Why are most zombies movies cr@p?

The problem with Quarantine is that it tries to do a pretty much scene-by-scene remake of Rec, but somehow just doesn't capture the same atmosphere as the original.

And the moments it does do slightly differently aren't as good.

I think if I'd seen Quarantine before Rec, I'd have thought it was an entertaining film but nothing particularly special, so it suffered from that respect ... but it just doesn't compare.
 
I agree. Lamd of the Dead was disappointing but it wasn't by any means a bad film. Diary was much looked-forward-to by the fans after the slight disappointment of Land, but it turned out to be an awful film! Land was a masterpiece by comparrison.
 
I think I may have spotted a mistake in your formula.

Well, indeed. It turns out that for a good movie the audience neeRAB to be emotionally invested in the characters and what happens to them. Merely having zombies doesn't guarantee that. Even having gore isn't enough if we don't care about the people being gored.

Zombie movies tend to be made by amateurs because they look easy. Good zombie movies are rare because good people are rarely attracted to the genre. Those who are, usually have some deep artistic vision they want to express. The zombie becomes a metaphor for something else.

It's the same with the Alien Versus Predator films. The people who made them thought that all you needed was to get the two species fighting each other. They were fans, but they didn't understand why the earlier films they were fans of, worked.
 
By the way, can anyone name that Zombie movie, in which a group of peeps are drinking wine and dancing in a big block of flats, and...

...in another room, a woman stares at her TV as a zombie comes out the telly and bites her? It was made around 1985 or 1988.

Plus, a zombie dog attacks its owner in the same block of flats.

I saw this a couple of years ago, but it was in Italian. Didn't bother me, I still understood it, zombie actions speak louder than worRAB! :D

Anyone know the title????

Thanks in advance.

PS. Most 1980s zombie films suck. :D
 
Zombies do NOT need to be "fast running" to make a good Zombie film, Dawn of the Dead (the original) is the absolute benchmark of the genre IMHO, the slow unrelenting swarm makes them more menacing (when done well), I think, than if they run around like "Rage infected monkeys".

Shaun of the Dead is hilarious, but also a great film and a great tribute to the likes of DOTD, without ever mocking it's predecessors.

28 Days Later is also a fantastic example, despite not being STRICTLY a zombie movie.

Thinking about it though, these are three individual examples, the majority of Zombie movies are low budget, minimal script rubbish, so really MOST zombie movies probably ARE cr@p, I couldn't tell you why though ;)
 
The best zombie films aren't really about zombies. Modern zombie films have a tendency to concentrate on the superficial aspects like special effects and cheap scare tactics, when they would do better writing a good script and concentrating on atmosphere.
 
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