I'm really not certain why they're not just calling the new George A Romero film Island Of The Dead - since that's clearly what it is - rather than insisting on referring to it as ... Of The Dead but no matter. While in Sitges late last year I had the opportunity to meet legendary effects man Greg Nicotero, who at the time was spending his evenings on the phone with Romero who for his part was back in my home town of Toronto at the time, just launching principal photography on the latest of his zombie pictures. Given the extremely tight timeline I have to assume that was has just been released by international sales outfit Voltage Pictures is dominantly raw footage - no way this has had time to go through a full post-production process - but the very first trailer for Romero's latest has just been released. Here's the skinny:
On a small island off North America's coast, the dead rise to menace the living. Yet...the islanders can't bring themselves to exterminate their loved ones, despite the growing danger from those the once held dear. A rebel among them hunts down all the zombies he can find, only to be banished from the island for assassinating his neighbors and friends. On the mainland, bent on revenge, he encounters a small band of survivors in search of an oasis on which to build a new life. Barely surviving an attack from a mass of ravenous flesh-eaters. They commandeer a zombie-infested ferry and sail to the island. There, to their horror, they discover that the locals have chained the dead inside their homes, pretending to live 'normal' lives...with bloody consequences. What ensues is a desperate struggle for survival and the answer to a question never posed in Romero's Dead films: Can the living ever live in peace with the dead?
Check the trailer below the break!
Video removed at producer request.
this does not look good at all...i'll probably watch it though lol
It doesn't look to bad. I'm a little tired of zombie movies though.
At least it probably can't be any worse then Diary of the Dead was.
I haven't liked Land of the Dead, and didn't even see Diary, but I like the bleak western feel this seems to have to it. Maybe that's just because it's in production though. We'll have to wait and see I suppose.
Bah that does indeed look bad. But I disagree that the genre is dead.
The genre is not dead, but Romero's talent seems to be.
the genre isn't dead. just look at what the comic series "walking dead" has done. the problem is they think just coming up with new locals or set pieces is making a new movie. what they need to do is just tell a real human story. look at "let the right one in". why is that film so great? not because it breaks new ground in vampire mythology but because it feels like a real film, telling a really human story.
we don't need islands or shopping malls or talking zombies, we need real human characters and a script that isn't just total dreck.
indiemaker0583
Thank you for a well made and valid point.
You're right in what you say and it's made me re-consider what I said above. But I present another angle. One I think none of us consider.
Upon reflection, I believe if there is any blame to be placed on modern horror not matching up to what I would consider the classics, I believe it lies not only with the filmmakers, but also with us, the audience. What with the advent of the internet, we are exposed to a whole new channel of information. What once was a mysterious process to us meager public, is now broken down in blogs and "behind the scenes" clips on dvd's and the web.
I agree wholeheartedly that for every Hellraiser and Alien, there was probably twenty or thirty stinkers. I guess me being a nineties kid, I don't know as much as I think. But I'd like to think there was a lot more passion and art in what came before as opposed to now. It's a lot cheaper and easier to sit a bunch of renderers down at computers and pump something out, than for special effects crews to get together and make molds and animatronics. I don't argue with them wanting to save money. I just think what they give is what we get.
To drag up a bad example, I'll suggest I Am Legend. I love Will Smith. I loved the scenery. I loved the simple enough story. I loved the length and pace of the film. But for a film that has some of the worst cgi I've seen this millennium, it lost all effect on me. I would've settled for cheap rubber easily.
I agree also what you say about trends, but I also cast a cautious eye on the somewhat conservative attitude filmmakers are adopting more and more of. Bear in mind, we're living in a time when everybody gets offended by every little thing that's put out there. So it's no wonder that horror as a genre is a knife whose sharpness has been dulled by the times.
I dunno. It's all in the eye of the beholder. I just appreciate the conversation.
Wow! I really hope the movie is better than what the trailer seems to make it. It looks like a scifi channel original movie.
"As far as I can tell, with Easy Riders, Raging Bulls being my bible, the explosive popularity of block busters such Star Wars & Jaws was the real death of American cinema, Thank you George and Steve.
But there’s always been a lot shitty movies made with a few gems in between. There’s still decent horror flicks coming out, but they’re few and far in between. Was it any different during the time of Hellraiser or Alien? For every one of those there were a dozen crappy knockoffs.
For all of The Things, there were tons of crappy rubber monster horror movies."
Agreed on all that, but not on the shaky-cam thing. I think that's by far the worst possible gimmick in movies today.
@thecrimsoncurse Funny you mention "The Right One" because the author John Ajvide Lindqvis has also done a zombie book called Handling the Undead (english translation) which was a totally different kind of film. The zombies did not eat people and the book centered on how the human population reacted to the waking of dead loved ones. I personally found the book dull but at least he was trying a different angle.
I think there are great zombie stories out there just waiting to be turned into decent films such as The Walking Dead, World War Z (already in production), and even some of books by Brian Keene, David Wellington and David Moody. Instead we get trash like this. It may only be a promo but as a promo it should elicit excitement. This does nothing. Without Romeo's name, this would go straight to the garbage bin. Land and Diary were also trash (although Land was slightly better). Romero should have been made to watch The Zombie Diaries and see how it should be done. One must ponder over the first Resident Evil movie had Romero done it as originally promised. It couldn't have been any worse than the Resident Evil series is today and it might have actually improved his standing within Hollywood and propelled him onto better things than the trash he churns out now.
Even with this shitty promo, I still hope he has some talent left to produce a half decent zombie film.
Let's hope Dead Snow, WWZ, and Worst Case Scenario (if ever finished) will be successful.
*sigh*
"To drag up a bad example, I’ll suggest I Am Legend. I love Will Smith. I loved the scenery. I loved the simple enough story. I loved the length and pace of the film. But for a film that has some of the worst cgi I’ve seen this millennium, it lost all effect on me. I would’ve settled for cheap rubber easily."
I just watched I am Legend on HBO a few days, the first time I've seen it since its theaterical release, and I wonder if the terrible CGI isn't intentional. Was it ILM that did the effects? Ironically, Lucas' powerhouse effects studio always seems to do really sloppy CGI work, even on the Star Wars prequels.
But still, I am Legend has some incredibly intense scenes. For a PG-13, 150-200 million spectacle, it creates a pretty bleak sense of dread. Watching it a second time, I wondered if those awful, animated creatures were so poorly rendered as an intentional means to make the film more accessible for casual/younger audiences.
If they had actually been phsyically threatening in appearence, maybe the studio feared the film would garner an R rating, something they didn't want to risk on such an outrageously expensive flick. With all that money on the film, and so many other positive aspects, I just can't believe those awful, awful, cheap looking effects weren't done on purpose.
Going completely off topic now, but I am Legend got me thinking... What the fuck is going on with The Road? I have friends who work at Shooters in Philadelphias were the film is now in Post. (yeah Philly!!!) People working on color correction are telling me that the footage is amazing!!!! Just, absolutely fucking amazing. I've heard rumors that the director hasn't perfected the tone just yet... But I don't buy it.
From everything I've read on set and heard from people actually working in post for it, it's a damn near flawless adaptation of the novel with a terrific score by Nick Cave. I can only assume that those shit head Weinsteins heard how popular the book was, bought the film rights without reading it, and now have a film that's too dark for their taste.
Hell, I'm hearing rumors of a straight to DVD dump job with it. Why Weinsteins? Why? I think we can blame the Weinsteins for some of Horror's problems today as well. They buy the rights up for everything, and they either don't release it, or they dump it on dvd with little to no marketing, and what marketing they do is always sleazy and misleading.
God, the covers for Nightmare Detective and Inside are embarassing. Or what about Infernal Affairs with the hot mini skirt clad asian girl. Those Weinsteins like insulting us fanboys by pushing the orienatlist, yellow fever angle huh?