Couldn’t sleep (probably because of the two-hour long nap I took this afternoon), so I decided to watch one more movie to tire myself out. Went with City of the Living Dead on Kanopy.
Director Lucio Fulci famously loved Dawn of the Dead so much that he produced a number of unofficial sequels (Italian copyright laws being notoriously lax at the time), but despite its title, this supernaturally-flavored zombie thriller owes more to Howard P. Lovecraft than George A. Romero. There’s enough blood and guts on display to satisfy most gorehounds, but the real horror lies in the film’s relentlessly bleak atmosphere: with the gates of Hell gaping open and the sleepy town of Dunwich overrun by murderous ghouls, the fate of the world rests on the shoulders of… a journalist, a psychiatrist, and a clairvoyant. Our heroes are basically doomed from the start, and the pervasive sense of dread that hangs over the narrative helps to compensate for the lackluster plotting and characterization.
[Originally written October 14, 2018.]