eat the yuppies

Rating: 8/10 (24 February 2008)

This movie helps put Diary of the Dead into perspective - it's got the same eat-the-yuppie-scum-before-they-breed subtext, but it's more felt, less metaphorical. Also rather emptier; also way tenser. And what it lacks in auteurist readability it makes up for in the roller-coaster excitement that Romero has consciously forsaken. The lapses in logic have all been well-catalogued, although I'll warrant that the National Guard is so accommodating they could be from Sweden, and that the final long money shot of the M-O-N-S-T-E-R makes me nostalgic for Val Lewton. But the set pieces are classic, and the found-tape structural logic is more convincing than Romero's, too. And for all their generic, stupid hatefulness, the characters are more felt and more dimensional.