Earlier this year, the people at Wild Eye Releasing was nice enough to send me an advanced copy of Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated for me to review. The concept of it, remixing Romero’s classic, Night of the Living Dead with an epic number of different forms of animation, had me giddy and interested in seeing the final product. But unfortunately, when I started watching this concept unfold before me it wasn’t what I had in mind, and I’ll admit I was disappointed. Things were not very smooth as some of the art just didn’t work, didn’t mix well, or was just flat out bad. All things I pointed out while writing my review. That’s one thing I think separates me from a lot of other people, if I trash your movie I at least tell why I’m trashing it. I also like to try to find something nice to say about it even if overall I don’t care for it. The line “One of the most creatives messes I’ve ever seen” might not be the types of stuff you want tossed on the cover of your DVD cases, but for better or worse, when it came to Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated it was true. To ME, it was a mess..but, it was also creative.
You see after I posted my review things got a little out of hand, a little unprofessional. I found myself not just defending my review of a film I didn’t like, but I found myself now taking comments to heart and going out of my way to insult the person who said them even more, also the person this little spat went down with just so happened to be the man behind Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated, director Mike Schneider. Now with time passed I can’t change my review on the film or even the 3.5 out of 10 rating I gave it, but I can at least say I’ve grown to appreciate what Mike Schneider attempted a little bit more than I did. And I can also say I respect him a lot more for just trying something new, no matter on if I feel it worked or not.
I also think if anything else the DVD is worth owning, if for nothing more, the extras you get on it. Extras I didn’t see originally on my screener (However I did mention them as I knew they were there) but have since gotten to see for myself when MVD sent me a copy of the film a few weeks back. Most people don’t know this, but I’m a little weird when it comes to my stacking of DVDs I own and placing them on shelves. I like to keep things organized. Meaning, zombie films are together and Romero films and films related to his films are all together ect. Tonight I finally placed my copy of Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated right in line with all the others on that shelve. Something that I for what ever reason didn’t bother to do a few months back. I think it goes to show that as a reviewer, even if you don’t like a film, don’t disrespect it. After all, movies are like babies. Sure, the kid might be ugly or in some cases a pain in the ass, but the creators of said kid/movie still love them and we at times really need to understand that.
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