JimPV wrote:
Quote:Oh I think Dawn is a very worthy sequel and I understand (though don't agree) some thinking it's superior to Night. But after Dawn, I would agree with you: Day seems more of the same (people stuck somewhere trying to fend off the zombies again ...) and Land positively shouts that Romero wants to keep making movies (any movies) but the "Dead" franchise is the only thing he could get funding for. Unfortunately.
After that, the sequels were the same-old, same-old with increasingly ripe gore effects and decreasingly effective political and sociological satire.
Whether any of the sequels live up to or exceed the original, it is not fair to say the Romero is simply rehashing the "same old, same old." Each
film advances the concept and has a completely different feel, reflecting the era in which it is made.
In DAY, I particularly enjoy that Romero tries to come to grips with exactly what's going on with the living dead - the deterioration of the cerebreal
cortext leaving a brain that operates only on an animal instinct to feed.
For all its faults (it is a bit like a replay of NIGHT, with the one-note Pilato standing in for the one-note Hardman), DAY feels like a rigorously articulated
argument, in which Romero begins the most negative of premises regarding human behavior and yet still manages to conclude that there is some reason for
hope.
And DIARY feels totally fresh, as if it were made by some twenty-something newcomer trying to put his stamp on the franchise.
By the way, in honor of DIARY's release on Friday, there's a retrospective of NIGHT here.
