Writer: Bookwalter
Starring: Pete Ferry, Bogdan Pecic, Michael Grossi, and Jolie Jackunas
For whatever reason, J.R. Bookwalter's The Dead Next Door was a mild obsession for me when I was still in high school, and that was before I'd ever even seen it. All I remember was that I was going through a zombie-movie phase (this was back in the late 90s or early 2000s, a few years before Hollywood got hold of the undead and ruined them forever), and would constantly visit the official website in my ninth grade keyboarding class. I honestly don't even remember how I initially heard about it, but I was a wannabe amateur filmmaker at the time, and so it wouldn't surprise me if I took to it because of its humble origins, as well as its ties to my home state.
The Dead Next Door was produced over the span of four years (also the timeframe it took for Peter Jackson to make Bad Taste) in Akron, OH, which is about two hours northeast of Columbus, the state capital and also the city in which I was born. It is known as one of the most expensive home movies ever made, a title it received because it was shot on Super 8 cameras, which were strictly consumer-grade, with director Bookwalter estimating that the total budget was a whopping $125,000 (a high figure, no doubt, but also kind of misleading, as it was raised in small increments over that entire span, so he never had more than a few thousand to work with at any given time). But what it lacked in financial resources, it made up for in sheer ambition: the film features an incredible 1,500 Ohio residents playing the part of zombies. That's pretty epic for what amounts to little more than an amateur film.
It also has some pretty great special effects, but the two footnotes to this claim are: 1.) it also features some terrible special effects, and 2.) a majority of the better ones are used up within the first thirty minutes, meaning there's a dwindling amount of reasons to keep watching as the minute count goes up. However, it's still amazing to see what Bookwalter was able to do with such a subpar video format, as well as very limited resources—some of the effects, especially the neck bites, still look impressive even today, and were pulled off by a special effects team with no notable names (at least none that I recognize).
Well when you're working with a shortage of resources, there has to be a trade-off somewhere; in other words, for every area that excels, chances are there will be more that suffer. In the case of The Dead Next Door, it's everything else. I had always had fond memories of this movie (which I bought on VHS when it was released) thanks to the copious amounts of bloodshed, and vaguely remembered the acting was bad, but I didn't remember just how shoddy all the other areas are: the story is rambling and pointless, biting off more than it can chew; “bad” doesn't even begin to describe the performances, which were worse than I remember, and range from terrible to positively atrocious; and no time or effort went into developing any of the film's many characters—even most of their names are simply plucked from the last names of popular horror film directors (Raimi, Commander Carpenter...you get the point).
I do feel kinda crass rating this on the same level as a polished feature; it's like trying an immature 12-year-old as an adult for a crime that he didn't even commit. But a bad movie is a bad movie no matter how it looks, or how epic the production might have been, or how ambitious the original idea was; and let's be honest here, The Dead Next Door is a godawful film. When blood isn't spurting, when the movie actually starts to believe that the story it's presenting us is one that's actually worth presenting, it's almost terminally-boring. Seen through these eyes—that even if the budget was tripled, or quadrupled, it still more than likely would have sucked—certainly makes me feel like less of an ass.
If this were a straightforward zombie film, where most of the budget was spent on the blood and gore effects (all of the “actors” worked for a deferred salary) we might have been on to something; for the first thirty-or-so minutes, that's essentially what we get, as members of the local “Zombie Squad” drive around, and attempt to thwart zombie attacks on the living. The leader of the gang is Raimi (Sam, the real-life namesake and director of the Evil Dead trilogy, was also the film's main financier, using his compensation for Evil Dead 2 to fund this one), who is supposed to be a no-nonsense tough guy, though his acting makes it hard to tell for sure. The other “ground members” are Mercer, Kuller, and Richards—during a routine call, Richards ends up getting bit, and so the crew is suddenly down to three.
There are other members of the squad: the scientists that are hard at work trying to figure out a way to kill the zombies. See, the undead here are rather unique in that: a.) they can run, and b.) they are impossible to kill. Now, “unique” here is used as a synonym for “uncommon”, because, like many facets of the film, it's an idea lifted directly out of another zombie feature: in this case, Return of the Living Dead. Still, it's a fascinating decision that gives Bookwalter and Co. the opportunity to try some pretty advanced effects; as I alluded to earlier, they don't always look convincing, but got to give them some points for trying. So the scientists, lead by Dr. Moulson, finally create a serum that speeds up the zombies' decomposition process, thus effectively killing them within a couple of hours.
Now here's where things really start to go a little overboard: Mercer is bitten and is used as a test subject for the new serum by Moulson. The problem is, Mercer isn't quite dead yet, so instead of decomposing him, it turns him into some sort of vengeance-seeking super-zombie; he can't run like the rest, but he can speak. This is a decision that once again bears problems for the production, because his voice is so low that it's often impossible to decipher his words, at least without cranking up the volume, which we never bothered to do. On top of this, there is a cult, lead by a Reverend Jones, who believes that the zombie invasion is God's will, and they will stop at nothing to put a stop to those, like the Zombie Squad, who are attempting to get rid of them. Even within this convoluted framework (another thing to keep in mind: all of this has to play out within a scant 78-minute duration), there are other subplots, like the paternity of one of the cultists, and frequent mention of a Dr. Bo, who created the zombie virus for reasons unknown, before being killed by his very creations.
It's all a hodge-podge of half-baked ideas, which is really what does the film in: not enough time is spent focusing on any of the major plot points, meaning the story just feels like an improvised, careless mess. Add this into the myriad of other problems that I have mentioned, and that means large portions of The Dead Next Door are dull. If it would have had the presence of mind to at least lessen its grand visions in one category, it would have been, at the very least, a serviceable film. Unfortunately, sometimes less really is more, and in the case of The Dead Next Door, more is unequivocally infinitesimal.
RATING: 3/10
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