A World on Fire - A Zombie Blog

Zombie master George Romero decided to take another stab at the genre he so inpired back in the sixties.  Romero has always been a treat to watch because in each of his movies, the undead were really metaphors for some aspect of society.  With Night of the Living Dead, he made some sharp depictions of race rights and civil rights.  With Dawn of the Dead, zombies became the targets of consumerism.  Day of the Dead took on military complex and Land of the Dead was all about social classes.

In this movie he tries to make a commentary on the new media … bloggers, youtube, the web in general.  His primary critique is that with so many new sources, the “truth” of an event is lost, providing confusion as opposed to information.  Romero was in his late sixties when he made this movie (quite an accomplished) but I hate to say, his age really shows.  He clearly comes from a time when the media was controlled by networks where information could be managed.  The subtext in his statement is without a power structure to filter our news, there might as well be no news.

In any case, the movie could have been a good one had he not tried to do the whole movie within a movie thing.  Also, his money would have been better spent in a few locations as opposed to the dozens.  Most of the time, the sets looks bare for money reasons as opposed to any apocolypse.  Still the first five minutes show a focused Romero.  Had he made that film instead of the fake documentary, it would have been quite a swan song for a gifted filmmaker and writer.  Instead, its late night movie material.