The October Zombie-Thon - Day 25: Shadows of the Dead
Posted by Trevor Snyder on 10.25.2008
If there's one thing I'm pretty sure zombies shouldn't do in an interesting movie, it's whine.
SHADOWS OF THE DEAD (2004)
Written & Directed by: Carl Lindbergh
Country: USA
If you ask me, there's nothing quite as depressing as a boring zombie movie. Oh, sure, any boring movie is a bit of a bummer in the long run. But, by their very nature, almost all zombie movies are about dead people that have returned to life. They should be interesting by default!
And yet, incredibly enough, a number of filmmakers have figured out a way to buck expectation and create turgid, sleep-inducing bores within the genre. I'm not talking about just any crappy zombie movie, mind you. I've seen a lot of terrible zombie movies that, if nothing else, always seemed to have something going on in them. No, it's an especially bad kind of zombie movie that just plods along from beginning to end, almost as stiff and lifeless as its undead ghouls (even more so, I suppose, since at the zombies are at least the living dead).
Take, for instance, a movie like Shadows of the Dead – a sort of zombie/romantic-drama from writer-director Carl Lindbergh. It's always admirable to see someone attempt a new approach to a familiar genre, but it also helps when the person in question can do so in an actual engaging manner. Lindbergh's film wants to score points for being different from other zombie movies, but all the differences in the world don't matter when the movie is constantly booking you a one-way trip to slumber-land.
Jonathan Flanigan and Beverly Hynds play John and Jennifer, a loving young couple on their way to a cabin they have rented for the weekend. They think they have it bad when their car breaks down in the woods, but things really take a turn for the worse when they notice what appears to be a dead body lying off in the distance. When John reluctantly succumbs to a Jennifer's nagging demands to check it out, he ends up attacked and bitten on the neck. At that point the two suddenly remember they're really not that far from the cabin, and together they haul-ass off through the woods.
Once at the cabin, any rest and relaxation they might have hoped for is thwarted by John's nasty neck wound, which he refuses to go see a doctor about, in true "stupid guy in a horror movie" fashion. Finally, he relents…but only after realizing he no longer has a pulse. Yeah, I always find that a pretty good sign that it's time to go see a doc.
Once at the hospital, the examining doctor confirms their fears about John's lack of heartbeat. At this point, I realized it might actually make an interesting movie to see what would happen next if John stayed at the hospital…to see how the medical community would react to something as fantastic as the living dead. I guess that will have to wait for another movie, as John and Jennifer instead make in the incredibly bone-headed decision to flee the hospital and return to their cabin. Now, really, why the hell would you do that?
Well, don't say I didn't warn them, but things in fact do not get any better, as John slowly starts to decay and is forced to wrap his rotting body in massive amounts of ACE bandage (ending up looking remarkably like Darkman, in the process). In his tiresome voice-over narration, John sums up his new state by saying "something was wrong. I knew that for sure." Gee…you think?!!
In fact, things are even worse than John realizes, given the increasingly unbearable hunger he is starting to endure. I'll give you one guess at what the one thing is that can quench that hunger. Incredibly (and some might say stupidly), Jennifer stays with John, continuing to take care of him even as makes clear his new cannibalistic desires.
Look, it's bad enough that she fled the hospital with him, but this bone-headed decision really takes the cake, to the point that you don't even feel sorry for her when the inevitable happens and John takes a bite out of her. At least, I'm pretty sure he does – the scene is so poorly filmed it's hard to tell what happened. But, she does start to turn into a zombie herself, so yeah, let's go with that he bit her. From here on out the movie consists of little more than these two just laying around the cabin, whining and blaming each other for their current predicament. They share an understandable aversion to the idea of actually killing anyone for food, but the movie basically forces you not to share their moral complication. You can't wait for these two to finally take a bite out of someone, just so that something will actually happen in this damn movie!
With 99% of the time devoted to the two main characters, and only a handful of locations, Shadow of the Dead feels more like a play than an actual feature film. And yet, with the stilted acting, insufferable dialogue and lack of action, this is dinner-theater at best. I just can't imagine why Lindbergh thought viewers would want to spend this much time alone in a cabin with these two characters. You know how everyone knows that one couple that is just too lovey-dovey, that are almost excruciating to be around? This is like spending close to 90 minutes with the zombie version of that couple, thus giving you the added bonus of hearing them droning on about their undead state in addition to the usual gag-inducing displays of affection.
The idea of the movie – an introspective character-study of a zombie – isn't a bad one (as a matter of fact, it was already done much better in Andrew Parkinson's I Zombie: The Chronicles of Pain), but Lindbergh serves it up underneath such an unbearable layer of mushy melodrama that it crushes any potential the concept had. In a way, though, the film's ultra-somber tone and tedious pace do succeed in making it a truly interactive viewing experience – by the end of the movie, you'll be just as miserable as John and Jennifer. Here's hoping you don't end being as unbelievably annoying as them, as well.
