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The Reapers are the Angels (Reapers, #1)
Alden Bell | 2010
6
7.5 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
If you're going into this book thinking you'll find an action-packed, zombie-mauling good-time, you're in for a surprise. THE REAPERS ARE THE ANGELS is literary zombie fiction (yes, you read that right), although it's not too literary it feels pretentious and stuffy, but it's not a totally light read either. There's violence chock full of blood and gore, a semi-solitary road trip, and God. Does it work? Yeah, in a way. The book was serious but there wasn't much depth and it didn't impact me as much as it probably should have. The plot is basically an odyssey, in which many diverse characters appear and we see how the main character, Temple, relates with them. One of these struck me as odd and took me out of the story. Before, the book showed realism and grit, then it came to giant mutants and turned into a sci-fi horror show. Frankly, it was just weird and didn't correlate with the rest of the story. Temple was an interesting character who told the tale well but was a contradiction; she's illiterate but knows words that few people do. Since she's always lived with "meatskins" and has never known the world before, her background doesn't support this and I found it didn't fit with her character at all. I got her but didn't care about her.

Honestly, I don't have much feeling for this book, I liked it but that's all, and while it's a good read, it's not great. If you like a thinking zombie story with philosophy and a stream of Christianity running through it, although it's not too deep, than you just might enjoy this book.
  
Day of the Dead (1985)
Day of the Dead (1985)
1985 | Horror
9
8.4 (12 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Bub The Zombie (1 more)
Capt. Rhodes
Night, Dawn and Day: The Perfect Trilogy
Day of the Dead- is the final movie in George's trilogy. It started with Night, than Dawn and now Day. The perfect trilogy about surival, surviving, surival of the finest and the livng dead. With great charcters, excellent villians and of course the zombies. In this one you have, Bub the zombie and the evil Capt. Rhodies. So thats a plus.

The plot: Trapped in a missile silo, a small team of scientists, civilians and trigger-happy soldiers battle desperately to ensure the survival of the human race, but tension inside the base is reaching breaking-point, and the zombies are gathering outside.

Romero originally intended the film to be "the Gone with the Wind of zombie films. This forced Romero to scale back his story, rewriting the script and adjusting his original vision to fit the smaller budget.

A total of five scripts were written as Romero wrestled with the film's concepts and the budgetary constraints. The first draft was over 200 pages, which he later condensed to 122 pages. This is the true original script, and to date no copies of it have come to light. This version was likely rejected because UFDC felt it was too expensive for them to produce even with an R rating. Romero subsequently scaled down the scope of this script into a 165-page draft (often erroneously referred to as the original version), then condensed it again to a 104-page draft labeled the 'second version, second draft' in an unsuccessful final attempt to get the story within budget parameters. When this failed, he drastically altered the original story concept and ultimately produced a shooting draft that numbered only 88 pages.

Its a perfect ending for a excellent and phenomenal trilogy.
  
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)
2016 | Comedy, Horror, Romance
Unexpected and Inventive Mix of Drama and Zombie
Contains spoilers, click to show
This movie was surprisingly decent even with all the cheesy love drama and relationship plot mixed in from Pride and Prejudice. I liked the background for the alternate 19th century London and how it came to be full of zombies. I also really liked how the father of this family had his daughters train in Chinese martial arts and was more concerned with their immediate safety and how the mother was more concerned with them marrying. I was a little disappointed in how not all the sisters where featured prominently enough into the plot/story. I liked Lena Headey's character too but felt she was underutilized as well. The zombies in this movie were pretty unique. It said that they were zombies but they could still talk quite intelligently and also craved human brains and if they didn't eat brains then they wouldn't turn into full zombies. The full zombies were far more aggressive and faster. I also liked how the character Darcy was in charge of investigating possible zombie cases and wish they could have delved more into that part of the characters story. The action also surprised me for being a PG-13 movie there was quite a bit of blood and violence. There were some nice headshot scenes where the zombies heads were blown clean off their bodies. The fight scenes were pretty well choreographed and the girls kicked a lot more butt than most of the guys. Even the plot with the cheesy love triangle had me trying to guess which guy was going to get with which girl and kept the plot interesting enough inbetween the action. I give this movie a 6/10 and say it's an above average zombie movie.


  
Zombie Dice
Zombie Dice
2010 | Dice Game, Horror, Humor, Party Game, Zombie / Survivalist
The Strategy (2 more)
The Theme
5-15 minute rounds
Luck of the Dice (0 more)
Press Your Luck
Zombie Dice- is a excellent press your luck game. Its created by Steve Jackson Games. Which their made Munchkin, Chez Geek, Illuminati, and more. Zombie Dice is a excellent dice game, so let me explain more.

Gameplay: The gameplay of Zombie Dice is simple. The player has to shake a cup containing 13 dice and randomly select 3 of them without looking into the cup and then roll them. The faces of each die represent brains, shotgun blasts or "runners" with different colours containing a different distribution of faces (the 6 green dice have 3 brains, 1 shotgun and 2 runners, the 4 yellow dice have 2 of each and the 3 red dice have 1 brain, 3 shotguns and 2 runners). The object of the game is to roll 13 brains. If a player rolls 3 shotgun blasts their turn ends and they lose the brains they have accumulated so far that turn. It is possible for a player to roll 3 blasts in a single roll, but if only one or two blasts have been rolled the player will have to decide whether it is worth it to risk rolling again or "bank" the brains acquired so far and pass play to the next player. A "runner" is represented by feet and rolling a runner means that the player can roll that same dice if they choose to press their luck. A winner is determined if a player rolls 13 brains and all other players have taken at least one more turn without reaching 13 brains.

Its a excellent game and a must play if you havent already. Its fun, its easy and i love the theme of it. Thank you Steve Jackson Games.
  
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
2004 | Drama, Horror, Mystery
The 2004 remake of the hugely influential Dawn of the Dead retains some key elements from it 70s counterpart, but is essentially, its own separate thing (This doesn't really bother me, because truth be told, I'm not the biggest fan of the original...)
The iconic shopping mall setting remains, and like the OG film, it's the best character. The mall lends such a unique feel to a genre that is well trodden. The similarities essentially end there. This time around, the zombies themselves are fast, vicious, definitely a modern upgrade to Romero's classic slow moving bois. There are some decent action scenes throughout (the opening 10 minutes is genuinely fantastic) and doesn't skimp on the gory stuff. It's ticks all the right zombie boxes.
Unfortunately, this version is absolutely brimming with asshat characters that really drag the experience down. With the exception of Ving Rhames, the dude who owns the gun shop, and the dog (because dog), it's really difficult to give a flying shit about any of these walking horror clichés - I genuinely think this movie takes the gold for the characters-who-make-really-dumb-decisions-and-put-everyone-else-in-danger category.
What's worse is that just when you're about getting used to all of these douches, a whole bunch more are suddenly introduced at the half way point!

That being said, Dawn of the Dead is still a perfectly entertaining popcorn horror that will satiate zombie fans. It's unsurprisingly not-as-good as the original, but I fully respect that Snyder tried to do something different instead of going through the motions, even if that does mean it loses most of the subtext that runs beneath the original's surface. Worth it if anything, for the weird CGI zombie baby....
  
The Walking Dead
The Walking Dead
2010 | Drama, Horror
Starts brilliantly, but now starting to drag...
I love zombie films, so a zombie (or walker as the "z" word is never mentioned) tv show really appealed. And to begin with, The Walking Dead really impresses.

The first season is such a good debut, Andrew Lincoln does very well as Rick - can hardly believe it's Simon from Teachers. The visual and physical effects are fantastic and the walkers are truly scary. Character development over the initial few series too is very good and you come to care about a lot (and hate a lot) of them. The first maybe 5 series I can't really fault too much. There's dips, but it always come bouncing back with some shock deaths or interesting characters like the Governor.


The problem is with the last couple of series. Everything has become a bit too samey - meet a hostile group, become scared & abused by the group, people get killed and then Rick's group manages to overcome them. The walkers have pretty much taken a back seat. Personally I think they should try and end the series soon instead of dragging it out too far.