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2024 MOVIE LIST
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I watched Cemetery Man (1994)
Scrolling through the cult classic section of Tubi, I realized I'd never seen this one., despite always wanting to.....well, I didn't love it.
A zombie killing cemetery worker wants more out of life.
Director Michele Soavi is an Italian filmmaker, known best to me for his films "The Church", "The Sect", and "Deliria-AKA: Stage Fright". Being an Italian Horror filmmaker, Soavi leans heavily toward spooky visuals, dreamy romantic atmosphere, and gore. Something I love about him and other Italian horror filmmakers like Lucio Fulci, Mario and Lamberto Bava, Joe D'Amato, and to a lesser extent, Dario Argento. (Dario knows what he did)
Cemetery Man tosses humor into the horror and atmosphere, offering something with a lot of quirkiness. I hate using the term 'off-beat', but I'm afraid I have no other choice. The humor here adds an element of lightness, which when combined with the horror and spooky stylization, creates more of a fantasy film vibe.
However, the humor doesn't exactly offer the belly laughs you get with a film like"Shaun Of The Dead". I smirked a few times, but overall the movie was a little leaden. I found myself expecting a fun ride, but got something that felt like it wasn't going anywhere. The action would start and stop and the story felt jumbled. I got bored to the point that I regretted starting the movie in the first place. Sure, I liked some of the cheesy gore and zombie effects. I liked the idea of the film. I liked the overall tone in a lot of spots. But, I felt like I was reading a page in a book, getting distracted and re-reading that same page again and again.
A film like "Brain Dead-AKA: Dead Alive" continuously builds up, ridiculous moment after ridiculous moment. The story has structure, a villain is set up, a hero follows an arc and grows. There is excitement and there are wild moments that all lead up to a final confrontation. While "Cemetery Man" has some of these parts, it doesn't combine them correctly into a whole. Making for a movie that fell really flat for me.
Give it a shot of you want, as it does seem to be popular among a small fan-base, so maybe it will work for you. I just don't think it's many styles end up cohering and the same goes for its story.