Dance of the Dead
It’s been a pretty good week for horror comedy flicks. Last Tuesday, genre fans finally got a chance to check out Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer (which was well worth the wait). This week sees the release of the equally anticipated (albeit slightly less funny) Dance of the Dead. It’s a good time to be a fan of horror films-particularly if you like some humor mixed in with your blood and guts.
Deftly combining elements from Return of the Living Dead, Night of the Creeps, and, oddly enough, John Hughes’ ‘80s teen flicks, Dance of the Dead is at both once intimately familiar and totally unique. A film that gives us just what we expect from the premise, but does so with enough characterization, heart, and attention to detail to make it seem fresher than it should.
The kids at Cosa High School are preparing for the Prom-but a toxic leak from a nearby nuclear power plant is bringing the dead back to life. Only a group of nerds, oddballs, and loners can save the day-and maybe, the Prom-from becoming another footnote in zombie cinema history.
I’ve long posited that the best genre films are the ones that keep things simple. If a plot can be explained in a sentence or two, the film has a much higher chance of being successful. Writer Joe Ballarini and director Gregg Bishop seem to have a firm grasp on this concept and employ it beautifully in Dance of the Dead. There’s really nothing extraneous in the script or the finished film-it’s lean, mean, and ready to take a chomp out of adventurous audiences.
There are a number of different factors that make the movie work so well. First is the script, which is smart, filled with memorable characters (who get some great lines) and genuinely funny. Ballarini has clearly done his homework when it comes to drawing ideas from his inspirations-he pulls concepts and situations from all of the aforementioned films but manages to put a spin on them that makes them feel more like homage than plagiarism. This isn’t to say that all of Dance of the Dead merely cribs ideas from other movies, because it doesn’t-Ballarini brings his own things to the table as well, most notably his characters.
The film focuses on slacker student Jimmy (Jared Kusnitz). Jimmy doesn’t take anything seriously-not his grades, not his relationship with class vice-president Lindsey (Greyson Chadwick), nor his job delivering pizza. He’s more content to make a joke than stand up for a cause, but he’s very easy to identify with. The rest of the cast is equally well-drawn, The sci-fi club guys provide comic relief, the cheerleader isn’t a bitch, the bully finds a purpose in life, and the punk band gets to save the mainstream instead of railing against it. It would have been easy to just phone in the characters, crafting a series of clichés we’ve all seen before, but instead we’re treated to archetypal characters we can quickly identify but they continually surprise you with their depth. Oh, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my favorite character, a surly graveyard attendant who just keeps killing the zombies so he can keep his job (which is basically another homage, this one to Michele Soavi’s Cemetery Man).
Gregg Bishop shows a real flair for the material and for getting every dime of his budget up on the screen. Dance of the Dead has more style and panache than just about anything to come out of the Hollywood horror mill in recent memory. The scene compositions are almost comic-like at various points in the film, but it works. The film has some real standout sequences (the dead rising is one, with the fresher corpses practically exploding from their graves while the older ones shamble around like classic zombies) and it never skimps on the gore. Bishop isn’t shy about splashing the blood and guts around which was greatly appreciated by this reviewer.
It’s not all blood and roses, though. Some of the jokes do miss and one plot element (involving the punk band) seems forced and arbitrarily introduced in order to re-use it again at the climax (where it’s no more believable), but the whole is greater than the few places where the film falters. Dance of the Dead is the “big gun” release of Lionsgate’s new Ghosthouse Underground imprint (created, apparently, to create with Dimension Extreme, Dimension’s direct to DVD genre imprint). As a debut, it bodes well for the label’s future. As a calling card for Bishop and first time screenwriter Ballarini, one can merely hope it’s a sign of things to come. Horror needs guys like this-men not afraid to challenge the genre’s conventions and approach the traditional from new angles. Men not afraid to love the genre they’re working in. Let’s hope we see more from both of these talents.
Horror Geek Rating: 4 out of 5
Tags: Dance of the Dead, Film Reviews, Ghosthouse Underground, Gregg Bishop, Jared Kusnitz, zombie movies
October 17th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Saw this movie about a week ago and have been riding high on it ever since, also saw and loved “Jack Brooks” I have a review of this film on my blog as well. Feel this is a little better than Jack Brooks but completely agree that it is a good time to be a horror fan.