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THE DEAD NEXT DOOR
Written, Edited, Directed, and Produced by J.R. Bookwalter
Director of Photography - Michael Tolochiko Jr.Raimi - Peter Ferry
Dr. Moulsson - Bogdan Pecic
Mercer - Michael Grossi
Kuller - Jolie Jackunas
Richards - Scott Siegel
Reverend Jones - Robert KokaiJ.R. Bookwalter packs more chunkblowing punch in THE DEAD NEXT DOOR than any other zombie film in the last 15 years. That's a bold statement, especially when there are films like Peter Jackson's BRAIN DEAD that have come along since. J.R. might not have Jackson's visual panache, but he delivers the goods just the same, pound for blood-soaked pound.
Yeah, I know I'm heaping the praise on this one, and it might sound a bit thick, but for what it is, it's a pretty amazing movie. Although, my opinion wasn't always the same.
Me and my old college roommate, Marvin Sevilla, had just gotten rid of the third kid assigned to our dorm room. We knew there was a place in town that rented student productions and we just wanted to cut loose. The mullet we had just got rid of had a thing for playing Terminator 2 on an endless loop which gave us a serious jones for anything anti-Hollywood.
We picked up Paul Wagner's PRODIGIES and saw the box for THE DEAD NEXT DOOR sitting behind it. Raimi. Romero. Carpenter. That a pretty impressive list of names and the box had them all. I just had to rent it.
Marv and I didn't make it half way through before we through our Mountain Dew bottles at the television screen. Where were the production values that made DAY OF THE DEAD the sickening ooze-fest that it is? Where was the character development that made NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD a benchmark in American Cinema? Where were the balls-out scares that Raimi delivered with the EVIL DEAD?
They sure as hell weren't in this movie!
A week later I wouldn't be able to remember the movie's name.
Some years after that I discovered J.R.'s magazine, Alternative Cinema, and caught his release GALAXY OF THE DINOSAURS. That flick didn't do much for my newfound love of micro-budget cinema I was discovering through AC, but it did encourage me to hunt down more projects from this guy "Bookwalter." Not remembering where I heard the title "The Dead Next Door" from, I rented it.
I thought about writing AC and trying to get my rental fees reimbursed. Finally recognizing the film, I didn't even make it half as far as the first time.
Isn't it odd how people grow and their outlooks change? While watching the beginning scenes tonight, I was blown away be the shear epic scope. There were literally hundreds of Zombies running around, all dripping blood in full make up. In the first 10 minutes viewers will see what George Romero always intended DAY OF THE DEAD to be, an apocalyptic look at the breakdown of civilization after the world has been overrun by the walking dead.
As with DAY OF THE DEAD, it is soldiers who keep the few remaining feudal colonies alive. Experimenting with the walking corpses, it is the military doing all they can to find the cause and the cure for the zombie plague.
At the center of everything is the Zombie Squad, a sort of MP division whose soul purpose is to make sure the creatures don't get out of hand. When one of their own is bitten, the group must head to Akron, OH, the source of the plague, to find a cure. The members aren't anyone special, just everyday joes fortunate enough not to get bit. They have no special talents or abilities that give faux-character development. Nor do we ever see them mourn. The Zombie Squad are exterminators, as cold and lifeless as the zombies themselves, with no time to do anything other than their job.
The movie skips along at such a fast pace that it's hard to see there's enough action for two movies. Bookwalter rarely ever allows the movie to slow, he plows through the story with nothing plot-motivated and everything sensory motivated. Explosions, squirting blood, heads being run over, zombie's tearing flesh from victims, all providing the devout gorehound his ultimate wet dream. It's a movie made by a teenager for teenagers, giving them all the nasty delights a teenager can dream up..