Scurrying

Rating: Null/10 (25 March 2004)

Spoilers herein.
I really admired how this was constructed and consider it a better film than the original. The deal with that original was the Dead were slow and stupid but incessant and inevitable. Here, the form is reinvented in a new genre, that started by "Alien" and copied hundreds of times with various alien swarms.
The key here is the pacing, which I think is pretty well understood for that escape genre. The enclosures, the secrets, the small scenes of pathos, the innumerable "them." The kickoff. And that ending, the one that bleeds into the credits, is a special coda with post- climax superfrenzy.
I admit to not being steeped in the Zombie genre, though I recently saw "Video Dead." But I think this doesn't qualify. These are scurrying, smart, growling monsters. No, I actually sought this out because of Sarah Polley, who interests me. She is a serious actress who has done well enough in a few intelligent films and following such careers is one of my minor hobbies. She must have done this because it was local. There's nothing of her in this.
Also appearing is Lindsey Booth, someone else I am watching, but in this case only because she is a slim redhead. She is slim and redhead here, and little else but provides an excuse for the rescue that triggers the climax. She's the scoobydoo component, and that ain't all bad.
The original depicted the Dead as a disease, or diseased, apt to an age discovering AIDS. This one depicts the Zombies as mad, precisely the sort of evil madness we bestow on jihadists. Think I'm joking? Look at the very first shot in this film: hundreds of Muslims praying (in unison, naturally).
Ted's Evaluation: 3 of 3-- worth watching