[THE DEAD screens Wednesday March 21st at 7:00 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art.]
Review by Bob Ignizio
Some of my favorite movies are zombie movies. At this point, however, even a die-hard fan like me has to admit that this particular horror sub genre is starting to smell about as fresh as the walking corpses that populate it. All you have to do is browse through the horror category on Netflix (or at your local video store if you still have one) and you'll find a ridiculous number of films starring the flesh-eating undead, almost all of them unwatchable by any but the least discriminating gorehounds. In this context Howard and Jonathan Ford's THE DEAD, while no modern classic on a par with 28 DAYS LATER or SHAUN OF THE DEAD, proves nonetheless a refreshingly well made and reasonably entertaining offering. Well, in parts, at least.
The Fords are definitely not out to reinvent the wheel here. They follow all of the rules and hit many of the same notes as the George Romero zombie films that started this whole zombie thing off in 1968 with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. If you wanted to tell yourself that this film was taking place in the same fictional universe as Romero's films, only set in Africa instead of Pittsburgh, there's nothing here to contradict that.
