Director: Michele Soavi
Year: 1994
Country: Italy/France/Germany
Alternate Titles: Dellamorte Dellamore; Of the Living, Of the Dead
Genre: Zombie
Plot:
Working at a local cemetery, a disenfranchised caretaker and his assistant are confronted with a strange epidemic that allows a victim to come back to life, and as more and more friends of theirs die and become inhabitants of the cemetery the two begin losing their grip on reality.
Review:
There's only a few areas in here where it really shines. Almost all of the positives are are dependent on the horror aspects of the story as when they're on, the zombies scenes are simply incredible. The creatures themselves look great, as the rotting, already-decomposing skin is starting to fall off, and some actually look like some patches of skin are thicker than other areas, giving them an eerie quality. That they're covered with lots of debris from the tomb as some have tons of sticks and sand on them make them look even creepier. The resurrections of each one are stand-out scenes, and are quite masterfully done. The one nearby the two lovers is the greatest one, being a really beautifully-done resurrection that stands as a great high-point.
The other big piece in this, and one of the brightest spots in the film, is that there's a wonderfully poetic, Gothic look to it which is great to look at. The graveyard hallucinations, especially the figure emerging from the burning leaves, is one of the greatest moments in the film full of great images while the resurrection of the bikers is even more impressive with the emergence from underground while riding around on bikes. The look of the cemetery, the interior of the house and much more here are brilliantly composed and designed. It's also got some beautiful scenes of dresses flowing in the wind that look wonderful in the best sense. These are the film's best factors.
There's some pretty big flaws in this one. The biggest one is that the film's strong message of love and death in here can lead to great drama, but this seriously detracts from the horror the main audience is attracted to. This is advertised as a zombie movie, yet there's only fleeting moments within that actually contain them. They're brilliant scenes, but the fact that the majority of the film consists of the leads running around trying to find a romantic figure for their lives leads to tons of long, boring scenes that are missing moments from what could've been zombie scenes. There's just endless boredom that results when it focuses on the two of them in their relationships, leaving no evidence of a zombie in sight of this. The ending twenty minutes of this is just simply agonizing as it draws up conclusions to the relationship subplots and where it's going to end, but the film simply has nothing interesting to do with the zombies and seem like the background filler in a film that's advertised as such.
Another big problem is that the film's incredibly convoluted and doesn't make any real sense. It concerns matters that are extremely vague and them attempts symbolic explanations to weave them into the storyline, making the end result a general headache. This is mostly evident in the love angle, which is just simply confusing and doesn't make any sort of sense whatsoever. The incoherent, third-rate brooding babbling done in conjunction is another factor of that. By adding these with long, lifeless scenes, this one's pacing really suffers as well. It starts off nicely, but then it deteriorates until it's almost dead. The last big one is that there's really no explanation given for why the creatures are coming back. It's a fact of life that only few know about, but how they came upon this would've helped. These are all reasons why this one seems really overrated.
Overview: ** 1/2/5
There are plenty of reasons why this one feels really overrated, but there's some good stuff in here as well that does manage to work itself into some watchable moments. This one has a lot of defenders who do like the negative points mentioned here, so if that sounds intriguing, give it a shot while the more hardcore, traditional zombie lovers should heed mild caution with it though.
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