108. Carny (2010)
109. Survival of the Dead
Carny is the 374th movie in Vivendi Entertainment's Maneater Series. Alright, so I might be exaggerating a bit, but you get the gist. This one follows such gems as Sand Serpents, Rise of the Gargoyles and Swamp Devil. Basically, these are low budget flicks that premiere on the SyFy Channel before hitting video in an uncensored form mere weeks later. I've seen quite a few of them at this point. None of them are particularly good but most of them are fairly entertaining, as long as you're down with B-level monster flicks.
Carny takes place in a small town. A traveling carnival has come to town complete with amusement rides, a freakshow and the promise of something never before seen...The Devil! As it turns out, the Devil is a genuine Jersey Devil. This being a monster movie, the creature escapes and wreaks havoc on the town. It's up to the town's sheriff, played by Lou Diamond Phillips, to stop it and save the town.
Story-wise, this is nothing that hasn't been done countless times in the past. With movies like this, that's not necessarily a bad thing. The cast is led by Phillips with supporting roles from a whole bunch of folks that you've probably never heard of. The gore is decent enough here. You've got some dismemberments and an evisceration or two. The Devil itself is CGI rendered. Not all that well either. If you want to be surprised by its appearance, don't pick up the disc as the cover art spoils it some. They should have gone with the poster that I show here in this review. Fools.
Overall, Carny falls right in line with the other Maneaters flicks. It's not really good but it's a fairly entertaining way to drop and hour and a half. That being said if you're not tolerant of stuff like this, you'd be better suited picking up something different.
The tag line for Survival of the Dead is "Death isn't what it used to be". Kind of an ironic statement given that you could say that exact same thing regarding director George A Romero's work. His career has hit upon many hills and valleys along the years. It seems like he's been stuck in a valley now for quite some time. Yet horror fanboys still heap praise upon him and generally defend his work seemingly based on the goodwill that the original Dead trilogy generated. Truth of the matter is, here is a 70 year old man whose primary skill set seems to be slipping away from him at a pretty alarming pace.
Survival of the Dead is Romero's 6th "Dead" movie. The setting here is an island off the coast of Delaware. The island has two families settling on it...the Muldoons and the O'Flynns. They've gotten along well until an ideology clash throws a monkey wrench into the serenity. The Muldoons believe in killing the zombies that arise from their dead loved ones whereas the O'Flynns insist on keeping them alive until a cure can be found. Not for nothing, but I've just started reading The Walking Dead comic series and this plot line's already been covered there. Eventually, the O'Flynns banish the patriarch of the Muldoons back to the mainland. Back on dry land, he hatches a scheme to get folks to the island to disrupt the O'Flynns way of life. Into this plot comes a group of National Guard troops who see one of Muldoon's videos and end up heading to the island. Essentially, the whole island feud is another take on the Hatfields and McCoys.
The last Romero movie that I actually enjoyed was 2005's Land of the Dead. It's not a great movie but it was at least enjoyable. What helped there was having a cast of familiar faces. Unknowns aren't always a bad thing but sometimes having someone recognizable can help get you more into what's going on. Here, the unknowns are that way for a reason...some of them are pretty damn terrible. You've got bizarre Irish accents that disappear and re-appear magically. The whole cast was just pretty aggravating.
Story-wise, there's not much going on here that hasn't been done before. Romero is basically rehashing his own ideas time and time again at this point. Other people are doing it better and with a lot more originality. Maybe it's time for him to step aside before he does further damage to his legacy.
Overall, Survival of the Dead just isn't worth the time or energy spent on it. Skip it.
3 comments:
I didn't even know Romero was making another "Dead" movie. At first I thought you might be joking about it, but then I read on. I really can't believe he's just plastering this movie onto the franchise without much fanfare...even "Diary of the Dead" got more coverage than this in the movie circles where I look for news. This doesn't bode well for the movie in my eyes. I mean, I love the "Dead" trilogy as much as anyone, and I found things to like in "Land of the Dead" and I even liked "Diary" when I saw it, but you're right, people rave about George Romero and in my mind, he hasn't done much to deserve that. I've actually despised a movie he's made ("The Dark Half") and his other movies, aside form the original three dead movies, are pretty hit or miss for him to be considered a legend like he is (don't tell that to most horror fans though; they'll rip you a new one). "Survival of the Dead" sounds like a cheesy DTV "House of the Dead" sequel or something. Ugh. Not impressive.
"Carny" sounds like fun. I'm a sucker for Lou Diamond Phillips. I really liked "Fingerprints," so I'm willing to check out his other DTV horror stories. DTV horror in general is something I'm inot. Whenever I run into a streak of bad ones (lkike I did during the horror challenge last year) people say I should stop watching so much DTV horror, but they forget that for every bad one I see, there's always at least two that I really like (for instance, "Carver" and "Prey" were two of my favorite finds from the challenge last year, and they're both DTV horror that not many other people liked).
Survival actually has a weird release pattern where it basically is DTV. It came out DTV overseas back in March. Then, it's going to premiere on demand at the end of this month before having a theatrical run at the end of May. Really a sign of how badly Romero's work has been slipping, IMO. Bottom line is, people are going to see it before the end of May so that theatrical release ought to tank badly.
I dig Phillips too. Carny is cheesy but enjoyable cheese.
Good call on Romero ... maybe he should try comedy?
Post a Comment