Mimesis: Night of the Living Dead.

This is the fourth film that Starkwell and Lovelock are watching that isn’t “Night of the Living Dead” that manages to have “Night of the Living Dead” worked into the title somehow.  None of them have been good yet, so I don’t expect this one to be.  This one is apparently about a group of horror fans who somehow end up in a recreation of the original film.  Yeah… I don’t know.

[...]

[Farmer in his farmhouse walks by an old TV playing a trailer for “Night of the Living Dead”.]

Starkwell: Soooo the film DOES exist in this universe, they’ve established that…

[Farmer goes upstairs and finds a bunch of zombies eating his wife.]

Lovelock: Wait… what?

[Opening credits are creepy, and show horror fans in costume at a horror con… in slow-mo.]

Lovelock: Cosplay IS fucking scary…

[Sid Haig speaks at the convention, playing himself (?)…]

Starkwell: Sid Haig is in this?  Hasn’t he been in like three or four of the movies that use the “Night” title in the title?

[So he’s not playing himself, I guess he’s playing a director guy.]

[...]

Main characters Russell and Duane get invited to some creepy party by a Goth girl.  Russell, the nerdy guy, is reluctant, whereas Duane, the black cool guy, wants to go and hook up with the Goth girl.  There has been some totally decent dialogue so far, much to everyone’s surprise.  Then they get to the party and there’s dancing and a horrible soundtrack that sounds like it was written by people who only listen to Rob Zombie.

[...]

[Duane passes out while peeing and a voice says “WAKE UP TIME TO PLAY” then it cuts to Russell passed out in a cemetery.  He wakes up next to a girl he met at the party.]

Starkwell: Wait, they’re dressed exactly like Barbara and her brother!

Lovelock: Wake up time to play?  What in the fuck was that?

[Russell is eaten.]

Lovelock: So… he isn’t a main character after all.

[Duane runs into Fake Barbara and joins her in the farmhouse.]

[...]

Duane goes and gets Russell, who is bleeding out, and brings him to the farmhouse.  They’re obviously straying a bit from the storyline, but Starkwell and Lovelock are definitely curious to see where this is going.  Who drugged everyone and dressed them up like the characters in the movie?  What are those things eating Russell?  And Starkwell just realized that Duane, who is basically Ben, is named after the actor who played Ben in the original.

[...]

[They meet a couple with kids and some young dude, hauled up in the basement.]

Starkwell: I’m nervous, because I really like this so far, and I’m wondering how they’re going to fuck it up.

Lovelock: I don’t know, but I feel like it’s around the corner.

Starkwell: Maybe it will involve Sid Haig.

Lovelock: I hope those are real zombies… somehow.

[...]

Duane fights a guy, who looks like the Crow armed with a pitchfork.  He kills him.  Then the bald guy with the daughter hot wires the truck and it explodes.

[...]

Starkwell: The soundtrack is distracting.  They should have gone much more subtle.

Lovelock: What’s with the zombie in clown makeup?

[...]

Anyways, the zombies are in the house now, and it’s all pretty by-the-numbers people surviving, and killing clowns with pitchforks.  They run across a dude in the house who tells them the truth, that there is a group of crazy dudes who like to re-enact horror movies.

[...]

[The dude is killed, tells them that there are six or seven of them.]

Lovelock: Wait, so the zombies are just people, or the crazy people behind this are able to turn people into zombies… or?

Starkwell: This might be the breaking point we spoke of earlier…

[The movie just jumped the shark for Lovelock.]

[...]

[So the zombies are actually just crazy people pretending.]

Starkwell: Wait, even when the zombies were stabbed in the back they just fell over and moaned… like zombies… that’s some serious dedication… and pain tolerance.

Lovelock: They suffer for their art.

[Suddenly they aren’t acting like zombies, they’re just going after Judith who just got thrown out of the house by Duane and Other Guy.]

Starkwell: Also, how did they tear that guy’s arm off… humans pretending to be zombies shouldn’t have super strength... yet somehow... ?

Lovelock: Also, how are they eating people raw and not vomiting.

[...]

[Sid Haig explains what MIMESIS is.]

Starkwell: Wait, they kidnapped Sid Haig too?

[Their plan is apparently to blame the whole thing on Sid Haig.]

Lovelock: I liked it better when we didn’t know what was going on.

[...]

Eventually some of the characters kill all the crazies.  There’s even a scene where Duane stabs a guy in the nuts.  Lovelock was hoping for REAL zombies, not dudes being zombies, but nonetheless, this is LEAPS and bounds above crap like “Night of the Living Dead 3D” or “Reanimation” or “Resurrection”.  As a remake, it is still well below Savini’s 1990 remake, but at least it does something interesting and original.  It gets a lot of points for that.  As a zombie movie, it is, well, not a zombie movie at all, really.  Oops.

[...]

Starkwell: Wait, why was the farmer's wife being eaten at the beginning?