Night of the Living Dead Re-Animation 3D Review

Night of the Living Dead Re-Animation 3D Review

Year: 2012

Stars: Andrew Divoff, Jeffrey Combs and Sarah Lieving

Directed: Jeff Broadstreet

Running Time: 84mins approx.

 

 

 

With no budget information to go on I can’t draw an amazing contrast to other low budget films, suffice to say this is filmed in 3D!

So I’m guessing the budget wasn’t amazingly tiny, also to cast 2 B-movie standards in there such as Divoff and Combs. These arent just bit parts either they are pretty much the main stars of the film. Divoff known (hopefully at least) for the wish master films, and Combs for Re-animators and a bunch of other TV and Lovecraftian parts.
Those popping up in this film surprised me and pleased me no end. The rest of the cast are minor apart from Sarah Lieving, who has had bit parts in some fairly mainstream films and lots of other B-movies.
Jeff Broadstreet does not have much under his belt either he is writer, director and producer of the film. He’s made a few other B-movies in there most noteworthy is American Grindhouse and possibly this films predecessor? Night of the Living Dead 3D (2006)

So we start off with Divoff he plays a mortuary owner Mr Gerald Tovar who seems quite a shady character from the offset and not afraid to kill a zombie or even a human. Which we also see not minutes into the film. We also learn a little later he has an aversion to fire so hates cremations.

Divoff’s acting is a little iffy to say the least not his best work. Just his lines seem a bit poorly delivered or delayed too much like he’s trying to build tension or be serious for me it just didn’t work.

Back to the initial zombie encounter, some reasonably good zombie make up says they tried to make an effort. Unfortunately the beheading of said zombie though only briefly flashed is a little poor CGI work, seen worse but it’s noticeable even with the small flash. The CGI makes me laugh in this film as its strangely mostly used to create CGI flies that accompany many of the rotting dead.
Sarah Lieving Pops up as Christie a woman seeking a job around now, she gets started as an apprentice and then shown around. Her acting is actually good and overshadows Divoff’s role when they first meet with better delivery and timing I feel.

So she’s introduced to Dye-Ann another apprentice and a bit of a gothic babe, we met her near the start of the film.

Then HURRAY! Jeffery Combs shows up, very briefly just pulling up to the Tovar and sons building.
Divoff a little later enters a room where he seems to wait for a dead person to arise then brains it with his favourite shovel.
Combs finally gets some lines here, he is introduced as Harold Tovar, Divoff’s brother he notices that Gerald’s padlocking the crematorium. It is so amusing to see these B-movie actors ham it up on the screen here trying to out act each other.
We get a sister Sara on the TV as well, who is a blatant rip off of Sara Palin, quite funny if you get the joke.

Even though some of the acting’s a little off and some effects are a little bad, there are some genuine good scenes in this film and I really quite enjoyed a lot of it which I will get to later in my review of this film.

Seems Harold is out of money and has come asking for some from Gerald threatening all the usual staples of a film like this. Even though they end up laughing about it Gerald’s got some ulterior motives inviting his younger sibling to supper.

You know one thing this movie shows is it doesn’t take a lot to do some decent zombie make up, like I said I don’t know the budget but I’m sure there have been some higher budget films with worse make up than this.

There quite a cool scene with Combs and Divoff at the Tovar house, Divoff tells Combs about the zombies and they have banter about the type’s slow movers sprinters etc. really made me smile Combs comes to the conclusion their Romero zombies.

It’s all a ploy though as Combs then goes about getting his brother on mental grounds, oh as you know how that will backfire later in the movie!
Back in the embalming room three high people are having a laugh when the new recruit gets a bit spaced out and has a trippy hallucination.
We also learn around this time how it’s all actually happened good old toxic waste! The meat and veg of zombie movies, chemical waste induced walkers is this just a homage to everything classically zombie or what?
Some fantastic references to night, dawn and day of the dead and the 1990 night as well as Combs rattles off dates and locations to *zombie cover ups* to his brother.
So because Divoff is afraid of the crematory oven, he was keeping the bodies in the crematory lock up where the waste was which he was also afraid to burn, which is how the corpses slowly come back to life. Of course this doesn’t happen when Divoff initially shows Combs.
Later in the movie after some good old fashioned zombie action in the mortuary, Divoff proves it to Combs that they come back after showing him their undead dad.

Anyway towards the end of the movie Divoff shows off a little crazy with the death of Combs character from a bite. He throws him into an already dug grave with a named headstone and buries him semi-alive.
The movie ends pretty much with a brilliant infinite shotgun moment of Gerald and Christie the only survivors shooting a crematorium full of zombies back to their rest.
There’s another little shock twist just before the end that as always I’ll leave you to discover yourself.

Yes this film had more ham than a bacon factory, and it wasn’t great by far but I loved it, it wasn’t bad at all but then again it wasn’t good either. If this didn’t have the B-movie greats in it, great make up or some top class references I think it would have been very poor all this was missing was a cameo from Bruce Campbell at some point.

Unfortunately it didn’t, though that doesn’t detract from the 3 star rating I’m giving it, I’m a hundred per cent sure that people will scoff at my high marking. Though seriously if you’re a zombie aficionado like me you’ll lap up the goodness this movie throws out in sweet little nuggets of gold I really enjoyed and recommend a viewing.