A group of horror fans find themselves unwilling participants in a nightmarish role playing game that pays homage to a classic horror film.
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Reviews
I love this movie so much
To me, this movie is perfection.
People are voting emotionally.
An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.
This film is very well titled. It positions itself using well crafted elements from NotLD, but the real homage is to our modern zombie zeitgeist.The plot is fresh and well developed. The film is never boring, as it never gets 'stuck' in the homage to NotLD. It becomes its own movie, and does so quite smoothly. By the mid-way point of the film, you are no longer waiting for NotLD to just 'play itself out' on screen.The characters are wonderful. The protagonists superficially reflect those from the original film, yet we know these people more from our current experiences with the zombie craze in popular culture. Overall, the production quality of this film is very good. There are a few questionable shots - with speedy cinematography or editing that really didn't fit the scene - but the other 99.9% of the visuals are clear and effective. The $500K production budget was put to good use. I gotta say - I really loved this film. Somebody give these folks some money to make more films, because they did a great job.
It's refreshing to see a film that knows the true meaning of the word "homage" -- something done or given in acknowledgment or consideration of the worth of another -- rather than "rip off," which is something we see far too often in films, especially horror movies.Douglas Schulze's Mimesis is a clever homage to George Romero's Night of the Living Dead on one hand and a modern "thrill killer" movie on the other. After an opening scare starring Courtney Gaines, the audience is taken to a horror convention where Alphonze Betz (Sid Haig) rails against the media blaming horror movies for real life horrors. In the audience are Russell (Taylor Piedmonte) and his unlikely pal Duane (Allen Maldonado).Russell is a horror fan while Duane is more keen on meeting some of the hotties at the con including Judith (Lauren Mae Shafer), a goth girl who invites the boys to a party later that night. Thinking he'll get some, Duane convinces Russell to drive out to the spooky farmhouse where they encounter some out-of-place regular people and a number of silent, spooky dudes all made up in makeup. Before the party gets too "dick in the mashed potatoes" crazy, Russell and Duane are down for the count, waking up dressed in different clothes and hanging out in some eerily familiar settings.There's no "They're coming to get you, Barbara!" line in Mimesis but much of the rest of Night of the Living Dead is there as our protagonists find themselves cast in a living remake of the film, complete with flesh-tearing zombies.Thus, Mimesis becomes a film with disparate characters trapped in a farmhouse with a menacing presence outside but the presence isn't supernatural, it's psychotic. Additionally, the script by Schulze and Joshua Wagner is incredibly self-aware, playing with and against the plot of NOTLD along with more current films where strangers toy with innocents (Them, Inside, High Tension, etc.).
A group of horror fans find themselves unwilling participants in a nightmarish role playing game that pays homage to a classic horror film.I like the idea they were going for here -- a group of people recreating "Night of the Living Dead". With all the sequels, remakes, and ripoffs, I am a bit wary of anything related to NoTLD these days. But I really think this idea had merit.However, I am not sure if it succeeded. At times, it seemed to drag, and I really disliked the role played by Sid Haig. Haig, being a well-known horror icon, should probably have played himself at the convention. In fact, for the film to make complete sense, the role would have had to be George Romero playing George Romero. I assume they know this and simply could not get him.
Two positive reviews so far, and here's a third. Why it has a 2.4 rating? You got me. From start to finish this movie either had me laughing or jumping out of my seat. It blends the two nicely, but doesn't try and force anything. A big part of the laughs comes from the actors, who seem to get the scripts subtle hints at comedy, and the scares come from Douglas Schulze's direction; this being his fourth feature,(all horror) he seems to have grown into a master of the genre. There is little proof from watching this movie that it was made on a shoestring budget, much like "Night of the Living Dead" the movie that inspired the script for "Mimesis" a love letter to Romero. The script is very self aware, however much like today's horror fan, the characters in the movie are not familiar with the classic zombie film, except for one character who keeps everyone informed, audience included, on what might happen next. After watching this movie I immediately went out and rented "NOTLD" which I'm sure will be the reaction of a lot of other people, thus making "Mimesis" even more cinematically relevant than I'm sure it intended to be by re-introducing a classic in modern story telling. Did I mention that Sid Haig (House of a Thousand Corpses, Kill Bill 2), and Courtney Gaines (Children of The Corn, The Burbs) also appear in the film. Fun for all. I recommend.