Attack the Block
Set in a rough South London neighborhood attacked by "gorilla wolf muthafuckas" from outer space, the 2011 Edgar Wright-produced cult favorite Attack the Block is inventive sci-fi with a youth of color as the lead for a change. Hoodie leader Moses (John Boyega) and his crew find themselves dealing with alien invaders, as well as two much more typical South End threats: the Five-0 and a trigger-happy drug lord named Hi-Hatz (Jumayn Hunter). The film doubles as an inspired, non-preachy critique of the demonization of the working class in the U.K. A one-time mugging victim who wanted to better understand his muggers and their lives instead of being resentful and fearful of them, writer/director Joe Cornish takes working-class kids like Moses and the brainy Jerome (Leeon Jones) (their mugging of Jodie Whittaker's nurse character Sam at the start of the film was based on the incident Cornish experienced) and fleshes out those characters to prove the irrationality of demonizing the underclass. (Had Attack the Block been a much bigger hit in America, it would have caused that racist dickcheese Lou Dobbs to get his panties in a bunch over the kinds of characters it chooses to sympathize with.) What also makes Attack the Block stand out is the absence of CGI. All the creature FX in Cornish's film are practical. The alien attacks are fast and brutal, and this is a case where the fast-cutting that so many critics complain about when they see present-day action movies is absolutely necessary because here, it prevents us from noticing how cheap-looking the monsters are--they're essentially just stuntmen leaping around in eyeless and coal-black bear suits outfitted with ginormous blue neon teeth. But because the Attack the Block aliens aren't CG, there's a realness and formidability to them that's missing from most CG creatures. Attack the Block is more of a sci-fi actioner than a genuinely scary horror film, although it contains one horrific moment: the split-second shot of a mutilated Hi-Hatz doing his best impression of Voldemort.
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later was my gateway to the zombie genre when the Boyle film first hit DVD, and it led me to check out for the first time George Romero's 1978 follow-up to his breakthrough zombie film Night of the Living Dead. The 1968 film was straightforward apocalyptic horror, while Dawn of the Dead, which centers on a pack of zombie attack survivors who hole up in a Pennsylvania shopping mall, throws satire into the mix. The mall backdrop and the survivors' gradual immersion into mall culture while biding their time both serve as a clever commentary on the downside of consumerism. The sequence where zombies turn an unlucky biker gang into a SAMCROnut buffet still holds up as grisly horror makeup FX wizardry. What doesn't hold up so well are a few non-FX-related elements that are a result of the film's low budget, like a really terrible, Mr. Peabody & Sherman-esque library music cue that drops when lead hero Ken Foree reconsiders killing himself and shoots and punches his way out of the mall.
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Zack Snyder's first feature film still remains his best directorial effort. Duplicating the satire of the original Romero film would have been a pointless effort, so Snyder focused more on the action side of the material, and that's the one aspect where this remake outdoes the original. The Romero version is stronger as a satirical horror film, while the Snyder film is much better at action and suspense (the film's first few minutes, in which Sarah Polley watches the zombie apocalypse erupt, are still a corker). The Snyder version isn't without a humorous side though: the rooftop sequence where the survivors assign celebrity nicknames to zombies they use as target practice is genuinely funny, as is a pre-Modern Family Ty Burrell as the douchiest of the survivors.
Evil Dead II
Groovy.
The Fury
The original Carrie is a far better Brian De Palma horror flick. But the lesser-known 1978 De Palma bloodbath The Fury, which was three years ahead of David Cronenberg's Scanners as a hybrid of espionage thriller and psychokinetic horror flick, has its charms, like crazy gore FX by Rick Baker and William Tuttle, an intense John Williams score, a villainous turn by John Cassavetes and the sight of one of the greatest pioneers of indie cinema exploding into several pieces, still my favorite movie ending ever.
