DVD Review: Night Of The Living Dead: Reanimated
Posted by sean in Latest News, Movies on November 13th, 2009
No matter how hard I try to express what, exactly, Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated is, you may find your first few minutes of viewing a bit jarring. I guess the most important thing to say is that one can’t approach this as a narrative film. It is, rather, in the words of its producers, “an art show hung on the… timeline” of George A. Romero’s cult classic, Night of the Living Dead.
Basically, artists from all over the world have chosen individual scenes from Romero’s film, and recreated or paid homage to them in whatever medium they wanted to. The resulting works were then cobbled together according to the timeline of the movie, with the original audio track playing in the background. At times, this gives the illusion of watching a movie, and one is tempted to try to follow the plot, or perhaps go nuke some popcorn. This should be avoided at all costs. It will only serve to confuse and frustrate you when the hodgepodge of styles makes traditional viewing impossible.
For this reason, I also have to agree with the producers’ recommendation that one watch the original NOTLD before popping this one in the DVD player. At times, the shifting formats – first a series of long shots on charcoal drawings, then a stop-animation sequence composed of photographs, then an extended bout of traditional animation, then a scene made entirely with a video game graphics engine – make it impossible to tell what is going on, unless you’ve seen the film before. This is only exacerbated by the movie’s sparse dialogue, especially in the first half.
But if you’ve seen the movie already, 
and you know what you’re getting yourself into, NOTLD:R is definitely worth a viewing. As an example of editing alone, it’s impressive; there’s so many different artists and formats here, and yet the producers have found a way to cobble them together into something that matches the film’s narrative, if not retell it clearly. At times, it’s slow and even frustrating – mostly when the still mediums, like charcoal drawings or comic book panels, are showcased. Even if the point of this piece clearly isn’t the action, it feels a bit forced when you have the movie’s soundtrack in the background, and the only motion onscreen is from a Ken Burns-esque panning of camera across pages.
As a showcase of animation, though, it works quite well. Many of the artists, and their styles, are as unique as they are visionary. Some scenes are animated with stop-motion legos. Some adopt a childlike claymation with the aid of construction paper and simple clay figures. Interestingly enough, some of the most visually interesting scenes are the different takes on traditional animation. One artist forms just the basic outlines of the major shapes and characters in the scene in high-contrast white, black, and gray, and lets flashing, constantly-squiggling lines inside these silhouettes hint at the details. It’s a striking effect, particularly when the artist manages to create subtle details like facial features or flames.
So, if you love Romero’s original classic of zombie horror, and you want to see a cross-section of international artists expressing their own impressions of his work, you’ll most likely enjoy this collection. Like an art show in any gallery, not everything will be for you – but then, that’s not really the point, is it?
Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated will be available soon, on DVD and an Internet near you!
