a definite shift over thirty years. Where the first film left you to do a bit more interpreting, and was a bit more on the psychological side, this one is a bit more a sign of the times, and gives you a lot more action to work with while you watch the affect of being cooped up as the world crumbles.
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I’m going to take a bit of a departure on this one, and say that if you’re looking for a plot, go elsewhere, because there isn’t much. Deep in Slovakia (actually, it might be just inside Slovakia, we never really know), a group of ultra-rich people do what ultra-rich people do – they get together and create for themselves what they can’t find anywhere else: A warehouse where they can kidnap and ultimately maim and murder wandering teens who would not be missed if they go missing.
Did you follow me? I hope so, because it isn’t really much to work with, and it really goes downhill from there.
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Luther and Nora Krank typically spend their Christmas season with everyone. The emphasis here is on spend. With so many holiday decorations and parties, last year they spent more than six thousand dollars. This year, however, their daughter Blair is joining the Peace Corps, and so they’re on their own. Luther Krank (Tim Allen) has an idea. Since Blair isn’t going to be home, and he and Nora will have all this time to be alone, why not just skip Christmas entirely?
As an accountant, it actually works out great. As a man, he knows he can’t get away with just ducking the holiday, so he comes up with a plan: They’ll take a cruise. Even after planning for a full cruise package, they are going to come out thousands of dollars ahead. Assuming that they can duck all of their standard holiday commitments, and that isn’t going to be an easy task. The first thing he has to do is sell his wife on the idea. It turns out that will be the easy part of it.
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Posted to
Thriller on May 27th, 2007 by Chad Everett
This was – I believe – the first of the films I took in from the 2006 edition of the After Dark Horrorfest. From what I understand, this was also incidentally voted the fan favorite, and it later saw a theatrical release all its own, in addition to the original release along with the other Horrorfest films. But I digress, because that really doesn’t have much to do with the movie itself.
A brief introduction on a farm shows us a peasant family sitting down to eat when their dinner is interrupted by a truck carrying two infants. Suddenly the story jumps forward forty years to meet a woman, who has been summoned to Russia by a notary claiming to have found her long-dead parents at the farm they once owned. On the steps to the office, she bumps into someone, but doesn’t pay any attention to it, as most of us wouldn’t. Pay attention, though, because this is important. During her meeting, she is informed that there are no other living heirs and she sets out to claim the home of her parents. She has a guide, who appears to be the only person willing to visit the farm at night. Also pay attention to the truck, because it looks an awful lot like the truck in the opening scene.
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When Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) wakes up, he knows that he doesn’t want to go to school. He’s ready to take a day off and stop to take a look around. If you don’t, life just might pass you by. But in order to do that, he has to convince his parents that he’s sick enough to stay home, but not sick enough to go to the doctor.
In order to do that, Ferris gives us his plan. He’s going for the clammy hands. While he’s bent over from coughing, he licks the palms, which gives them the wet feeling. He also gives us a point-by-point on-screen blow of why not to go for a fever (you might end up at the doctor’s office). Which is a little odd, really, because the on-screen thing isn’t used elsewhere. But it works, and his parents head to work and he has the day off. Now he just has to get through it.
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On another indeterminate day, sometime after the original Clerks ended, Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran) is headed back to the Quick Stop. Only today is a little different than another day, because as he lifts the door to the store, he sees something different inside. Fire. Lots and lots of fire. At first, he can’t believe it, so he simply shuts the door.
Then he lifts it again, verifies that it is indeed fire, and he calls 911.
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Penny Deerborn (Rachel Miner) doesn’t like cars. I mean she really doesn’t like cars. Through a series of flashbacks in the movies, we find that she was in a horrible wreck when she was younger that killed both of her parents (at least, they appear to be her parents). So her psychiatrist, Orianna Volkes (Mimi Rogers) is helping her through the process of conquering her fears.
Orianna has written at least one book on the subject (we see it several times as events of the night unfold), and she is helping young Penny to come full circle. To conquer her fears by confronting them. So they are taking a ride into the mountains. It appears that the mountains might be the place where the wreck happened, but that may or may not be important. What is important is that Penny simply doesn’t like being in cars. She gets sick just riding along with the door shut.
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A seemingly never-ending line of dirt-encrusted men, women and at least one child prepare to be hanged in the gallows, all to appease Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander) and his war on the pirates. As they march endlessly towards their doom, a cryer announces that item after item is suspended. No longer can people gather, demonstrate or even have lawyers. Instead, they can just die.
Then, a young lad, clutching a piece of eight, begins to softly sing. The song is gradually picked up by each of the others in line behind him, until it seems that everyone is singing the haunting song. This seems to do nothing more than infuriate Beckett.
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We first meet Arden (Toni Collette) in the opening section, titled simply The Stranger, as she struggles to care for her abusive mother in what appears to be a rather run-down home. As Arden takes a walk, she comes across something rather unexpected in the field – the body of a young woman. For reasons known only to her, she takes the necklace the girl is wearing, and on returning home, she calls the police.
For a completely unexplained reason – perhaps because her mother wants to continue abusing her all by her lonesome – when she finds out that the police have come, Arden’s mother is furious with her. I’m not sure exactly what Arden was supposed to do. Perhaps she should have just left the body in the field to rot and continue to be abused by her mother. I don’t think it was really explained, and we are just left to figure out why her mother is so hateful. Maybe you can explain it if you have seen it, but I certainly didn’t get it.
In any case, this sets the tone for the rest of the film.
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That cuddly green ogre Shrek (Mike Myers) has returned for the third go-round, and this time the stakes are a bit higher. King Harold (John Cleese) has croaked (he’s a frog, get it, he croaked?) and with one of his last breaths (he had several) he has left the reins of Far Far Away in the hands of Shrek and Fiona (Cameron Diaz).
Naturally, Shrek is thinking mostly of himself, and he isn’t really interested. He just wants to go back to the swamp. So before the king dies, he asks if there is another option. Luckily, there is one. His name is Arthur. That’s all that Shrek needs to hear. There is someone else who can handle running things and get dressed up, and he and Fiona can get out of there. So he and Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss (Antonio Banderas) board a ship and head out to find Arthur.
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