Detention of the Dead (2012)
Scroll down to the bottom of this review if you want a TL:DR version.
What to say about this film? Well it scored a poultry 4.2 on the IMDb site, and I'd have to say it isn't far from the truth. Zombie films are a dime a dozen these days just like vampire and werewolf films. But as a genre it's about as popular as Burberry and just as annoying. Still, credit to those who continue to make them as it's nigh on impossible to come up with a new and original way to portray the living dead.
Sadly, this film doesn't break the mould in any conventional way, the acting leaves little to the imagination and the over-used social classes that make up the cliché American high school are prevalent The testosterone fuelled jock, the alpha male, the pot-head, the head cheerleader, the nerd and the Goth girl make up this cast and none of them are likely to be adding an Oscar to their mantles any time soon.
With little explanation, the zombie virus breaks out during detention, the place where our cast convenes. For some inexplicable reason they quickly figure out what's happening, but when their teacher gets bitten and they decide to head to the library they take her with them. Eventually she gets decapitated by the pot-head using a guillotine.
It's about here that I realised this film is little more than a re-hashing of The Breakfast Club but brought kicking and screaming into the 21st century and shoved into a school full of flesh eating ghouls.
I imagine it'll come as little suprise to learn about the love square that's going on here. The cheerleader is in a relationship with the alpha (they were caught doing questionable things in the bathroom that landed them detention) but the nerd (who was taking performance enhancing drugs - can someone say irony? - to make sure he got into Harvard and was caught by the now decapitated English teacher) is totally in love with the cheerleader. But all along the Goth chick is in love with the nerd. And the pot-head? Well he's too high and preoccupied with playing with his teacher's decapitated head to even think of getting it up.
Like many horror films of this genre, you can predict those who are going to survive, by now we've lost testosterone-fuelled jock to an errant zombie no one knew was in the library, and alpha got a tiny nip on the end of his finger that sees him slowly begin to turn. As the cast are having heart-t0-hearts (if you can call them that), I wondered if alpha would perhaps sacrifice himself, but no, instead he decides along with Goth chick and pot-head that they're off on a jaunt to try and escape.
But no! Cheerleader doesn't want to leave so nerd stays behind, much to the chargrin of the Goth girl. While they navigate the vents (original or WHAT?!) Cheerleader and Nerd have an awkward conversation where you see him put his heart on the line and her vapid responses that would have most foaming at the mouth at just how vacant some people can be simply turn him on even more. Kissing ensues.
Meanwhile, in the vents, Goth chick, pot-head and alpha come across a zombie rat (I know, but you can't make this shit up!) and after some too-ing and fro-ing and some frantic backwards shuffling they tumble from the vent and pot-head realises he's left his stash up in the vent. Most sane people would just run for it, but he doesn't and of course he's consumed entirely safe for his legs by the rats. Luckily alpha and Goth chick use his severed limbs to fight their way back to the library and manage to successfully cock block the nerd who's about to lose his virginity to the virgin cheerleader.
Realising they zombies now know exactly where they are and they've got to do something unless they want to become a midnight snack for their once-classmates they make something akin to Dead Reckoning (from Planet Terror), well if it had been made by an armless leper. So out they come on pot-head's long-board English teacher's head on a spike at the front and fight their way using the gun nerd was going to do himself in with, an American flag pole (how patriotic!) and Cheerleader gets throwing stars from somewhere. It takes them mere seconds to destroy it and soon they're once again fighting against the hoard with anything and everything that comes to hand from a gun to pencils, a baseball bat, a knife Goth chick had in her oh so cliché Dr Martens to a clarinet.
Nerd tells them he'll hold them off (FFS it's the apocalypse, don't be a hero!) while they run through the gym to the roof. They gym is teeming with the zombies but somehow Goth chick and Cheerleader make it to the ladder but of course the blonde bimbo gets bitten on her ankle. With one bullet left, and Goth girl about to do what she's no doubt dreamt of since grade school Nerd busts through the hatch onto the roof. Zombies don't jump, but they can climb, they empty the last bullet into his brain but here comes Zombie-alpha. Yeah, you guessed it, blondie side-tackles him off the roof and queue Nerdy-Gothy kissing and oh look here come the army!
Overall it was fairly predictable and very strange in places, the roof filming looked totally different to the indoor shots and the only person with an even remotely believable character was Nerd but even he was too good looking to be a real nerd. It also wasn't the worst film I've ever seen, and it was entertaining enough for a Saturday afternoon when I didn't want to have to think hard about what I was seeing.
It gets a paltry 4.9/10
TL:DR : Imagine if the Breakfast Club was dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century and if there were zombies.....
Django Unchained (2013).
If you're a Tarantino-phile I suggest you exit this review now. K, thanks.
Now don't get me wrong, I like Tarantino's films as much as the next person. I saw the line up, Christopher Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jamie Foxx, throw in some spurs and people spitting tobacco and wielding awesome Stetsons and sawn off shotguns and you have the makings of a great cowboy film, no?
NO.
Now before you try to shoot me down, allow me to explain. This film is approximately two hours and forty minutes long. "There's nothing wrong with that woman, Titanic is longer! The final LOTR film is even longer stil!!!" I hear you yell at your monitor. Yes, I know, but those films had REASON to be as long as they were. An hour of this film is just, nothing, a black hole of banter, Tarantino's self-indulgent need to have a cameo in his own film and dragging out what is an obvious story line.
Imagine if Punisher, Taken, Taken 2, Law Abiding Citizen, Leon, Wanted and Machete (ok well maybe not Machete since it's already kinda there) were all set in Cowboy times and you have the story of Django (who I cannot stop calling Duhjango). A black man, sold into slavery trudging through woodlands meets Dr King Shultz who buys (ok shoots everyone) his freedom in return for leading him to a bunch of wanted criminals.
Django, who's shackled and on his way to hard labour until death and clearly has nothing better to do accepts and is made a free man, the rest of the slaves are left with a half crushed white man and a shotgun, doesn't take a genius to work out what happens next.
Here would have been the perfect point for a montage. Of course Django wants to kill every cracker is a 50 mile radius and Shultz agrees that they will go find his wife after all the killin's done. Broomhilda von Shaft, is a german speaking woman who lives with Calvin Candie (DiCaprio) and following a Star Wars style explanation and MISSISSIPPI in massive letters scrolls across the screen (if you weren't aware of being in the middle of a Tarantino special before, you are now) we follow Shultz and Django as they cook up a scheme to get them into Candie's home and out with Broomhilda.
Buuuuuut, does it ever work out that way? Out of nowhere the infuriating character called Stephen (played by a very very old looking Samuel L Jackson) accuses Broomhilda of knowing Django, and sneakily tells Candie who comes back into the room and preeceeds to butcher a black man's skull and talk about dimples in the bone.
Here would have been a great place for the film to end with a spectacular gun fight, and one does occur with Shultz killing Candie, only to get blown to smithereens himself. CUE ANOTHER HOUR OF SOMETHING.
Literally, an hour later Django gets his revenge, and after taking Broomhilda's signed freedom papers FINALLY blows up the Candie house and all those inside, and rides off into the sun- OH NOPE MY MISTAKE, rather he entertains his ladyfriend by MAKING HIS HORSE DO A FUCKING DANCE. Seriously.
When the credits rolled at the end of this film, I doubt I've ever felt gladness like it. I personally would like to thank Tarantino for raping me for an hour of my time. The film had a perfectly good story line, some amazing acting talent, some great gun fights and banter but it was JUST. SO. LONG!
If you love film as much as I do, and finding a great film is less likely than winning the jackpot, you'll appreciate that a film that just drags on for the sake of screen time is like being jabbed in the eye repeatedly by angry crows, not enjoyable. Also, the soundtrack was all over the place, there was classical, music that sounded like it had come from a crappy 70s cop TV show and hip hop, it was like the barrel of crappy music has well and truly been scraped clean.
I probably will watch it again, but only when someone either gives it to me as a present or it's in the bargain bin for 99p. I'm just glad I didn't spend money to go see this in the cinema as I would have ended up in a sugar coma from eating ice cream and popcorn just to stay awake. I imagine those in the cinema either wet themselves or died of hunger/thirst and those who were lucky enough to survive probably smelt worse than a rotting corpse in the Sahara desert.
A massive drain on time. 4/10.
Warm Bodies (2013)
I decided to rent this on a whim the other night having seen the intro to it during my last visit to the cinema months before it was released. I wasn't expecting much, I've had a bit of a zombie overload over the last few weeks what with The Last of Us (which was AMAZING), then watching World War Z in the cinema the other day (also pretty darn good). That and I've seen so many zombie films I struggle to see how it could possibly be told from a new angle and still be interesting.
That said, Warm Bodies does just that. It's reminiscent of the new fashion for making fashionable, up to date films. Nick & Norah, Juno, Scott Pilgrim etc etc etc, you get the picture. It works, it's hip, this film is definitely down with the kids, albeit dead kids. There's little back story into the apocalypse only that it has been 8 years since the first recorded case and of course it takes no time for most of the globe to become shuffling, brain munching, grey-faced weirdos. Pretty much the collective populous of teens at present, then.
The film follows the story of R (pronounced Aaaarrrrrrr - like a pirate only less Johnny Depp) and his unusual zombie life, he cannot remember his name, or how he came to be a walking corpse. His thoughts are coherent and often funny with a dry wit, and he has groaning conversations with his zombud Marcus. One day he and his homies stumble upon Julie and her weird BF Perry and their friends. Chaos breaks out and R ends up munching Perry before laying eyes on Julie and well you can imagine the rest.
R rescues Julie from the remaining zombies and takes her bad to his pad, an aeroplane on the abandoned runway of some nondescript airport. We learn R likes good music and collects stuff he finds on his shuffly travels. Cue montage of them getting to know each other.
We learn of the 'bonies' what zombies become when they give up, imagine an anorexic Skeletor and you're most of the way there. Eventually it becomes clear that the love is the answer and the zombies begin to revert to their human forms, this seems to anger the bonies significantly and so they start amassing towards the city. R, who has at this point admitted he killed Julie's ex decided he must find a way of telling the humans that the zombies are reverting and heads for the city followed by his zombuds and the bonies.
Does this film have a happy ending? Well what it does have is a balcony, which holds a Julie with a waiting R underneath, I hope that it was a happy accident as it's cheesey as hell but there we go, it's a love story first and the zombie apocalypse second.
Overall it was a good film in my opinion, and Nicholas Hoult does make a hot zombie. Will definitely be purchasing this film, but only when it's in the 2 for £10 at HMV.
7/10.
