Los niños no deben jugar con cosas muertas

Con esta película de zombis, los espectadores no deberían tener las expectativas demasiado altas. Bob Clark fue uno de los primeros seguidores de La noche de los muertos vivientes George A. Romero, y junto con el guionista Alan Ormsby (uno de los directores de la estupenda película de terror Trastornado (Deranged)), que también se reservó el papel principal, terminaron una comedia de terror relativamente poco memorable, sobre un grupo de actores teatrales que cumplen una especie de juramento perverso de valor en una isla desierta. Sin embargo, bajo la dirección del maníaco manipulador Alan (Ormsby), los «niños» titulares juegan con «cosas muertas» y despiertan a los cadáveres del cementerio adyacente. Pero no esperes un infierno zombi desde el principio, los cadáveres reanimados no aparecen hasta el último tercio de la película, hecho que molestará a gran parte del público del filme. Clark simplemente se tomó su tiempo antes de mostrar al espectador el giro que desea ominosamente. Aun así, disfruté de la primera mitad menos interesante de la película con su densa atmósfera, y lo que vino después fue bastante satisfactorio. (16.03.2019)

Bob Clark was one of the first directors to pick up the gauntlet thrown down by George Romero, who not only fundamentally transformed the canon of pop-culture zombie mythology, but mainly used the walking dead as a catalyst for social criticism. Clark focused primarily on the latter aspect, so rather than horror, he presents a biting satire in which the zombies appear at the end as a form of divine, or rather infernal intervention. Unfortunately, the rest of the film conversely focuses on a heavily thesis-based and stiff depiction of the dynamics within a group of hippie bon vivants. As such, Clark and Alan Ormsby’s screenplay presents a caustic picture of the hippie community in the era of its decline, revealing that the internal workings of that group are subject to the same social pressures and power struggles as in mainstream society. Besides naïve and crazy people, the group is also composed of cynics, materialists and manipulators, with a charismatic leader standing at the centre of everything, though he gradually proves to be not only a manipulator and egocentric, but mainly his own construct, desperately trying to build a cult of his own personality and whose flowery speech conceals his calculating nature and systematic efforts to hide his own insignificance and pitifulness. Unfortunately, everything said in the film is delivered in an extremely stiff manner. Perhaps thanks to that, on the other hand, the excellent staging and dramatic elements shine through even more, particularly the final sequence, during which even the corpses themselves seem to marvel at the central character’s spinelessness. (01.05.2014)