Tag: Zombies

Automatic Arsenal | Battle Girl (1991) Review

May 22, 2025

It’s true that the movie fully entitled Battle Girl: The Living Dead in Tokyo Bay has a very low budget. As much as I’d prefer to be an enlightened critic who doesn’t discriminate on such bases, in this case I’m interested in how the miniscule production influences the viewing experience. For reference, we can plot this one somewhere between, say, Nemesis and Screamers? The former is so raggedy that it’s sometimes incoherent, not only in the big picture but in the micro, where the camera and editing have to be so judicious, so careful not to show the edges of the set, so to speak. Battle Girl has a little bit of that, though its setting – the zombie post-apocalypse – is easier to render than other sci-fi worlds, where “scatter some trash in the corner” is actually workable. … More Automatic Arsenal | Battle Girl (1991) Review

Gianna Jun | The Last Vampire vs. Ashin of the North

June 26, 2022

Like all those books with straightforward titles like How to Learn JavaScript, I’ll note in this introduction that “This is not a book on how to learn JavaScript,” and in this case, I won’t be summarizing Gianna Jun’s career between the films Blood: The Last Vampire and Kingdom: Ashin of the North — not exactly. But I chose these two movies because together, they suggest something about how stars are made. … More Gianna Jun | The Last Vampire vs. Ashin of the North

I Need a Herb

March 11, 2022

Tomorrow I’ll be booting up an old favorite, Resident Evil 5, to play with a friend over online co-op. This game has remained significant to me for two reasons: one, it was probably the last title from my golden age of video games, back when it was couch co-op. My buddy and I had done … More I Need a Herb

Three More the Korean Way: Wow, Cool Capitalist Critique!

October 6, 2021

One of the stranger experiences I have on Twitter is witnessing non-Koreans speak in defense of Korean pop culture against the clutches of Hollywood, as it’s both heartening to witness and not something I completely agree with. The assertion is that America doesn’t understand what made these originals so great, that X factor unique to the culture. Admittedly, we have a proven track record, from The Uninvited to Oldboy, to still easternmore scars like Death Note and Ghost in the Shell. And yet, we say that a film like Parasite is distinctly Korean but universally understood. Train to Busan is better without a remake despite that remakes are a cornerstone of the zombie subgenre. And then there’s our Squid Game, and if you must take what little remains, hey, The Running Man is good! Believe me, I get the concern that American adaptations won’t capture what the originals are saying — but what are they saying? … More Three More the Korean Way: Wow, Cool Capitalist Critique!

Train to Busan Remake

August 29, 2021

The reviews are in! First of all, before mentioning the personnel involved in the Train to Busan remake — I hate this, and it broke wide yesterday. Now, I understand the sentiment, because Hollywood has had a bad track record remaking Korean movies, from The Lake House to Oldboy, but I have to emphasize that this example is different. The director is Timo Tjahjanto, a horror filmmaker in the clique with Ti West and Gareth Evans (in that they’ve all contributed shorts to the V/H/S series) who also happened to direct The Night Comes for Us. This is an Indonesian guy, and he was hired by James Wan — neither are Korean, fine, but it’s not the usual Wonderbread cash grab. … More Train to Busan Remake

Even More Zombies | #Alive (2020) Review

September 15, 2020

Zombie movies stopped being weird a long, long time ago. And I don’t mean “millions of Milla Jovovich clones” weird — though before I fall into this visible trap for genre snobbery, is that any better or worse than Return of the Living Dead III’s zombie power loaders? To my mind, still, there’s a difference between Paul W.S. Anderson and Brian Yuzna. There’s a difference between in-groups and out-groups, the names made in the heyday — teeth cut, conventions defined, practical effects — who attach to a classic like Re-Animator, itself apiece with Evil Dead 2 and Dead Alive and the original Return of the Living Dead — the good ones. Whenever a zombie movie passes before my eyes — or I watch a zombie movie, whatever — all of this history trots out again for parade, all this embittered narrative and stolen history, borderline appropriation / vandalism of our darkest realms, us — genre champions — for coercion into the mainstream. What you call perhaps the last bastion against genre monopoly by superheroes I call… the rape of the natural world! … More Even More Zombies | #Alive (2020) Review