The seemingly endless cycle of remaking classic films rolls on; this time the film being pillaged by modern film-makers is George Romero’s landmark Night of the Living Dead, originally shot in black and white on a shoestring budget in the late 60s and mixing solid, contemporary horror (right in modern society, not in some remote castle in a distant, backward land) with commentary on morality (notably it has been seen as a commentary on the then-contemporary Civil Rights movement in the US, with the lead black character). Now Zebediah de Soto wants to create Night of the Living Dead: Origins, which will be a 3-D CGI animated film using a new technique he and colleagues at New Golden Digital developed which, according to The Hollywood Reporter article, allow the makers to direct CG performances in much the same way as they would live actors. The “American style anime” as they describe it is aimed to be an updated version of the original (which was actually remade in colour several years ago by special effects god Tom Savini) in which they also plan to flesh out the character’s back stories more.
Normally I like more character development, but Night delivers dread in spades though a sense of claustraphobia; it needs to be tight and short to maintain that tension and going off on character back stories would dilute that, I would think. And while I love animation I’m wondering really what this is going to have in common with the original classic – will it really be an update of it or is it simply trading on a well-loved name (Romero is not involved)? As ever we’ll need to wait to see what the actual finished film looks like to work that out, although to be honest I have been less than impressed with recent remakes of other classic horrors.
(“They’re coming to get you, Barbara…” a scene from Romero’s original Night of the Living Dead)
September 17th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Oh good god no! The first remake was okay, the thirtieth anniversary remix was dreadful, the second remake looks pretty poor and let’s not start on the numerous Italian knock offs…
That said, bits of “Fear(s) of the dark” were pretty creepy, but I wait to be convinced it’ll work as a CGI cartoon that rises above the mediocre quality of Resident Evil cut scenes…