Directed by: Alexandre O. Philippe.
Written by: Chad Herschberger & Alexandre O. Philippe.
Zombies are everywhere
right now. As popular culture icons, they pretty much disappeared in the 1990s –
after decades of movies by the likes of George A. Romero, and a host of imitators,
the genre seemed to have pretty much died off. But the early 2000s brought them
back in a big way – first in films like Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later and Edgar
Wright’s Shaun of the Dead, and then onto the Walking Dead comics by Robert
Kirkman – and the insanely popular TV show it inspired. Zombies are everywhere now – they’ve gone mainstream again.
A good documentary about the phenomenon could easily be made – and some of Doc of
the Dead is fascinating. But a lot of it isn’t. Perhaps a feature documentary wasn’t
needed – a short would have done.
Doc of
the Dead goes back to origins of the genre on film – breezing through the first
7 decades of cinema in a few minutes – from The Cabinet of Dr. Cagliari (1919) to
White Zombie (1932) to I Walked with a Zombie (1943) through some sci-fi of the
1950s. Quite quickly it gets to George A. Romero and Night of the Living Dead
(1968) – which pretty much invented the zombie genre as we know it today. It
then walks through Romero’s films, and its many imitators, and show how zombies
have gone mainstream – with books, comics, movies, TV shows, and everything
else – and then showing the conventions, zombie walks and everything thing the
die-hard fans of the genre have done.
Some of
this is fascinating stuff. I didn’t think very much of the analysis of the
movies – which basically sticks the big hits, and doesn’t tell us anything new
or unique about them (Dawn of the Dead is about consumerism? Who knew?) and doesn’t
even delve too deep into any of them either. I was much more interested in some
of the things I didn’t know – the origins of the zombies in reality, and the
possibilities of a real zombie outbreak (it may not be possible for the dead to
come back to life, but perhaps an infection could create real, zombie-like
people).
Unfortunately,
the stuff that’s of real interest to me about the film is about a third of the
movie. Another third is going over the movies and books that anyone who knows
anything about zombie movies already knows all about (but hell, if you think
zombies begins and ends with The Walking Dead, then by all means educate
yourself). And then another third is downright embarrassing – strange re-enactments,
and stuff that is just plain boring.
A good documentary about zombie culture could easily be made. But Doc of the Dead, directed by Alexandre O. Philippe – who directed the far better The People vs. George Lucas, about fans who hate the man they once adored (which was strangely fairer to Lucas than I thought it would be) – isn’t that film. It seems to be made for people who know nothing about zombie culture – and if they know nothing about zombie culture, then why the hell would they watch a documentary about zombie culture? The film quite simply isn’t good enough.
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