MovieChat Forums > American Zombie (2008) Discussion > *spoilers* Great movie - until the last ...

spoilers Great movie - until the last 25 minutes

posted 15 years ago by TheTrueMayhem
9 replies | jump to latest

Watching this movie, I was surprised by how sometimes it felt like I was watching a real documentary. I'd realize that the subject matter was zombies and I'd bounce back to reality. I loved how it made zombies out to be almost regular people, each with their own quirks and issues they dealt with, just like any other person. Also, they were not flesh eating zombies, prone to violence at the drop of a hat.

Suddenly Live Dead happens, and afterwards it seemed that the zombies in the community became violent for no reason. The crazy red head kills her neighbors and the weird cat-loving, scrapbooking girl goes straight for the throat without any provocation.

There is no hint in the movie that zombies were prone to this kind of behavior in the past. It is also said in the film that Live Dead had been happening for years, so I don't think it can be attributed to the event.

These last minutes of the movie really kind of ruined it for me. Anyone else feel the same?

[–] francis_taylor76 15 years ago

I don't know. I think there are some subtle and not so subtle hints as to these folks not being so "normal". Whether it's an odd, prolonged look they give or an aggressive or passive aggressive statement made in the movie, I kind of felt something strange or violent was coming.
You had the historian's photos of the older versions of "Live Dead" and there were some distrubing photos and detailed descriptions of what they were doing. There was enough foreshadowing about both "Live Dead" and some of the characters that could lead you to think something was amiss. Afterall, it is a mockumentary about the undead. Just my take.

[–] thecultofhorror 15 years ago

John (the documentary guy) was probing with certain questions that the zombies where avoiding, especiallly the activist guy. Especially when asked "are there zombies that eat humans?"

There was a slow intensity building up for the first hour of the film, The director definaltely illustrated that something was going to happen at Live Dead. There were also enough wierd moments at Live Dead to show that the zombies where hiding something from the public.

As for the red headed lady, she wasnt stable to begin with. What was in her closet? Her killing those guys on the drums wasnt out of her character range.

And the chinese girl attacking John, might have been the best scare of the film, I was waiting for something to happen like that and the way the scene was filmed was brilliant.

I think the movie as a whole was written, acted, editing and filmed brilliantly.

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[–] jbailla2 14 years ago

The red head lady was, like you said, crazy to begin with. She seemed mentally unstable during the interviews pre-Live Dead; once at Live Dead, nobody paid her or her art any attention, and she was left by herself during all the festivities. Afterwards, she was finally set off after the film crew admitted they hadn't been looking into her past and her dreams and she snapped. Earlier in the film she mentioned suicide would be so difficult because it was so hard to kill zombies.

As for the other woman, she tried so hard to be a normal human. She pretended like she wasn't a zombie, but she was obviously segregated at work as demonstrated by the break/lunch room. She was unstable herself as demonstrated by the multiple scrap books she had and how she instantly fell in love with someone she met for the first time. Her downfall began when he rejected her and she agreed to go to Living Dead. There, she belonged and participated in a zombie society she didn't know existed. Both other zombies mentioned something big happening in the future, and I wouldn't say it's too far off to think she was sort of brainwashed into the same line of thinking. John was kind of an *beep* to everyone about eating human flesh and injecting those blue vials at the beginning of th film, so she had reason to take out her aggression on him.

So as you can see, OP, there was clearly a long setup to what happened during the final 25 minutes. It's not in your face spoon feeding you, but it's there. I'm sorry you couldn't see it.

[–] solmaquina 14 years ago

Honestly, I think the last 25 minutes is what redeems this film. Up until that, it's just a fairly boring mockumentary with little happening and on a redundant topic. Then the (very clearly set up) conspiracy begins to unconver and we're left with a plot!

Really? Worst film you ever saw? Well, my next one will be better. Hello? Hello?

[–] sandifay62 14 years ago

Yeah, it was evident that the zombie activists were covering up a lot of bad zombie behaviour. Lol

I agree that the first have didn't push the scariness or since of danger far enough, but the last part felt like the beginnings of a pretty good zombie movie. I wish the first half was cut down and the last half was extended. I wanted to see the zombies rise up!

[–] Moondrop_C 13 years ago

Want to see zombies rise up? Watch Land of the Dead. I don't think this was meant to be a horror film. At least I don't think it started out that way. I liked it okay, including the beginning of the zombie revolt, because they'd been hinting at it, except for the way John was handled. That felt like the start of an episode of Law & Order: SVU.

[–] chrlpolk 12 years ago

The movie itself is a social commentary on the effects of stereotypes and social groupings.

What happened at Live Aid, and how much does our own bigotry play into what we assume happened? The fact is, we just don't know. Sure, they didn't give good responses to the questions afterwards, but why should they? It was supposed to be a zombies-only event, and the film crew invaded their privacy.

The crazy red head was actually trying to commit suicide-by-cop. She didn't fit in with the humans, she didn't fit in with the zombies, and the closing of the documentary made her feel all the more irrelevant. After she killed her neighbors, she begged Grace to ensure that she got the death penalty. That was her intent for the murders.

If you notice before the scrapbooking girl's attack, she was talking about how if she could just change one person's life. Well, she did! One might think it was John, but I believe she did it to change Grace's life. Grace's prejudices would forever be tempered, knowing her friend had been turned.

For me, personally, I found the Live Aid and the finale to be an astute observation of the self-fulfilled prophecies brought about through stereotyping.

[–] jenclark92 10 years ago

Earlier in the movie, one of the experts made a comment about the zombies producing some kind of salvia that spreads the virus and makes them want to procreate.
The girl who attacked John had said she wanted to have a baby. Maybe that was her desire to procreate. She finally realized she would never have a human family, so why not make a zombie?

[–] schwatime 12 years ago

Watching this movie, I was surprised by how sometimes it felt like I was watching a real documentary.

I can attest that you weren't the only one. The person I watched maybe the first half hour with just couldn't seem to understand that it wasn't a real documentary, even though I'd told him ahead of time that it was a fake documentary, and even after I painstakingly pointed out that if there was a virus loose in Los Angeles that reanimated dead folks, we'd surely have heard one hell of a lot about it in the news. Then he said he didn't want to watch any more of it because it made fun of retarded people (er, developmentally disabled, I mean).

I started thinking that the developmentally disabled person was in the same room with me. This is a guy who sat through all of Primer without understanding that it involved time travel.

I sure hope he never reads this. But the good news is that if he does, I figure there's a good chance he won't figure out that I'm talking about him!

About the violent aspect of the zombies, yeah, it's hard to believe that the news wouldn't have gotten out more, especially since even the high functioning zombies seemed, on average, to be a little slow. I thought the movie was going to inform us more about that after the expert mentioned the feral class of zombies, but that didn't happen.

*spoilers* Great movie - until the last 25 minutes

spoilers Great movie - until the last 25 minutes