It Comes At Night (2017): written and directed by Trey Edward Shults; starring Joel Edgerton (Paul), Christopher Abbott (Will), Carmen Ejogo (Sarah), Riley Keough (Kim), Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Travis), and Griffin Robert Faulkner (Andrew):
Tense, claustrophobic thriller is set during some sort of zombie-plague apocalypse but uses that apocalypse to explore the horrors of human beings under pressure. Father, mother, and teen-aged son hide in a house in the woods. A stranger arrives. Charity fights with fear.
Anyone expecting pitched battles with the walking dead will be disappointed in It Comes At Night. But if you're in the mood for a downbeat tale of character and failure, the movie is a solid effort. It's a use of the zombie to comment on human frailties that the Grandfather of Zombie Movies, George 'Night of the Living Dead' Romero, would have thoroughly enjoyed and endorsed. Recommended.
White Zombie (1932): written by Garnett Weston; directed by Victor Halperin; starring Bela Lugosi (Legendre), Madge Bellamy (Madeline), Joseph Cawthorn (Dr. Bruner), Robert Frazer (Beaumont), and John Harron (Parker):
White Zombie was shot in 11 days for about $50,000 in 1932. Bela Lugosi always regretted not getting more money for it as White Zombie was a comparatively big hit.
At a trim 68 minutes or so (about five minutes have been lost, depending on what print you see), White Zombie is an engaging, creepy movie regardless of its shoestring budget. Lugosi is used well as Haitian voodoo master Legendre, allowed to underplay rather than play to the cheap seats. The acting from the other principals is mediocre at best.
Highlights include the appearances of the zombies, who stagger around wide-eyed. They're not the resurrected dead of contemporary popular culture. No, they're living people made subject to Lugosi's will by a combination of drugs and mesmerism.
The director Victor Halperin (also the producer) manages an effective use of shadows and murk throughout, along with a lot of shots of Lugosi looking hypnotic. There's a weird bit of business in which Lugosi clasps his hands together in order to control the zombies, a bit of business that seems funnier as the movie goes along. Is this the Zombie Grip?
Other than a lame bit of recurring comic business involving missionary Dr. Bruner's repeated attempts to get a light for his pipe, the movie moves efficiently along to its curiously affecting and tense climax. Those goggle-eyed zombies may not be dead, but their appearance and their movements would recur for the next 85 years in a host of zombie and zombie-esque movies and TV shows. And of course Rob Zombie would take both last name and band name from the movie. Recommended.
Night of the Living Dead (1968): written by John Russo and George Romero; directed by George Romero; starring Duane Jones (Ben), Judith O'Dea (Barbra), Karl Hardman (Harry Cooper), Marilyn Eastman (Helen Cooper), Keith Wayne (Tom), Judith Ridley (Judy), Kyra Schon (Karen Cooper), George Kosana (Sheriff): George Romero's witty, gritty, subversive zombie film pretty much kicked off the entire genre of the walking, eating dead.
The restored print used by TCM is a revelation. Romero's low-budget film now looks and acts more like an art-house classic than a drive-in staple. It's amazing how good the movie is, and how eccentric -- an African-American hero, a protagonist (Barbra) who slips into near-catatonia 20 minutes into the movie and pretty much stays there to the end, and those rapidly evolving zombies who quickly learn how to use tools.
Night of the Living Dead is better than every walking dead movie or TV show that followed with one exception -- Romero's own sequel, Dawn of the Dead. Brilliant film-making, and acting by amateurs and local actors that works beautifully, none more beautifully than Duane Jones as Ben. Highly recommended.
