I heard about this movie months ago and finally saw it at the video store. I was disappointed to see that they only had the 2D version to offer, but with me doin’ reviews for ZRC, I figured I’d save some people a few bucks by warding them off from getting it themselves.
I knew 2 things about this movie before I even saw it: that is was in no way a faithful adaption of George A. Romero’s classic 1968 Night of the Living Dead and that it was going to be a bad movie. Knowing these 2 things, I put the disc in and watched it and…I liked it. If you’re pissed about it being call “Night of the Living Dead” and having nothing to do with the original, then you might as well be pissed that George Romero didn’t protect the name in the first place. It’s public domain, any hack can make any piece of shit movie they want and call it “Night of the Living Dead”. The thing is, these people made a decently watchable film with a bit of humor that pays homage to the real deal in several scenes. It ain’t Gone With The Wind, but thank god it ain’t Day Of The Dead 2: Contagium or worse yet, Zombie Lake.
It starts out much in the same manner as Night of the Living Dead, Johnny and Barbara are headed to a cemetery for a funeral of their aunt. They arrive late to find nobody in the cemetery but zombies. They get split up and Barb finds her way to the mortuary and more zombies. Enter Sid Haig, as the owner of the mortuary and cemetery. He’s more concerned with Barb getting out of there than he is with there being dead people walking around. She’s chased off by more zombies and is eventually rescued by a fella on a motorcycle who takes her to a farmhouse. This is pretty much where the movie leaves behind anything resembling the original Night of the Living Dead, with the exception of the afore mentioned homages, one of which is that the inhabitants of the house are actually watching Night of the Living Dead on the TV and talk about it several times. I’m not going to bother telling you anymore of the story, because I honestly think you should check it out for yourself.
I’d actually describe the story as a Night of the Living Dead meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Of course, that’s keeping in mind that it’s not as good as either one of them. The acting is here and there, the pacing is good, the story is okay and the humor is mildly chuckle-worthy. The zombies for the most part are pretty good, but not very consistent. As the camera lingers you begin to see the man behind the curtain, so to speak. As the version I saw was only 2 dimensional, I could still tell the parts where they were trying to exploit the 3rd dimension and they were few and far between and didn’t slow down the story. It wasn’t chock full of overly gimmicky 3D shots.
All in all, given the flux of completely terrible, unwatchable and worthlessly bad zombie movies that I’ve seen out there, this was a welcome return to just regular bad zombie movie. I enjoyed, you could too if you weren’t expecting too much. I plan on picking up the 3D version to own if I can ever find it.

1/13/08 Addendum: I just got the 3-D version and it definitely made it better! It’s a gimmick, but damn cool one. I haven’t seen a fully 3-D movie since Creature From the Black Lagoon. I got some lighting gels, traced one of the four pairs of 3-D glasses that came with the DVD and made 12 more pairs of glasses for some friends and I to enjoy on a video projector. It was a hoot watchin’ it with a crowd. If you’re planning on having a get together of the zombie sort, this is the perfect bit of entertainment to raise the atmosphere.

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