Too much of everything

Such a frustrating disappointment

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This was a poorly conceived project. Too much of this film looks like it was created by a 5 year old. I've never seen anything as crudely produced as this. Very little of it is actually animated, in the traditional sense. A lot of it looks rushed, as though they were in a hurry to fill-in unfinished portions. With some scenes, original footage was processed with various filters as a low-budget cheat. The visual style changes quickly and abruptly throughout. The worst part of it is, the suspense and atmosphere of the original has been degraded into a laughably bad imitation. You have been warned. Avoid this version like the plague.

Let's face it, folks. The zombie horror sub-genre has really been done to death (pun intended), what with all the sequels, remakes, and shoddy straight-to-DVD crud that delivers little to nothing new. So it's really saying something to note that this particular reimagining of Romero's 1968 classic is anything but another dreary run-of-the-mill rehash. Almost 150 artists from all over the world pay affectionate tribute to their favorite scenes and the picture's most iconic moments using all different styles of animation that include oil paintings, comic book panels, acrylic, CGI, legos, stop-motion animation, rotoscoping, Claymation, and even sock puppets (!). Some approaches are serious and respectful, others more comic and irreverent, all are impressive for their admirable sense of bold go-for-broke imagination alone. Granted, the broad assortment of wildly contrasting styles occasionally threaten to cancel each other out, but fortunately director Mike Schneider keeps it all cohesive and compelling throughout. Wisely retaining the original score and voices of the cast members, this film does a surprisingly sound job of recapturing the stark terror and grim humor of this groundbreaking fright feature without ever diminishing its impact or importance. Best of all, this movie offers one the rare opportunity to see the living dead premise from a fresh and unique perspective. Proof positive that there's still plenty of life left in the moldy old zombie horror sub-genre.

Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated (2009) ** 1/2 (out of 4) One could argue that George Romero's 1968 film NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was one of the greatest horror movies ever made. One could also argue that it has caused some of the most outrageous and stupid moments in terms of rip-offs, remakes and flat out idiotic fan movies. You had a remake in 1990, a 3-D remake, countless impersonators, fan documentaries, a couple sequels that would eventually be remade as well and all of this because of there being no copyright on the film. Oh, and let's not even go into the countless Italian, German and Japanese films. I think the biggest crap-fest of them all was the "30th Anniversary" gig that had John Russo filming new scenes and adding them back into Romero's film. This film, subtitled REANIMATED, features the original audio track from the Romero film but with a new look.The entire concept of this film is that they'd take the soundtrack and dialogue from the Romero film and let artists from around the world add their visuals. With this we get animation, claymation, stop-motion, comic book visuals, acrylics, sock puppets and we even get a strange cartoon-like version of when the zombie reaches through the window and grabs Ben. There are all sorts of styles going on here and they change quite often, sometimes a single shot changes direction. I must admit that this is a rather strange way to watch a movie but there are a few styles here that I'd love to see the entire movie made of. This type of thing certainly isn't going to be for everyone and I think it's safe to say that it wears out its welcome before the end credits but at the same time there's no question that a lot of imagination went into this thing and I can't help but respect it. I'm not sure who exactly to recommend it to but if watched in pieces I think most people will at least respect the thing. What impressed me the most is how it was all put together with countless people giving their impressions of a scene and for the most part it all goes together very well. Needless to say, I think some moments work better than others but you have to expect that. The scene with Ben first showing up was extremely good as was the first meeting between Ben and Cooper, the truck catching fire and of course the final attack sequence when the zombies are entering the house. Since the movie uses the original audio I was surprised to see how suspenseful it actually is even without the original footage to back it up. REANIMATED certainly isn't a masterpiece but it's a rather unique item that's certainly a lot more imaginative then countless big-budget films out there.

I don't know what it is about George Romero's NOTLD, but I always feel compelled to watch any variation of it. I've seen the colorized version, the Savini remake, the 3-D Sid Haig remake, and even that 30th anniversary version with new footage by John "Paycheck" Russo. It is a film I am infinitely familiar with, so this new take on it sounded rather interesting. Basically, artists from all over the globe offered their (free) services to animate the original film beginning to end with tons of different styles. You end up with a final product that reminds me of the great early 90s MTV series LIQUID TELEVISION (anyone remember that?). Unfortunately, the end product is - like the contributors - all over the map. The animators utilize all kinds of styles from hand drawn to computer animation to live action usage of dolls. When it is on top of its game, the film's animations are fantastic, breaking down Romero's film into a variety of unique interpretations. For example, Andres Silva's take on the window attack is fantastic as he re-interprets it in the form of a Tom & Jerry style cartoon with cats (zombies) and mice (humans). When it is off, however, it is really rough with some downright embarrassing stuff that looks like it was slapped together in Microsoft Paint. Also, some points of the film just use live action footage with artistic filters over them to fill in the gaps. Project coordinator Mike Schneider should be commended for such a grand idea, but he should also be chastised for not exhibiting some level of quality control. I get it, this is just fans doing their work to honor Romero's masterpiece. But that should be no excuse for shoddy animation that sometimes even pixelates on screen. These sub-par efforts undermine the truly rewarding work on display here.