Runtime:
81 minutes
Release
Date: June 14, 2014
Rating:
NR
Director:
Alexandre O. Phillippe
I
occasionally get a bee in my bonnet and wind up watching a slew of
documentary films or adding a bunch of those films to my Netflix
queue. That ends with me telling my friends all these random facts
about serial killers, animals, health insurance, or some other random
topic. After watching Doc of the Dead, they can look forward to
hearing all about zombies in the coming days!
Doc of
the Dead opens with a scene of a zombie outbreak with Bruce Campbell
and Simon Pegg doing voiceover work. It then jumps right into a
detailed discussion of zombie movies and the zombie phenomenon. While
the description makes it seem like this is a documentary about the
history of the zombie movie, it doesn't really play out like that.
It's more a documentary about how zombies became so popular over the
years.
A good
portion of the documentary focuses on Night of the Living Dead with
George Romero himself talking about making the film. It then glosses
over some of the films that came later before hitting on Shaun of the
Dead. Romero even comments that it's his favorite zombie movie that
he didn't make himself. We also get to hear about how it might be the
second best zombie movie of all time and how it spoke to an entire
generation of people in the same way that Clerks did.
Look, I
love Shaun of the Dead, so much so that when my roommate revealed he
never saw it last year, I made a noise that sounded like a dying cat.
When I couldn't find my copy, I marches his ass to the used DVD
store, bought a copy, and made him watch it that same night. As much
as I love it, I don't know if it really spoke to a whole generation
of people. Maybe it's because I don't live in Britain, but I thought
it was just a sound movie that did a great job of mixing horror and
comedy.
Since
this film is all about zombies, we also have to hear a lot about The
Walking Dead. While I did like that they brought in the artists from
the comic book, it seemed like it jumped too fast from the comic book
to the show and everything that came later. If it weren't for the
artists, the show wouldn't exist, and I wanted to see more about the
comic. Then again, I missed the entire last season of the show and am
not the biggest fan of Fear the Walking Dead, so I may not be the
best judge for that segment.
Other
documentary films dedicated to the horror genre usually focus solely
on horror movies, but this one actually looked at other elements,
which I liked. We get to hear about the world famous zombie walk in
Denver and how it grew from less than 50 people in its first year to
more than 15,000 people today. Then we hear from the author of The
Zombie Survival Guide and what prompted him to write the book. We
even hear from the people making survival spaces for people concerned
with real life zombie outbreaks.
Doc of
the Dead wound up being more interesting than I expected, but it
expires from Netflix soon, so watch it fast!
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