Yee Haw-ror

For such a good website, IMDB sure has a pretty stupid readership. Somehow I once again find myself prowling the dangerous neighborhood that is their message boards, this time for the 2008 little historical horror, The Burrowers. “Tremors meets Jeepers Creepers,” cries one probably-thinks-he’s-very-clever commenter. You know, because The Burrowers has worms. And...hats?

My point, aside from the fact that people who frequent the IMDB message boards are generally not very bright, is that The Burrowers is a refreshingly well-made and even, dare I say it, original little film that’s mean, gooey, and surprisingly witty. So pah.

Quick Plot:

In the 1870s, a young Irishman named Fergis woos a pioneer lass (House of the Devil’ s Jocelin Donahue in a quick cameo) until her and her entire family disappear one day in the Dakotas. Fergis is soon met by a too-cool Clancy Brown, Lost’s William Mapother and his prospective stepson, and a suspicious military outfit led by another Lost veteran (Doug Hutchison, with a kicking handlebar mustache) to follow the probably doomed trail, assuming the settlers have been abducted by Indians.

It doesn’t take long for the four men to break off into their own posse, joined now by Sean Patrick Thomas’s not-so-Irish cook. Soon they discover a young catatonic woman buried (slightly) alive, her neck marked with an oddly oozy cut and mysterious infection. 

Following my review of Dead Birds  and callout for more historical horror, several readers and friends recommended this 2008 Western creature feature, directed by J.T. Petty. To those who did, I say...thank you. 

The Burrowers isn’t the best straight-to-DVD film I’ve seen this year, but it’s a genuinely rewarding 90 minutes of effective atmosphere, likable acting, and a far smarter-than-it-had-to-be script. It even has some laugh-out-loud lines, particularly in its early scenes as the comfortable cast starts their trail. It can't be easy to write dialogue set one hundred and thirty years ago, but Petty produces some natural and entertaining conversations for his game cast.

More importantly, the film is scary in a unique way you don't really see too much of nowadays. In no way does The Burrowers change the nature of horror cinema, but it actually does some fairly interesting things with its story, killing off characters you expect to go further, avoiding cheap scares where plenty could be used, and teasing us with the nasty subterranian carnivores until near the film's end. Following a rather neat climax, the final moments are incredibly unsettling in a way you just don't find in most horror.

High Points

Headed by a cast of character “that guy” actors, The Burrowers is extraordinarily played. All the men are believable as nineteenth century working fellas, but they also have great chemistry and come off as a likable, if flawed (and doomed) crew

For CGI creations in a low budget film, the titular monsters are surprisingly neat little creatures, with phallic wormy bodies, muscular cricket legs, and ugly little faces primarily marked by the kind of teeth you're really not looking forward to being devoured by

SPOILER LAND

While I don’t usually enjoy a dreary ending for dreariness’ sake, (and The Burrowers finish is a downer), the final images and lines are hauntingly appropriate. We've seen that this is a cruel world run by narrow minded men. A fairy tale finish would've been ridiculous. 

THUS ENDETH SPOILERS

Low Points

I appreciate a film set before electricity not going for the easy fake lighting during night scenes, but at the same time...I really like to see things in movies 

Lessons Learned

Never mess with another man’s Indian

When in doubt, assume you’re surrounded by bear traps. Just trust me on that one

The ability to fall asleep while riding a horse is a power that must be cultivated, though unfortunately, bares no correlation with good aim when shooting a pistol

Vertically challenged men in positions of power will usually do nothing but cause trouble

Rent/Bury/Buy

A highly recommended little Instant Watch, The Burrowers has an intriguing pace that may be a little slow for some viewers. Though it took a fair amount of time to get to the (surprisingly not that brutal) monster mashing, the engaging style of the acting and rare historical setting will still make it a winner for most genre fans. Watching it so closely after Survival of the Dead  even makes me think that my problem with Romero's film had nothing to do with my lack of love for Westerns. This is a solid, scary, and entertaining film that easily warrants a bargain priced buy.

Oh Hai George

As some of you might know, the ponytailed national (turned Canadian) treasure is responsible for my favorite film of all time, a little slice of zombie mayhem and mall madness known as Dawn of the Dead. Regarding the rest of his filmography, I can simply say it’s a mixed trick-or-treating pillow case from an economically challenged neighborhood, filled with some tasty, if cheaper store-brand candy, slick but tasteless Good ‘N Plenty, and a heavy percentage of frustrating Milk Duds.

To give a brief summary of my estimation of the Dead sextology, so you know where I’m coming from in reviewing Survival:

Night: Classic, brutal, groundbreaking and still effective. The modern horror movie.

Dawn: I hug it once a day, just so that it knows I still love everything about it.

Day: Though it's grown on me over the years, I still declare Day to be overrated and kind of obnoxious, filled with good ideas (Dr. Frankenstein), amazingly crafted zombies, and a batch of characters I would like to shoot myself

Land: Underrated, the kind of film that gets progressively better for me on repeat viewings. Once I got over my initial excitement-met-with-disappointment in the theaters, I’ve been able to watch this much more objectively to say it’s far more relevant and better made than I had initially thought

Diary: A mess, but not as embarrassing (in my estimation) as others make it out to be. I like the idea of going back to the start with a comparably low budget and believe it or not, I even like some of the themes. Unfortunately, Romero insists on molding said themes into a giant orb and bashing us over the head with it via a bland and awful narrator.

And thusly do we enter 2009’s Survival of the Dead, a continuation of sorts of Diary that mixes shambling “deadheads” with feuding Irish clans off the coast of Delaware (I’m serious). Let us begin.

Quick Plot: AWOL from the National Guard, Sarge (Diary cameo-er Alan Van Sprang) and a few of his cohorts decide to follow a suspicious ‘Net (yup, the same entity that robbed Sandra Bullock of her identity in 1995) advertisement to an island paradise off the coast of...Delaware (cue Wayne’s World clip of "Hi! I'm in...Delaware"). 

En route, the team picks up a moody, if efficient teenager and lands at the dock. Not surprisingly, they meet some opposition from both zombies and humans, in this case, Patrick O’Flynn, an exiled old man looking to send some trouble the way of his former home. I think. 

Anyway, a fairly interesting boat escape sends our gang on a ferry, O’Flynn hopping onboard to give proper directions to the oddly leprechaun-less island. Romero starts to have a little fun setting up the strange society fashioned by O’Flynn’s rival, Seamus Muldoon. Where O’Flynn had attempted to purge his land of all the undead, shooting any soul with gray skin, Muldoon sought to preserve all victims in their former state with the hopes that one day, some smart Frankensoul might discover a cure.

Such a conflict is interesting in itself, especially when we get a peek at chained zombie mailmen delivering some bills and undead farmers fruitlessly plowing the fields. Yes, it’s ridiculous for a rotting corpse to maintain enough tension in her body to ride a horse for three weeks (don’t those ankles give out, Mr. Romero?) but I honestly don’t mind a seasoned, somewhat bored filmmaker trying out new tricks with the genre he created.

Of course, ‘not minding’ the idea of experimentation doesn’t mean anything when it’s executed so poorly. Survival is a weirdly awful film, one that tries to be funny without telling any good jokes, then attempts to make a statement by forcing its who-cares narrator (another narrator? HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING FROM DIARY OF THE DEAD???) to deliver a lazy diatribe on What It All Means. The final image of Survival is interesting; it didn’t have to explain itself.

You can understand the uncomfortably picklish Catch-22 Mr. Romero has found himself in. For forty years, film fans have been crying for more zombie movies, but by most accounts, Romero ended that era with Day of the Dead. He found new ground with Land then, I imagine, realized he was out of gas once more. Rebooting the zombie myth with Diary made sense...it was just poorly done. So now, at the age of 70, everybody's favorite newly declared expat seems to say "Whatever. I like Westerns. They like zombies. Here's my compromise." The attitude is refreshing. The film is not.

By far, the worse thing about Survival is not necessarily its acting--none of which is particularly good, but hey: Romero’s always been more about presence than performance--but the ridiculous broad nature of its characters. It’s fine to have a diverse cast, but not when each is defined by their ‘thing.’ You know you’re in a bad low budget film, for example, not when there’s a lesbian character, but when said lesbian insists on telling you with every line of dialogue that she likes to have sex with women. Are all lesbians as horny as they come off in bad horror movies?

High Points

Considering the vast use of stereotypes to define virtually every character onscreen, I’ll give Romero minor credit for having a spunky Irish brunette that wasn't named, as most spunky Irish brunettes in film are, Kate. Also, it would have been so easy to add a leprechaun so you know...restraint.

At first, "Survival" of the Dead seems like an arbitrary word pulled from a dictionary to replace the already used times of day in the title. However, I will say that it actually fits the film and its storyline. So that's something.

Low Points

I don't want to hop on the boo-hoo-CGI train, especially since I think most of the Survival zombie kills looked fine. But did the first major headshot have to be more digitalized than something out of Left For Dead?

SPOILERS

I understand that ever since Barbra whined her way through the farmhouse and silly Judy went up in flames, George Romero has attempted to atone for Night's not-too-bright-or-brave female characters. Still, aside from Gaylen Ross's Franny, has there ever been a realistic or likable woman to survive his dead films? Making your female tough doesn't make her real, a trend continued here with the ridiculous, bland, and aggressively butch (and obviously named) Tomboy, played by Athena Karkanis (Saw IV-VI).

THUS ENDETH SPOILERS

Lessons Learned

With that, just in case you didn't know, this movie taught me that lesbians dig hot chicks

Handguns do indeed work after being submerged in water

People who grow up in Alabama will not in any way develop a trace of a deep Southern accent. Perhaps it's beaten out of you in the National Guard

Um. Zombies bite people. Just in case you forgot, despite living on an island with them for three months


Killing yourself is a one way ticket to hell

There is a magical Irish-filled isle off the coast of Delaware where all inhabitants dress like John Wayne or extras in the Oregon Trail

Rent/Bury/Buy

I so wanted to like, or at least not mind this film. Sigh. Maybe hybrid fans of cheesy Saturday morning Westerns and old school zombies will get the humor. I didn't. Then again, I do believe Romero, unlike someone more stuck in a bygone era of filmmaking like Argento, has a weird Cassandra-like power of making movies that look and feel better twenty years down the road. I do indeed cite Land (now 5 years old) as a prime example of a film that is simply stronger with so much time between its initial release. Perhaps Survival will follow?

So do I recommend the film? I can't tell you not to watch it:it's a Romero zombie movie for goodness sake. But be prepared to be baffled. Those who simply hate the idea of a childhood hero now slumming in a weird land of make believe may want to skip it. Better yet, if you were a Star Wars fan who considers the prequels to be dangerous to your health, then avoid Survival of the Dead. At the same time, you're a curious movie fan who needs to open Pandora's box. Maybe it won't be that bad. For you.


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