Clash of The Dead
Overall Recommendation
Recommendation?
I can’t point at any one thing and say “this is the reason not to watch this”, but neither can I point at anything in it and say “this is the reason to watch this.” It’s really a C- movie. Maybe a solid C. The zombies were good, the special effects and what little camera work (I mean real camera work, not that hipster lazy shit) I suppose I saw some good acting. But all that aside, and it’s not even a very significant all, and I’m left feeling slightly dazed as if I just look an Uber with 5 college sorority girls from a country I’ve never heard of and none of them would stop talking in their foreign language the entire drive across New Mexico without any pee breaks. This is just warmed over same-old same-old with the lamest contrivance imaginable to define it from the herd. Coming back to this, I believe I just referred to this as a fucking waste of time. And I stand by that, simply because it is not interesting. It does not suck. That could be interesting. But this is just… man, shrugging doesn’t even do it enough-less justice. Have you ever taken bunk acid and then sat there two hours bored as fuck while waiting for it to kick in? I can’t find exactly the right thing to say about how this was wrong, except to repeat myself that if I can’t even tell what characters are alive, dead, or in the current scene I’m watching because you’re spinning your camera at the end of a bungee like a biplane’s prop propeller barnstorming through hay bales; what the fuck are you wasting my time with THIS shit over? There’s obviously a lot of really interesting shit going around somewhere that you’re privy to. Go film me some of that and let’s give this another go. I need you to do better.
Plot Autopsy
Plot Autopsy
- Idiots in a cool van doing all the explanatory bullshit talk so we know exactly where we’re picking up.
- I think some French guy yelled at them in Irish about getting off his land so his sheep wouldn’t get riled.
- Everyone, including the Europeans, are acting like a bunch of asshole Americans.
- Pull a rusty chain, win yourself an unclaimed skeleton WITH a hidden trinket!
- Begin shaking the camera wildly and screaming. Pass the camera randomly without any indication.
- Continue shaking the camera wildly and screaming. Put the camera on the ground, kick it multiple times, pick it back up and run for 200 paces, fall to your knees and tearfully confess random shit into it, then… hell. I don’t care what you do. I just don’t. I can tell you we’d both feel a lot better and even enjoy it if I did.
Zombie Description
Zombie Description
So, they’re pretty much just plain old zombies, but… they’re REALLY caused due to a believer in an obscure south African voodoo religion swallowing his religious pendant for safekeeping before he was tortured, killed, and laid to rest in a swamp, which strongly goes against his tradition. So everything was fine until some idiots with cameras and egos hauled his ass out of the swamp, took his trinket, and bounced. I’d be pretty pissed off about that too. So he rounded up his other south African voodoo dudes and they hunted down and killed most of the camera team that disturbed the original corpse in the first place. See? Perfect sense.
Where the money went
Where the money went
The money went to not paying for a steady-cam or whatever the hell those things are and instead soup someone’s younger brother up on meth and then give him the literal instruction to “always be pointing the camera at the person who is talking now.” knowing full well that half the script reads “All remaining characters shriek inconsolably in unison.” What? You think I’m being cheap and petty? You had a character in your movie for 20 minutes that I thought had died or run off earlier, but no, I just couldn’t tell that they’d survived the initial zombie attack (explore the acres, explore the acres. Really… explore the acres.) because your continuity budget was spend on a rhesus monkey named “Cocaino” like an Italian would pronounce it from the early 80’s crime shows on CBS. You had an idea, not a plot, and your idea had a wrinkle, not a defining characteristic. You know what made Anna Nicole Smith famous? Not that she looked like Marilyn Monroe. It was because she was willing to look like Marilyn Monroe when she was literally twice the size of Monroe. It was her thing, she did it well, and it worked for her. You… you have nothing here. Nothing to even start out figuring out what works and what might need a second look. This is a fucking waste of time.
Best Weapon
Best Weapon
I think I have to combine “Childlike enthusiasm” with “swinging a historical gas mask like a medieval flail” into one weapon and then point out that a perfect example of this Best Weapon entry is actually invented and then demonstrated quite proficiently in this here film. I also kind of liked the whole “Well, most of the zombie has been trapped under cave-in for the past century, so I’ma just break off the parts that are in my way” approach, too.
Can I get a hand?
Can I get a hand?
There was some cool breaching here, but mostly through doors and such. I’m gonna be honest- there was so much shaky “found footage” crap that there wasn’t really much room for anything else. You chose a genre of movie that severely limits your ability to show anything that needs to be focused on for more than a third of a second. Yeah, you got to make a zombie movie this way, but… you could have done better.
That was new!
That was new!
Zombie breach is one thing, and it’s lovely, but I have never considered that there may have been humans running around in the tunnels under a war zone, and then had them collapse, capturing and killing them, entombing them under tons of debris, but then, a century later, that corpse regaining it’s life and urge to kill? Although it’s trapped and can’t get to it’s prey? I mean, yes, it does slightly come off like one of those Halloween house scary-thingys, but it also worked pretty well. I liked it. I also liked the idea of the corpse being thrown in the pond having such a long term effect. It made me think of peat bogs and how dangerous they are.
Review Notes
Review Notes
Got a lady talking to a camera. In the woods.
Ok. 1916, worst battle in human history. Or rather… worst battle SO FAR.
Lots of what looks like if Gordon Ramsey was running a Historical Channel War Show.
Got what looks like a camera crew being quite lost.
We’re starting our documentary about the mysteries and myths of the Somme. In other words, much more interesting stuff than these two twats standing around babbling.
Ha! Dude just knocked something over.
“That’s certainly Somme-thing to think about.”
Once again I love their van.
Camera having some issues.
Bugs in trees.
Lotta stress about map.
I don’t even know what a BAFTA is.
Oh? Controversy? Con-Tro-Vo-Cy? Yelling it in separate syllables?
It’s like the director is seeing back in time, or imaging it.
These guys are very pointless.
The British plan was flawed??
All sorts of uchy sounds… then figures in the background… then nothing… tense…
Jesus, this woman makes Americans look horrible.
Local tried to warn them it was dangerous around there.
“an Unidentified French Object”
Strange movements in the woods.
So much of these people hate each other and are working against real journalism.
Well, we’ve fallen into a trench. One of the experts, that.
Found a mustard gas container… and a trench system… and gas… or fog…
Jesus, I can’t stand these people.
Once again, they become history rapists.
All sorts of disgusting stumps and mud and crap and swamp and they can’t stop arguing.
“go with the embellishment for now…”
“So they were probably called…. Somme-Bodies.”
“It’s like you’re a talking hemmroid.”
I love the falling down and camera dropping and finding scary crap!
Oh, they have a chain that goes down into the swamp, and they haul it out, and it’s a corpse! Fuck yeah!
Man, that poor guy didn’t dye an easy death.
That director is such a fucking ass.
And I think things are about to go south. It’s very dark and foggy.
Oh. A helmet on a rifle. Pretty sure that marks a grave.
Got a whole lot foggier too.
Evidently, on Christmas day, someone kicked a soccer ball out into the middle of no-mans land, and the Americans and Germans plaid a match. The Germans won. I’m pretty sure there’s a true basis to this…
The director is now insisting on a moonlight soccer shoot-out. I drank at the most state college I could go to school at and I never played anything that dumb.
But that looks ok, ‘cause it looks like zombies are approaching.
And… things get a bit chaotic there. Definitely a whole lot of screaming and zombies and biting and green filter light and screaming and running away.
They’re in the trench and panicking and for some reason only the director has the only light…
As far as I can tell, there was another zombie in the trench with the three? survivors? So they ran into a trench-room that doubles as a root cellar (pun intended) and they’re now hiding and rubbing dirt on themselves.
For people navigating a zombie uprising, they’re awful concerned with who they have the cameras pointed or not pointed at. The whole “surviving the evening” seems to have taken a far second beyond documenting their own demise.
There’s a whole lot of frantic shit going on the screen but it’s all garbled and super-spinny and every character is screaming at me.
They kinda took “found footage” to experiential artist level. When ever they want to not film any of the characters, they just make growling noises from off-screen and then everyone screams and they swing the camera wildly like on the end of one of those baby jumpers duct-taped to a rodeo-bull’s ass. I want to know what the fuck is going it, it sure looks interesting.
All the lights are on, but all the corpses in the tunnels have come back to life. They’re all entombed and trapped and shit, but that makes it even scarier. I can’t remember what 80s horror movie had the person slide down the dirt tunnel of hands, but this… this is kinda more what they were aiming for.
Director just ripped zombie legs off.
Uh… about 20 minutes of the growling screaming not pointing the camera at anything in particular, and then the zombies caught up with them, and instead of anything resembling a united front, the director shrieked even louder that he was doing a documentary and shoved the chubby cameraman at the zombies.
Christ, I can’t believe that they’re only ½ way through this. They better bring something plot-ish back,
Ok. I think they’re safe for the moment. I can only see the woman waving the light around, but they’re all screaming quite enthusiastically…
One of the good guys got hurt… Was it a bite?
Wait, there’s 4 of them still? I missed 30 minutes of a character being present simply because they filmed this so hard to follow?
And now they’re arguing about destroying the pendant.
Exploring the cameraman’s (or whoever, hard to tell at this point) wound, looks ok, but he’s… anti-pendant.
So they broke the pendant.
Who is going to be the first one out the door?
“Yeah, of course, ‘cause all the psychos went away because we broke a piece of jewelry.”
I regret sending my wife to work with all the Hi-Chews.
Scarfing a handful of slightly stale marshmallows was not a wise substitution attempt.
They all did some sort of holding out rocks to choose something, and now they’re either trying to get out or reinforcing the way in?
They have opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.
NOW they’re looking for weapons??
Somehow the zombies got into THAT room. It involved a whole lot of dust. I believe one human perished, but you couldn’t tell that from the volume or continuity of the random screaming. It sounds like when you’ve listened to 40 straight hours of pornography. Ask me how I know. But the sounds all become variations of the same wave’s ebb and flow, the tide in and out, it’s like Lamaze on meth.
So, the bloody guy altered a camera, they’ve got dynamite that they’re holding in reserve, and I believe both men are arguing over which one gets the honor of dying for the woman. I’m having a hard following this, since the plot consists of “scream a lot… heeheehee… run a lot… heeheehee… scream… AND RUN… LOTS!! HAHAHAHAAAA! BEEEEEEOOOOOTCH!!!!”
As a covert reconnaissance attempt, the fat guy sets off a flare and goes tunning through the trench, while the woman and other dude sit on their butts and talk.
Now we’re flashing back to the cast who died?
So, the ones sitting in safety just realized the one out risking his life also has the van keys.
Growl-smash!
For two people being hunted by zombies, they spend a lot of time sitting with a light on and talking. I’m so less than impressed. It’s like the script grew up eating paint chips for breakfast.
I think they need to bury the swamp corpse? Is that the point of this all?
But he’s gonna do some flare and dynamite diversion first? Not sure why?
Well, the zombies caught up to them, but there was a hastily stitched together action sequence and now we’re back to wandering the dark whispering.
Now they’re both outside and safe? With the dynamite? Or just a flare?
Should have used a gas mask as a weapon in the first place. Pretty good face-smasher.
They made a run for the van, but it turns out they were in the middle of a mine field. I mean, I can see the van. You can probe from there. It’s not that far.
Why did you get them all to bunch up right by the van? Gonna ruin your van. Idiot.
Oh, he got bit anyway. So it’s time for heroics.
He’s gonna go suicide vest the zombies to clear the way to the van. Now she gotta bury the swamp zombie and publish all this shit.
Interesting ending. Not interesting enough, but…
————End Transmission——————–
Introduction
Introduction
So- let’s start the writing early and figure out what we’re going to watch later. Lots of stuff to talk about. Lots of stuff to not talk about. Shall we start with how I ended up high on mushrooms, riding the NY #4 train alone at 3am? Or why all of the ammunition in the house is suddenly organized? My brother got married!
That in itself is worth talking about, except, well… it can’t be. But it was fucking lovely and his husband is the coolest dude ever and eventually the two of them will figure out how to play Exploding Kittens. Which was the gift my wife and I decided to get them. Well, that and matching engraved switchblades, but my mom nixed that idea thankfully. Considering I’ve already had to surrender what would have been mine of the set to TSA on the way out of Boston, which was a shame but nothing as bad as the fit I would have thrown if it were actually meaningful. In the end I handed it off to an employee and asked him if he’d like a free pocketknife since I had forgotten to pack it in my checked luggage.
The flight out was wonderful, except I forgot the big bag of gummies that I’d set aside for us to fly out with. As in, eaten in the airport right before TSA and then in our bellies as we zoom slowly as fucking hell from Portland to Boston. But instead, I forgot them at home, so I took pills (Seriously- get a fucking valium prescription. The medicated life is the only reason I haven’t reached for my revolver. That’s a fucking Moby (covering Mission of Burma) reference before anyone gets their panties in a bundle. The truth is not that comfortable, no. The spirit passes by this way.) and my wife took wine. I mean that as in a medicinal sense.
I think I was listening to My Chemical Romance if I wasn’t asleep, and if there’s a better description of displaying Bi-Polar behavior, I can’t think of it. Everything went mostly wonderful*, we had a mostly wonderful visit with my parents*, my wife and brother had a great first meeting*, there was a gorgeous wedding and then a disjointed wandering that led to a very significant announcement of intent to jaywalk, followed by jaywalking, which about a urination later led to a return back to jaywalking and finally finding the fucking Staten Island Ferry. Which, while sitting alone and slightly loopy while people watching for the next fucking boat to arrive is a pretty crappy place.
I mean, Friday night Staten Island Ferry at 3am is what I would suppose could be considered a “Not average” cross section of New York City, but once I abandoned the idea of actually *taking* the ferry- which had been the intent all along until I realized there was a damn near hour wait for the next one and that I also was having just the slightest bit of distrust regarding when certain public transportation runs where when, and the realization that if I was wrong, I was in for something resembling a 4 mile walk while all substances consumed during the day ran out, so I decided to take the fun way back to the hotel.
I jumped in with a line of hooligans that were fare-skipping, and then hooted and clapped along on a subway car as a group of drunken teens got a early 40’s businessman to shotgun a beer with them. I don’t recall getting robbed or propositioned, New York is turning into a pretty tame place. Not like Portland, Jesus.
Wife and I were going up there to the tax lady that I’ve always gone to- my ex picked her out of the phone book, turns out she used to be a stripper, I continued going to her even after ex and I separated, now that it’s been 15 years of accounting you can’t tell she ever was a stripper. I guess the lesson is that prostitution was the first business, but there is a longevity to understanding math that defies gravity.
Who was it who said “He who does not understand compound interest is doomed to pay it, he who does reaps it’s rewards?” or something equally “Fuck those Italian grease-monkeys and their hand-made craftmanship automobiles, someone tell me how I can turn out an extra 20 units a day without the loss of more than two major appendages on any fiscal year!”
The flight back was actually the hardest flight I’ve ever taken back. I mean in terms of checkpoints and interacting with security and shit. My wife and I ate a bunch of edibles and did dab hits right before we tried to print our boarding passes and check our luggage, which had a couple of firearms in a locked, TSA approved case.
We’ve travelled with guns before, we’ve never had an issue, we take the bare minimum of precautions like “Unload the guns” and “Don’t pack the mushrooms or dab rig in with the guns.” Usually we have no issues. They blink more at the fact that my wife is taller than me than they do us checking firearms. But this time, they had no idea what to do at the counter.
First they made me open the gun case, but then one guy got pissy and asked me to close it. They asked if I intended to check the firearms, and it seemed like a strange question, so I asked if I was allowed to bring them with me into the plane? I mean, they’re not going to magically turn into avocados and then we’re all going to have an impromptu guacamole party, so what the fuck else you think I’m trying to do when I hand you a locked gun case and say “There are two unloaded pistols in this.”
Finally, they got someone who didn’t appear afraid that touching a handgun was the “gets aids” equivalent of a public toilet seat. He makes me walk down to some no-name grey room with rubber truncheons and a big, hose-off tile floor… No, that last part is a lie. But they wiped some magic harry potter wand with, like, one of those acne-fighting oxy-clean patches on it all over the gun case itself- not the guns- and then stuck it in a machine that went PING and the screen’s border turned all red. I asked him if he could tell me what it had detected. Very seriously, he could not. I asked him if he could tell me if it was a narcotic or an explosive, and he very seriously explained that the machine looks for compounds, and it had found a really trace amount of one of those compounds.
This is when I felt the edibles really kick in so I leaned against the table knowingly and didn’t say anything about how one of these pistols was my grandfather’s double-barrel .38 drop derringer which I would be willing to eat if it’d never been on the same table as a pile of cocaine.
So this dude makes me stand outside the room while he calls his supervisor to report in that the machine went PING but there’s nothing but a couple guns in the case, there’s no Miami-vice sized hidden stash of cellophaned powder UNDER the cheap foam backing… I get let in and he says we’re all good to go. Which is cool. This guy has a funny looking mustache, I’m tired of not looking at it.
We walk the 40 or steps to get to security, and I walk through the thing where you raise your hands like “Don’t shoot, cop! I’m not in season!” and some linebacker dude stuffed into TSA sausage wrapping informs me he’s gotta pat me down, including my crotch. I look at the scanner image thingy, and it looks like I’ve got a thermite bomb burning in my hoodie and I could make Ron Jeremy pick up the bar tab. I don’t give a fuck. I know it’s not the thrill of this dude’s day either. “Ok, no biggie.” Dude pats me down. No idea if he felt bad energy I was giving off or something- do I need to use more deodorant?
Then he pulls me aside to another harry potter wand contraption and I just want to tell the dude “I just spent the past half hour handling firearms with TSA agents. I’m probably gonna register something.” But no, I lean against the table and again stay quiet. For some reason, this machine doesn’t ping. And I’m off.
So. What the fuck zombie world. I’ve missed you. There’s a hell of a lot to talk about, I need to figure out what to do this fucking therapy thing about. My dad and I had multiple interesting conversations and he seems to feel I need therapy. Interesting. My mom told me I should think of pleasant thoughts when I’m dealing with an asshole, so earlier during the trip when a woman was reprimanding my wife and I about our choice of parking, I listened politely and then told her that I admired the color of her vehicle.
See? What the fuck do I need professional therapy about? But he brought up a good point, which is I probably had a lot of shit to still deal with from the younger years. There’s honestly probably a crime or corpse or something that I could help John Walsh solve. I’m not sure that I care to though. I mean… why? That just sounds like work and extroversion, which is work. So…
I need to get better at not pissing people off when I point out that they’re being irrationally aggressive. Far as I’m concerned, world better appreciate an uptick in car praise and call itself lucky. With this being a journaling of sorts, I suppose it’s somewhat noteworthy that although there was much angst and strife between my wife and I this past week, when I was kissing her goodbye this evening, there was such a tranquil feeling of peaceful loving serenity that it crossed my mind “Tonight would be the perfect night to finally shoot myself in the side of the head so that she’ll always remember this perfect moment as our last.” and since it’s not hard to see the irony of her coming home to the horror that quickly overrides anything joyous about the night before… this led to an ironic… smirk? Smile? Smrike? I have no idea to what to call it, but she caught it, and she asked about it, and I didn’t want to tell her about it but I feared not telling her about it more so I did and I know things are so hard, so hard…
There’s this stupid thought pattern I cannot cease revolving on based on the idea that if I got a 9-5 then I’d be equally miserable and this would make her happy? I understand how lucky I am, but am I resented? A few nights ago she yelled at me that I was too controlling. I don’t understand that. But my response is to stop the car and hand her the keys when she’s been drinking if she says that “I took them from her.” instead of “You pointed out that I’d been drinking and asked for the keys”.
I’d rather give them back and roll regretfully through flaming oblivion knowing that we died so without her being able to tell me I’m controlling. I got two days of mowing the lawn in back-to-back before it rained again. That sentence took about a minute to type. I have to think of where every key is now. Once something dies, it’s dead. That’s the fucking kookery about zombie bullshit. You get all sorts of second chances in the zombie world.
No wonder it’s such a refuge of the reality-challenged and optimistically-inclined. I want to buy the rights to Zombieland 3 just to make Woody Harrelson’s character a cannibal. That said, I have found something that I want to watch. It looks kinda dumb, yet formulaic… until you realize that these are going to be WWI soldiers and thus NOT zombies. I have nothing against Nazis zombies. Wait. Let me take another crack at that. Nazi Punks Fuck Off.
But what I meant to say was that I dig there’s a whole sub-genre of zombie movies about Nazi zombies. I’ve never really thought too much about this except in a sort of “Every family has a cousin kinda like… that.”- meaning, more of an idiot Burt Reynolds-esque than usual. Not necessarily more of a racist than usual. They can be both if you’d like.
But my point is for Clash of the Dead “100 years after World War 1, a team of investigators travel to France to unravel the rumors of unexplained happenings from a famous battlefield. But the war isn’t over as they quickly learn when the undead rise up from their final resting place.” Like I said. Nothing about Nazis. I mean, I suppose chronologically, some could get mixed up in the fray, especially… well… hold on a sec. I’m pretty sure that Germany overran France in WWII. So I suppose… I think you know what I’m trying to say. I ate an edible earlier… I found the stash! and it’s… yeaaaaahhh….. Whoops. Just noticed we got two directors here. Let’s see how that pans out.
“Sometimes I feel it’s a shame when I get feeling better when I’m feeling no pain.” Something about the bitterness and crapshoot of three-day old Starbucks coffee in the refrigerator is feeling the Gordon.
It’s hard to not eat the mushrooms, knowing I have them. There’s a rational voice that’s small and in control repeating that it’s a bad idea.
I know the answer to “how many times is playing Russian Roulette too many” is once, but, what do the 1:6 odds feature? What if it were 1:600? These are the fine lines that once identified can give you power over people. I think about the fear that first play must inspire. Optimistically, the resultant adrenaline. Colors so vivid you can wear their scents. Strangers, once dead, now alive and romantically inclined. It must shine to have risked it all. Someone once wrote something about “He who can wager his all on one bet, lose, laugh, and move on to start over again is a truly free man.” Or something like that. Ok. Gotta watch this movie. Think the coffee is kicking in.