Contagion (2011)

First impressions? I have no idea what to make of it. Then as I began to bounce ideas of the Whalley, I found that I did not like this film at all. Be warned, there are spoilers.

Well, let’s start off with the plot. From what the trailer told me, it was essentially a ‘what if’ scenario, seeing what would happen if bird flu went to full blown human-to-human transmission. This was because the main line from the trailer was “No-one needs to weaponise bird flu, the birds are doing it,”. The problem with this is it’s not bird flu! It’s revealed that a bulldozer knocked down a banana tree, which a bat then ate, but it dropped a bit into a pig pen, which a pig ate, the pig was then sold onto a chef who chopped it up, didn’t wash his hands and gave the disease to Beth Enhoff, played by Gwneyth Paltrow. So the disease is the bulldozer-bat-banana-pig-chef virus. And yes, despite having about fifteen minutes of screen time, Paltrow is one of the top billed cast members.

And that’s it. It follows the same line of ‘Lost in Translation’ where it’s just people living out their lives, in ‘Contagion’s case, with an epidemic thrown in. But there isn’t really a plot, and if there was one it kept being broken up by the constant scene changes to the different stories being told. Like I said in my review for ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’, it breaks up the flow of the film. This also means that there’s hardly any character development so I don’t give a damn about any of the characters. And any characters we do care about, like Kate Winslet’s ‘Dr Erin Mears’, die twenty minutes after being introduced. Apart from that, characters are dropped and introduced every five seconds so we have no conclusion to their story, or have any idea who died or not. ‘Dr. Leonora Ornates’, played by ‘Inception’ bigwig Marion Cotillard, could have been dropped from the film as she didn’t contribute much, and I even forgot her character existed.

Back to the multi-plot point. I’ll list them, it’s easier.

·         First plot follows Mitch and Jory Emhoff, played by Matt Damon and Anna Jacoby-Heron respectively, trying to survive in the world that is gradually breaking down.

·         Second plot has Dr. Ellis Cheever, played by Laurence Fishburne, trying his best to run the CDC during the crisis, as well as look out for his loved ones.

·         Third plot has conspiracy nut Alan Krumweide, played by Jude Law, essentially making things more chaotic by saying the CDC shouldn’t be trusted.

·         Fourth plot follows Dr Erin Mears, still played by Kate Winslet, performing her duties out in the field.

·         Fifth plot follows Professor Sussman and Dr. Ally Hextall, played by Elliot Gould and Jennifer Ehle, trying to work on a vaccine.

·         And finally the sixth plot follows Dr. Leonora Ornates, still played by Marion Cotillard, trying to track down the origin of the disease.

And there’s the major problem with this film, there’s too many plots to follow. As mentioned earlier it keeps cutting between scenes and plots, so we can’t keep track of the stories. And in a film which lasts an hour and forty minutes, there’s not enough time to follow all the stories. The film does focus more on the Emhoff, the CDC and Krumweide stories, which were done very well, though the Krumweide story does coincide with the CDC plot, and the CDC plot also crosses into the Mears and vaccine stories.

As mentioned Winslet’s character is a likeable character, but she does get infected early into the film which leads to her death, which was a very sad moment. But her story did seem to have been cut too soon, and one of her scenes was of her explaining something to a committee, which, whilst it does explain the facts to the audience, is also pointless because the committee SHOULD KNOW THIS! Then there’s one member of the committee who acts like a complete bitch, more concerned about money than lives.

Leonora’s story was also too short, one scene which could have had important dialogue was covered up by techno music, and the person she was talking to kept disregarding her comments. Heck, I saw this with the Whalley, who knows some Chinese, and he said one scene where they were arguing about Leonora’s comments, Whalley said they were actually talking about who had lunch! Then she’s kidnapped and disappears for half the film, so that her kidnappers can get the vaccine for their village, which hasn’t and will never be infected. Of course, after the trade was made she learns that the vaccine the village received was actually a placebo (since she wasn’t the only kidnap made), so Leonora then rushes back to tell the villagers, especially the children. And there’s no conclusion. We don’t see her get back to the village, or at all after that scene, which is pretty understandable since she was blindfolded when she was taken there, therefore she has no idea where the village is!

Mitch’s story was really compelling though, as he represents the everyday common person. All he wants to do is protect his daughter and we can really feel a connection with him. The only faults I found was that, at the beginning anyway, he’s stupid! The doctor says his wife has passed on, yet Mitch asks if he can talk to her. There was the point that he knew that his wife was killed by a virus and was put in isolation, BUT, not only did the hospital let him go without reason, but when he starts coughing he tells Winslet’s character that he “might have caught a bug,”. I literally started hitting my head on the seat in front of me at the sheer stupidity of, not only Mitch’s character, but all of the characters. And I thought I was going to hate his daughter when he forbids her from contact with any other people, especially her boyfriend, but she actually understood the reason why he’s doing what he’s doing. It was a pleasant surprise. It was also a very thoughtful scene when Mitch gave his daughter and her boyfriend the prom night they never had, which also coincided with Mitch emotionally finding his wife’s camera.

Whilst Hextall is in the film in its entirety, Sussman just disappears, so there’s no conclusion for that character. Hextall does enable us to meet her father, played by Dan Flannery, though, who, in twenty seconds of character development I kid you not, becomes my favourite character. Seriously, in twenty seconds we’re told that he risked his health to help others and he would rather his daughter leaves than make her ill. Now when the rest of your cast are being outshone by a character who, not only is in the film for a minute, but doesn’t even have a name, you know something definitely went wrong somewhere!

And then we have Jude Law’s character; Alan Krumweide, who basically represents any protestor who doesn’t know what the Hell they’re on about. You know, any protester which says the current system is crap but doesn’t give an alternate strategy, or one which will obviously not work in reality. Which we get a lot nowadays. Anyway, Krunweide writes a load of blogs (which Sussman says is graffiti with punctuation.....I feel sad now), which basically slates anyone who tries to combat the virus. And by God I hated this character, I really did. He continuously says the government is organising a conspiracy, that they’re making money off peoples suffering, creates panic, paranoia and anarchy, and he’s a Goddamn hypocrite! Yeah! He says he got the virus and cured himself with a random drug, which causes looting at pharmacies, and his friend, his pregnant friend, begs him for help, even offers him money, and he refuses. She then dies, and he doesn’t give a damn. And through all this, not only did he not even have the disease, he earned $4.5million! Somehow! I truly hated this guy! I actually hoped he would get the disease towards the end of the film, as an attempt to get the audience to like him. But no. We last see him interviewing people who are queuing up for the vaccine. He does not get any repercussions, though government officials say they’ll be charging him with numerous convictions, including manslaughter, as well as being sued by many people. I still feel that his story didn’t have a conclusion though.

But despite the breaking of the flow, despite the constant scene changes, the plot is still very effective, simply because it could happen. In fact, it has happened. As the film points out, the last major epidemic was the Spanish Flu which wiped out over one billion people died, then, of course there was the dangers of bird and swine flu in recent years. It shows how society can break apart as a flu becomes more and more dangerous. And it even steals the message I said ‘Survival of the Dead’ showed, which was in times of crisis, the enemy is ourselves, as people start senselessly killing each other, assaulting each other, riot and loot.

And the makers actually did their research on how a vaccine can be created and how flu can spread, as the disease research personnel reference actual  basic reproduction number, finding the origins of the virus and figuring out how to grow the virus. It’s really interesting and, for once, actually educational. The only downside is that it’s normally shown through one person explaining it to another, even though the second person should already know this!

And whether you like the characters or not, a majority of the acting is great. Matt Damon and Jude Law were fantastic in their roles, whilst Kate Winslet and Laurence Fishburne were also pretty good. Gwyneth Paltrow also gave a pretty grotesque (in a good way) performance of a person having severe seizures, it almost makes you look away because it looks so realistic. Marion Cotillard though, at times, looked bored stiff. It also makes you think how much some of these big named actors and actresses were paid when they were only in the film for fifteen minutes.

The weird thing is though, the virus isn’t really shown to be much of a threat. Sure, we’re told there are thousands infected every day and in the end millions died, but from what I was told from a radio review and the trailer, I thought people were going to be dropping left, right and centre. If I remember right I think only about five people die on screen, then we just see a lot of body bags and memorials in other scenes. Yes, the film focuses more on the creation of a vaccine and the deterioration of society, but it would’ve been more effective if we saw the virus claiming lives every single day at an alarming rate, it would’ve made the film more tense and terrifying.

I think it’s one of those marmite films; you either love it or hate it. I found it to be a bad film, but still a very effective and a very powerful piece of cinema.

Dance of the Dead (2008)

Okay, going into this film, I was worried that it was going to be a poor cheap imitation. A comedy yes, but a poor one. And by God, I was wrong, this film was great. It does a very good job at being a zombie story and at actually being funny.

We follow a group of students, some preparing for prom, some going out to film, when the power plant that is next door to the cemetery starts bringing the dead back to life. So, yeah, it has an environment message! Kind of a stupid message to portray, but at least the film doesn’t throw it in your face every five seconds, unlike most environmentally friendly films. It only mentions the plant, oh, about five times I think, the characters themselves focus more on surviving the effects, which is actually a really good route, it makes the film more realistic. Yes, I know it’s a film about zombies, but yes, focusing more on survival is more realistic.

All the characters are brilliant in their roles and are actually played by people who are in the necessary age range, instead of being played by 30 year olds. The characters are actually believable, they act like real students at the start, then react how you’d expect students to react in such a situation; scared and terrified, whilst at the same time adapting. Not only that, but the film succeeds in making you care about them. They’re enthusiastic, they’re charming, they’re just brilliant in their roles. The actors did a really good job in portraying them as well, even the minor characters did great jobs, especially the gravedigger.

It is really good as well that the film does not portray the geek characters in the stereotypical manner, you know, the spectacles, spots, braces, asthma and lisp voices. Real life geeks are NOT like that, if you believe it, so it’s good to see the film portray realistic characters.

I do have to give a nod to Justin Welborn, who portrays Kyle, as he made the character truly fantastic. He was really believable as the tough bully, then managed to make the audience sympathise with his character when he (SPOILERS!) dies. Not only that, but he actually brought most of the laughs during his screen time.

But the best character has to be Coach Keel, played by Mark Oliver. He converts the group of student survivors into hardened soldiers in no time at all, is actually competent, is one of, if not the, funniest character, and, on top of it all, drives my dream car, a hummer! He is just awesome! And his opening scene is priceless as he oversees Jimmy’s (played by Jared Kusnitz) detention. The montage of him arming the students with the garage full of weapons is also a great gem, especially when one of the lines consists of:

Coach Keel: “Little lady, you’ll get the machete,”

Gwen: “But I don’t know how to shoot a machete,”

His reaction was brilliant. Then there’s the scene where the students are talking to the band which had been distracting the zombies for five hours, whilst Coach in the background was killing zombies. Hell, he did a ‘Predator’ moment and ripped the SPINE AND SKULL from one zombie! Now that’s awesome!

The story is pretty good as well, the whole students versus zombies scenario was very well executed. It is dragged down a bit with some dodgy dialogue., and there was one scene where the zombies were literally jumping out of the graves to go after some of the characters in the graveyard. Whilst it was silly, you do have to remember that this is a comedy, and at the same time it was suppose to be an intense scene. The characters involved are running for their lives, and the spring boarding zombies add a lot more tension to that scene.

The zombies are a bit of a mixed result. They are good at bringing in a claustrophobic feel to the film, a nod to the old Romero films if you will, maybe the zombies being distracted by the music is a nod to the fireworks from ‘Land of the Dead’. And some scenes are done really well, such as in the morgue at the funeral home, where a zombie jumps out of the freezer still in the body bag. But half the time the zombies stagger, the other half they run, I’m pretty sure I heard some zombies mutter “brains”, some do Spiderman impressions and some are capable of DRIVING A CAR! Why?! Why are they able to drive a car?!

Then there’s that bizarre scene of two recently turned zombies making out because their former human selves had a bit of a romance going on. That was weird.

The ending also annoyed me. The sci-fi club having now got dates from female survivors at the prom, have since joined the other main characters and the Coach and are now planning to attack the power plant in order to stop the polluting chemicals (which are causing the dead to rise) from spreading. And then the film ends. Yeah, we don’t see them actually attack the power plant, it just ends, which makes me think it’s sequel baiting...even though there shouldn’t be any zombies there, and anyone who is there won’t put up much of a fight. But, yeah, disappointing ending. And I suppose after saying all that, there could’ve been more casualties from the group, which at the same time we don’t want because we do care a lot about the characters.

Final thoughts, this film is awesome! Yes it has flaws, but what film doesn’t? It’s creative, the acting is great, the music played by the musicians characters is great, the effects are good, it has a message which doesn’t ram itself down your throat, overall it’s a really entertaining piece of film making, especially for a low budget production. I definitely recommend this movie if you’re looking for a laugh.

Survival of the Dead (2009)

Now this is a return to form for Romero. After suffering the unlikeable Riley in ‘Land of the Dead’ and the horrendous...everyone in ‘Diary of the Dead’, we get a much more improved film from the Master of Horror.

First of all, Romero had never thought of any of his Dead films (past ‘Night of the Living Dead’) as sequels, as they never featured any characters from the previous films. ‘Survival of the Dead’ breaks that tradition, as the leader of the military group from ‘Diary’ and his comrades return. Now, we actually get background with these guys! Yeah! We learn a little about the events which lead to Sarge, played by Alan Van Sprang, and his group becoming highwaymen. We hear his thoughts and feelings about the situation, and we begin to like him. Then again he did rob the group in ‘Diary’, so I already liked him.

I’ll come back to the other characters in a minute. The plot starts off with two families on Plum Island, the O’Flynn’s and the Muldoon’s. They had never liked each other, and the zombie Apocalypse took their rivalry to the next level. Patrick O’Flynn, played by Kenneth Walsh, wants the dead to stay dead, but Seamus Muldoon, played by Richard Fitzpatrick, would rather keep the dead around, wanting them to remain part of society. A standoff with Patrick and Seamus and their respective groups results in Seamus exiling Patrick and some of his men from the island, after Patrick’s daughter Janet persuaded Seamus not to kill him. Why does Seamus listen to Janet?....I dunno.

Anyway,  after Sarge and his group pick up a boy, played by Devon Bostick (and he is actually listed as ‘boy’, check IMDB if you don’t believe me), boy tells them of an online video of Patrick telling people of an island which they can use to escape the zombie horde. Sarge and his group go to Patrick and his group, a shootout occurs with each other and some zombies. Francisco, played by Stefano Colacitti, commandeers a ferry, but bites a zombie’s finger off. Patrick, the only survivor from his group, steers Sarge and his group to Plum Island. On the island things fall apart; Kenny, played by Eric Woolfe, is shot, Francisco is shot by the lesbian Tomboy, played by Athena Karkanis, before she is kidnapped by Muldoon’s men, Sarge collapses after being shot and Patrick finds his daughter has been turned into a zombie. Meanwhile Muldoon’s right hand man Chuck, played by Joris Jarsky, is tasked to find his old flame-turned-zombie Janet as the other zombies had failed in trying to eat something that isn’t human.

 

Now, here’s where I thought Romero had gone against what most films have; a love interest. Yeah! Well Tomboy’s a lesbian, Janet is dead and there’s no other female character. So who else is there for Sarge to have a romantic involvement with except...Janet? But you’re dead! Oh okay, it’s her twin sister Jane!...Who was never mentioned before....or any indication of existence was made about. Yeah, that was really stupid.

So the plot is pretty good, except for one little tiny problem...there’s little to no zombie involvement. Every so often we see captured zombies, but they have little impact. They only have a rampage twice, once when Sarge’s group face off with Patrick’s, and when Patrick’s and Muldoon’s forces clash. The violence mainly occurs between the human characters. This does give us some much missed character development, but for a zombie film, there really should have been more involvement from them. Actually, now that I think about it, that’s probably the underlying message, that, in times of crisis, the enemy isn’t some dark malevolent force, but ourselves. I don’t know if that message was intended, but I’d like to think it was.

And bizarrely, there are some funny scenes in the film, such as Sarge throwing a grenade at Patrick and his men, which blew apart the front of the shack they were in, prompting Patrick to say "What the bloody Hell was that?" or something along those lines. And of course Patrick is a great laugh. Then there's some ingenuity when Francisco becomes infected by biting a ZOMBIE! That was clever, you have to admit that.

One thing I almost missed though was the fact that for the whole film, Sarge’s group holds onto over $1million cash in an armoured truck, and they really want to hold onto that cash. Boy even asks Jane what she would do with that amount, which apparently made her return to help her father’s group. But, like I said in ‘Land of the Dead’, money doesn’t work in a world where civilisation has collapsed! So why Patrick also blackmails money from folks he sends to Plum is also irrelevant!

The characters are a huge improvement on the last two films, pretty much everyone was likeable in their own ways. The actors and actresses portraying them were very good as well. Patrick is a funny and has a very strong personality, Sarge is what Riley from ‘Land’ should have been, Chuck is very interesting and Kenny was underused.

Even Muldoon was a great character, his views on keeping the dead with us and not letting go is one that is viewed by many, and one which even intrigues us, the viewer. Despite the fact that we’re on Patrick’s side because we’ve followed him and also agree with the ideology that zombies need to be shot, it is still a theory that will stick in everyone’s minds. Muldoon is even right when the zombies start eating the horse...sort of. I mean, whilst this means that the zombies have started to eat other meat, I feel that this just means that we’ll now have zombie animals running around also trying to eat us. Plus I am one of those people who think animals should be zombies, like in the Resident Evil franchise.

The zombies have also started to get smarter...even though they’ve only been around for three weeks. Personally I think it should take longer for them to get smarter, like it took four films for them to get smarter in ‘Land of the Dead’, but Muldoon has them chained up in their past jobs, forcing them to remember, which, again, actually works; the mail zombie continuously puts mail in the mailbox, the woodsman zombie continuously chops some wood...sort of, and the woman farmhand zombie uses a plough. Then again it’s not just them. A zombie on the ferry remembers how to start a car, and the Janet zombie remembers how to ride her horse. Why are they smarter? Who knows and who cares?

In fact, now that I think about it, the boy was probably the least favourite character as they made him a jack-of-all trades, making him an annoying know-it-all. Jane/Janet was also one of the least favourites as, well, Janet was only alive for five to ten minutes, and Jane just moaned a lot.

The film itself, isn’t really that scary or creepy, to be honest. Maybe because of the lack of zombies. But the feel of it is much closer to the original trilogy than ‘Land’ or ‘Diary’ were, and that made it superb. Is it better than the original trilogy? No. I like this movie, I really do, but I feel that the original trilogy has set the bar for zombie films; it’s going to be extremely hard for any zombie film to be good compared to ‘Night of the Living Dead’, ‘Dawn of the Dead’ and ‘Day of the Dead’.

So, yeah, I like this film, I really do. It’s the best one of the modern trilogy by far. But should Romero continue doing ‘...of the Dead’ films? I don’t think he should, personally, as I feel that he will make the zombie film genre, the one he made famous, old and tiresome. Also, how many ‘...of the Dead’ films can he make? How many can anyone make? I mean, how about...’Dance of the Dead’? Can you imagine if that happened?

What do you mean it happened?

Diary of the Dead (2007)

Firstly, I like zombie films. Just in case I didn’t make that clear in the ‘Land of the Dead’ review, I like zombie flicks, whether they run or walk. Then, I like the found footage genre, where it makes you feel part of the action, with films like ‘Cloverfield’, ‘The Blair Witch Project’ and ‘REC’, I really do like that film genre.

So why do I hate this film? Okay, hate is a bit of a strong word, but I certainly don’t like it.

This film serves as a reboot, it follows the zombie outbreak but in the 21^st Century, with the main flow of information being from the internet. Whilst rebooting it wasn’t that big a deal, it does move away from the classic feel that the original trilogy and even ‘Land of the Dead’ at least attempted, which does not bode well.

It follows a group of students and their professor (who is with them...for some reason) who attempt to survive the zombie Apocalypse, as well as film everything. And that’s the main reason why this film fails. Jason Creed, played by Joshua Close, literally wants to film EVERYTHING. This leads to some of the stupidest things I have ever seen. One example, Jason films a zombie attacking one of his friends instead of, oh, I don’t know, HELPING HIM! Sure he shouts at him, but putting down the camera and attacking the zombie doesn’t come across his mind. He does this five times. FIVE! And, to return back to the point, he does film everything, including himself EDITING his video! And for what? “72000 hits in eight minutes”. Oh yeah, in a world where the dead are rising, all he cares about are the number of times his video has been viewed. What the Hell is wrong with this guy?! The Stranger, played by Martin Roach, even says “Who’s gonna be left to watch?”. And it is a bit redundant when we’re told that whatever the camera picks up, the audience will pick up, then towards the end say that Ridley got bit, then not only cut back to that scene, but zoom in on the blood in slow motion! You contradicted yourself movie! You say the audience would’ve picked up on that, then you spell it out for them, effectively saying they’re morons!

Then it all comes down to the flow of information. The underlying message in ‘Land of the Dead’ is rich verses poor. The underlying message in ‘Diary of the Dead’ is the search for the truth; the war in Iraq being the big motivator. That the media and the government keep the truth from the public. Again, like in ‘Land of the Dead’, it was a terrible message to portray. Why? Well let’s see, how can the government keep the dead rising from the public secret?! I think everyone knows!

Not only that, but there’s a political message as well; mainly that the military are complete and utter jerks, shown when soldiers steal everything but the weapons from our group and when some military personal shoot an elderly couple when the zombies they were hiding attacked them. The elderly people being shot, okay, fine, I can’t think of a defence for that. But, the stealing from group, to some, was to show that they are in fact dicks. In reality, it shows that in the zombie Apocalypse you can’t rely on the military for protection, especially when it is falling apart at the seams. People get desperate, that’s human nature.

What else sucks about this film though? The characters! Now, at least ‘Land of the Dead’ had some good characters, unlike ‘Diary of the Dead’ where pretty much every single character is unlikeable and unbelievable. The majority of them are bland and forgettable, some do some really stupid things, like pull a gun out of their arse (well it’s the only explanation for the sudden appearance of the gun I can think of) and shoot themselves through the cheek, but there are three characters who really piss me off. There’s Jason who I’ve already gone over.

Then there’s Debra who is played by the awful Michelle Morgan, who hasn’t got a personality beyond bitch. She constantly moans and does an immediately emotional recovery from her family trying to kill her. But that’s not the worse part; she’s the narrator. And a bloody awful one at that. Her narrating lines are just terrible, including a line which says that she has put in sound effects and edited the film to make the viewers scared. Point one, this is supposed to be a real life documentary, why would you edit it in a way to scare the person watching it? Point two, if she says she edited it, thank you for telling me five minutes into the film that Jason bites the dust later, thank you for the spoilers. Point three, the scares in this film are predictable and stupid. Point four, you Debra, SUCK!

Then we have Andrew Maxwell, the professor of the students, played by Scott Wentworth. Why is he with the students? Because the plot says so! Seriously no lecturer, professor or teacher hangs around their students when they’re filming a project for their class! But whilst Wentworth does at least try to bring some decent acting into this film, his character is just so dull. Half his lines, at least, are strangely poetic, which makes his dialogue tedious and annoying.

Actually, I lied, there were some characters that were likeable, the Stranger and Samuel, the deaf Amish guy. Martin Roach does a fantastic job as the Stranger and was actually a very interesting character. Samuel was intriguing, mainly because he blows three zombies up with a stick of dynamite, and he was played by R.D. Reid very well. Unfortunately he was slightly ruined by the fact that he put a scythe through his own skull and a zombie’s skull like they were butter. But both of them were well thought out characters. And when your main cast are being outdone by characters who were in the film for about ten minutes, you know something is wrong.

The ending REALLY pissed me off though. After surviving a night in the mansion that’s built like a fortress, the three remaining survivors lock themselves in a panic room as the house is overrun by the zombies. Why is it overrun? Because they left a door open! A zombie Apocalypse, and they left a door open?! What a bunch of idiots! And the film ends like that? Not with a bang but with a whimper? Just because you had a zombie running around the night before, doesn’t mean you can’t have a climax.

Oh wait, that's NOT the end! No Debra narrates a scene which debates whether humanity is worth saving when two rednecks use zombies for shooting practice. Point one, because two people use dead people as shooting practice, everyone apparently deserves to die. Point two, they shot zombies which would eat people. I agree that they shot what used to be human in an undignified way, but they're zombies! Point three, you still suck Debra!

So, final thoughts?...I didn’t like it. So, two for nothing, I hope the aptly named ‘Survival of the Dead’ restores some dignity to the franchise.