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Children
Of The Living Dead
Tor A. Ramsey, 2001, USA
Rating: 1.2 |
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Posted: March 13, 2003
The acting in Children Of The Living Dead is so utterly dreadful, it made
me yearn for the theatrical prowess of Jean
Claude Van Damme. Please do not confuse this offering with any of George
Romero's works, for his efforts set the zombie movie genre standard so high that
films like this can't even see it, much less reach it. This film starts
off with a bang, with hundreds of the walking dead roaming the countryside while
the local townsfolk and law enforcement types take up arms against them. Noted
makeup wizard Tom Savini even makes an appearance as one of the zombie hunters
-- look for him to score a way cool double zombie shot with a single bullet, and
to pick off distant ghouls with a lever-action rifle he twirls around a la Chuck
Connors in The Rifleman. Had this action continued, Children might
have been a contender. Sadly, as this zombie uprising is (temporarily) quelled,
so too are any hopes of this turning into a great zombie/action flick.
The film that's left revolves around Abbot Hayes, once a troubled kid with a
mother who dressed him as a girl and treated him like the daughter she never
had. Needless to say, this cat had serious issues, killed some girls around
town, and was himself killed in prison. But Death's got nothing for Abbott's
kind of evil, so he returns from the grave to kick around the barn in back of
his old home. Who knew cross-dressing had supernatural repercussions? I guess
this means we can all be on the lookout for a zombie RuPaul when he kicks the
bucket. Anyway, some developers have come to town to build a car dealership.
Only problem is, they've picked a small cemetery for their location. So Abbot
Hayes shows up and bites some dudes, and they bite some dudes, and so on and so
on. This, of course, leads to the ever-popular, often fabled
construction-workers-versus-zombies bloodbath. The dialogue here really shines:
The sheriff huddles up with the construction workers before they do battle with
the undead, and advises them to "avoid contact with their teeth." With guidance
like this, how can mankind lose?
Children takes a great horror premise and goes out of its way to wreck
it. We need more zombie killing and far less bad acting and crappy dialogue. The
guy who portrays the pitcher in Kool-Aid commercials has greater stage presence
than anyone in this movie. If nothing else, Children serves to remind
viewers of just how brilliant George Romero's
Dead Trilogy
is, and how it takes far more than the words "living dead" in the title to make
a good zombie flick.
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