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 f I had to guess, I would say that J.R. Bookwalter, the
auteur behind the no-budget zombie opus "The Dead Next Door", shot his
movie with a 8MM film camera. It looks grainy enough, dark enough, and has
enough incomprehensible visuals to be 8MM. Of course I could be wrong and the
film's bad images could just be the product of a faulty 16MM film camera in the
hands of an incompetent person. Either way, "Dead Next Door" is a big
disappointment, even for fans of low-budget Zombies Attack movies such as
myself.
Our epic opens with a plague of zombies taking over the
planet. Flash forward to 5 years later, and humans are still in control albeit
just barely. In an effort to contain the growing zombie population, "zombie
cops" drive around in station wagons (!) armed to the teeth. But strangely
enough, for a bunch of supposedly well-trained cops that have been battling
zombies for the last 5 years, our heroes prove to be rather incompetent. Before
the first 20 minutes are up, 3 zombie cops get bitten by zombies because of
actions that can only be defined as idiotic. You'd think that after 5 years
these guys would be smarter than this, but apparently not much of anything, or
anyone, in J.R. Bookwalter's world can be called smart -- the film included.
"Next Door" has quite a reputation in the realm
of Zombies Attack fandom. I've been hearing about the film ever since I became
aware of guys like Romero, Savini, and Fulci. Apparently Bookwalter, the
writer/director/everything of "Next Door" has seen all of the same
movies that I have. "Next Door" is chock full of questionable scenes
of local people playing zombies eating thinly disguised "flesh". And
that, I think, is the biggest problem with "Next Door" -- Bookwalter
spends so much time prepping the flesh-eating scenes that he forgets about the
rest. The blood spurting is well done (for a low-budget movie), but what about everything else?
Everything else includes: making the film viewable;
directing his zombie actors to have a uniform ability -- some hop, others walk,
and still other zombies sprint; and how about this, actually hire actors that
can act. Name calling the abysmal acting in "Next Door" seems a
bit harsh, now that I think about it, considering that the screenplay itself is
a hodgepodge of everything Romero had already done. Bookwalter throws in a plot
about a preacher name Jones halfway into the movie, but it's all for naught.
What it all comes down to is that J.R. Bookwalter is simply
not a very good writer. Although the direction sometimes shows promise -- that
is, unless you've seen a lot of movies, in which case you'll know that
Bookwalter doesn't invent any new camera angles or set-ups. Which is to say,
Bookwalter should stop making films, because the man just doesn't seem to have
the talent for it. He reminds me of the hero in "American
Movie" -- a midwestern fellow with a lot of passion for the craft of
moviemaking, but just no real talent for it.
I never thought I'd say this, but "Next Door"
makes the video opus "Meat
Market" look like a masterpiece. I think my readers know that I tend to
give low-budget films the benefit of the doubt, and when a filmmaker shows
creativity and originality I credit him/her for it. That said, I can safely
state, without hesitation, that "The Dead Next Door" is an unmitigated
disaster with laughable acting, incompetent execution, miserably writing, and
last but certainly not least, a perfectly bad way to waste 70 minutes of my
life.
Don't believe the hype. "The Dead Next Door" is
dead on arrival.
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