AMC’s The Walking Dead is successful in part for its visceral presentation of a dystopian United States where calamity has not only brought the dead to life, but those dead have pretty much overrun the country.  Even more disturbing, our cast of characters has learned that all living people carry the virus that will make them zombies hungry for flesh after they die, and that only a post-zombification destruction of the brain can stop their lust for humans.

Still, zombies in The Walking Dead are slow, near catatonic (though, like me passing a Chick-fil-A, they get more animated when near a meal).  If you stay in an open space or avoid them in bunches, you should be fine.  These zombies are like the walking dead in George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978).  Don’t get in an elevator without knowing what’s on the other side of the door and you should be okay.

This is a trial for the show’s writers, who have to continually come up with scenarios where the protagonists and the zombies must come to close quarters (i.e., the group just wrangled with hundreds trying to clear them out from a prison that, if habitable, will be the perfect fortress).

No such problem for Zack Snyder’s (300, Watchmen) unappreciated remake of Romero’s film.  Nurse Sarah Polley and her husband wake up to see a little neighbor child at the foot of their bed.  Awww.  Sally is sleep walking again. Nope.  She’s a zombie and she’s fast and she strikes like lightning.

And away we go.  The zombies are like bullets, carbon copies of the victims of “the rage” in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later.  The decision is brilliant, because now, it becomes plausible that zombies actually took over the world (a ridiculous notion if, to become zombies, they had to die, and then get up and move about at the speed of latter years Andy Griffith).  A motley crew of survivors, including Polley, Vingh Rames as a cop, Mekhi Phifer as a hood, Jake Webber as the conscience, and an impressive Michael Kelly as the security guard who traverses from self-interested and greedy to semi-heroic, hole up in the mall.  All is well until they try and help a man they can see from their binoculars and it goes poorly, to say the least.  What follows is a harrowing escape from a their breached fortress.

First time director Snyder makes his mark at the outset with an introduction showing the breakdown of society as scored by Johnny Cash

It’s a helluva a ride and has numerous touches that elevate the material.  I’ll list three.  First, the film has the guts to show us what happens to a baby in the womb if that womb belongs to a zombie.  Second, it can be very funny, one such moment being target practice on the top of the mall that becomes a competition to shoot Burt Reynolds:

Third, it features my favorite zombie ever

Ty Burrell of Modern Family.

With Halloween nearing, and my son in eighth grade, the number of scary films appropriate for him to see is increasing, and he is chomping at the bit (he’s already secured a promise from me that I will take him to The Exorcist for its 40th anniversary next year).  I remembered 1408 as having been both scary and appropriate and so we watched it this weekend.  It is scary and appropriate, but on a second viewing, it is pretty weak tea,

The movie is based on a Stephen King short story, so naturally, the protagonist (John Cusack) is a writer, and not just any writer, but that certain writer whose first book was brilliant and serious and moving, but it just didn’t sell (how could “The Long Road Home” not sell?).  Cusack is James Caan in Misery, even down to the sole cigarette.  So now, embittered, Cusack writes a schlocky travelogue based on his visits to haunted hotels, inns and B&Bs.  Cusack is enticed by an anonymous invitation to spend the night in New York City’s The Dolphin Hotel, room 1408.  Despite the best efforts of its manager (Samuel L. Jackson) to dissuade him, Cusack insists, and soon, he is ensconced and psychologically assaulted.

The lead up is good stuff.  Cusack is convincingly cynical in his pooh poohing and Jackson is effectively ominous in his warnings.  Moreover, the plot is equipped with a nifty “in” to the room – Cusack’s agent (Tony Shalhoub) engaged lawyers to find a civl rights statute that prohibits a hotel from refusing to rent an available room.

But there are only so many holes that can be patched.  Cusack learns that there have been 56 deaths, both natural and unnatural, in Room 1408, and Jackson also informs him that recently, a maid went in the room and gouged her own eyes out.  Cusack doesn’t believe it, which is fine, but Jackson knows the room is a meat grinder.  How in the world could the room be made available to anyone under any circumstances?  The civil rights law wouldn’t override gutting the room, or making it a part of the hallway, or simply declaring it off limits to any renter.   And who needs to tidy up this room?

This is a failure of writing.  There are any number of ways around the “we have a haunted room but it is still available” conundrum, but first, you have to cut the body count down by 46 to make its availability to Cusack, even under threat of litigation, reasonable, and its availability to victims 15 and up plausible.

Once Cusack gets in the room, it becomes a decent fright fest, starting with a few slight tricks (chocolates on the pillow appearing magically, a creepy clock radio that only plays The Carpenters).  Ghost jumpers follow, then an unexplained slasher and soon, you name it, it happens.  The room plays on Cusack’s pain, and torments him, inevitably, with the memory of his dead daughter.

Cusack is excellent as a man fighting losing his mind, but without backstory, the movie becomes all about the visuals.  And those remain interesting only for so long.

Still, state senator Clay Davis from The Wire (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) steals the picture in his one scene as a reluctant air conditioning repairman.  So there’s that.

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit!