Movie Night 4 – 'The Laziest of Lazy Days...'

I've had the whole day to myself today and it was glorious. Apart from a couple of brief intervals (for a very late breakfast and to take the Christmas decorations down) I've been in bed all day and it seemed like the best time to catch up on a couple of movies that I've really wanted to watch for a while.

What were they? Read on and find out, dear reader...

'Boar' (2017)

In the harsh, yet beautiful Australian outback lives a beast, an animal of staggering size, with a ruthless, driving need for blood and destruction. It cares for none, defends its territory with brutal force, and kills with a raw, animalistic savagery unlike any have seen before.

Spoiler, it's a boar... Seriously though, if the title has already given the game away then there's no need to be coy in the blurb. But anyway...

I thought this was going to be another 'giant animal scary movie', like others that I've mentioned here, but 'Boar' was surprisingly enjoyable and not just in the 'god, the CGI is awful kind of way' (which it was at times but the rest of it was good, I thought). The pacing was shot to pieces (apparently what a horror film really needs is people just standing around talking to each other for large chunks of the film...) but when it actualy decided to try, 'Boar' had a good mix of tense moments and gory deaths that kept me watching. Good fun then but shame about the bit right at the end where they're clearly leaving things open for a sequel...

'The Dead Don't Die' (2019)

In the sleepy small town of Centerville, something is not quite right. The moon hangs large and low in the sky, the hours of daylight are becoming unpredictable, and animals are beginning to exhibit unusual behaviors. News reports are scary, and scientists are concerned, but no one foresees the strangest and most dangerous repercussion that will soon start plaguing Centerville: the dead rise from their graves and feast on the living, and the citizens must battle to survive.

An awesome sounding title with a cast that any other zombie film would die (and then reanimate, naturally) to have. Why was I so disappointed then...?

Well, it just wasn't that funny; far, far too deadpan and dry to raise any kind of laugh from me at all (and I'm normally all about a bit of dry humour). Bill Murray was ok but Adam Driver trying to 'out Bill Murray' Billy Murray was just too much. And the bits where the fourth wall was broken were just painful, sorry but they were.

If this wasn't bad enough, 'The Dead Don't Die' wasn't particularly scary either. And if that wasn't bad enough you've got characters signposted as being important who are then either killed off quickly or just ushered out of the plot with no real clue as to why they were there in the first place.

It's me so it's entirely likely that I missed the entire point of 'The Dead Don't Die'. If I have missed it, can anyone explain it to me? Oh well, back to the books...