REVIEW: Planet Terror
Knowing how wacky and loony Robert Rodriguez can get, I’m not surprised that he wrote and directed this lovely piece of zombie mayhem. In fact, I’ll go further and say that this is probably one the best zombie homage that I have ever seen, with the exception of the classics. The tale is quit simple; accidental biogas is accidentally released and the people who are exposed to it turn into “sickos,” and its up to a group of strangers and enemies to band together and fight their way through it.
To get started, there is a lot of randomness in this movie, however, I think that the best random scene in this movie is the point were they are all in the bar and tension rises between two enemies and the film cuts out and the real is lost, then the real is found and put back together and everybody is friendly and the whole bar is burning. What the hell? I love that they added in that extra grindhouse feel to it. But the randomness is also accompanied with silliness. The humor in this film is greatly exaggerated and well done, and for the most part, this aspect lightens up the scariness this movie may have.
As I said before, it isn’t really scary as much as it can be gross, and that works pretty well in this film, especially given the genre.. In this film there are zombies but they are more than just zombies, they are horribly mutated zombies. The reason why this film seems so original to the zombie genre is because the dead in this film have large welts, tumors, cysts and puss pockets that gradually grow in size over time. I also enjoyed the excessive gore that was used in this film; people being torn apart, zombies eating brains, the most disgusting tongue horror that I have ever seen.
I do want to add my 2 cents in about the action. To start off, I think that this movie is the most ridiculous opera of action ever imaginable. Examples from the trailer are using a helicopter to chop the heads off of zombies (Dawn of the Dead?), using the rocket-launcher-leg to propel oneself into the air, using a pocket rocket to shoot zombies, it’s all great action-packed fun and it mixes well with the explosive comedy. I personally think that it ranks up with the Looney Toons style of action like Hot Fuzz and Shoot’em Up.
Overall, I think this movie is a good natured, old fashion zombie flick with a few Rodriguez twists and turns to it. It has pretty good acting, great gory action and ridiculous amount of unpredictability and zombie carnage. Hopefully this zombie flick will go down in history as one of the best zombie homage to the genre. This movie is just plain great! It even has a touch of Troma to it. I would also recommend this movie to those who enjoy zombie flicks as well as Romero flicks, I would go as far to recommend this one to black comedy fans and of course, Rodriguez fans. It’s just a great action packed comedy-horror film that really ignites any television or theater screen.
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