Festival of the Living Dead review.
Just because you can…doesn’t mean you should.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Festival of the Living Dead
Directed by Jen and Sylvia Soska
Written by Miriam Lyapin and Helen Marsh
Starring Ashley Moore, Camren Bicondova, Keana Lyn Bastidas, Maia Jae Bastidas, Andre Anthony and Gage Marsh
Festival of the Living Dead Review
In some ways it’s fitting that Festival of the Living Dead arrived on Tubi the same day that The First Omen hit theaters. The latter is a lovingly crafted prequel that aims to pay reverence to and add to the mythos of a classic horror film. Fitting seamlessly into a world built by artists doing great, lasting work. That legacy prequel is bound by rules. Certain things must happen because its events transpire prior to the story it is attached to. Positioning itself as a sequel to George A. Romero’s masterpiece, Night of the Living Dead, Festival of the Dead has no such restraints. It also has none of the love, craft, or reverence.
Simply put…Festival of the Living Dead doesn’t care about what Romero was doing in 1968. It’s just a name that can be riffed on. A story that can provide a backstory, so they didn’t have to write one. It uses clips from the public domain classic in its opening montage and presents a main character who is a descendant of the original’s Ben (Duane Jones). Ash (Ashley Moore) even has Ben’s rifle from his time trapped inside the farmhouse. How she has this…who knows. Festival isn’t interested in Night of the Living Dead.
It’s Ash’s birthday and she wants to go to a music festival as a last hurrah before she begins college at Harvard. Unfortunately, she’s stuck babysitting her little brother Luke. Some parents she has. She dumps the kid into the care of Iris (Camren Bicondova), her oldest friend. There is a large supporting cast here…which means you shouldn’t expect any character work beyond the surface. It does, however, provide a nice collection of zombie fodder. The main characters to care about are Ash, Iris, and Luke. To their credit, the cast does a fine job trying to make that happen with very little help from the script.
The rest are mostly expendable. Ash’s boyfriend Kevin and Iris’s friend who wants to be more Blaise get some shine. Ty (Andre Anthony) turns out to be the human villain of the piece. He’s good here too…again with little help. By good…I mean Ty a terrible person and Anthony is good at playing him. He presents the only truly threatening obstacle the group has to deal with. There are zombies, of course…but they aren’t good ones. They manage to get their bites in…but mostly you see them wandering around the background even as gunfire should be attracting them to the front.
Look, Festival of the Living Dead isn’t the first knockoff sequel to drag Romero’s good name through the mud. It’s just the latest one. Before long it won’t even have that going for it. Romero, of course, made six Living Dead movies. The first two are masterpieces…quality declined from there. But, the father of the zombie film, always had something to say about the world when he made these films. It’s most famous offshoot series, Return of the Living Dead, aimed to be an entertaining take on the zombie mythos. There are also a ton of unauthorized sequels…most of which are low quality attempts to cash in on the name. Festival of the Living Dead falls firmly into the last camp.
This is a movie with nothing to say. About society, about the genre, about the movie it is supposedly a sequel to. It’s barely even about zombies at a festival. We do, eventually, get to a music festival. This world’s take on Burning Man complete with a large wooden man to burn. Well…Burning Man if 30 to 40 people attended it, at least. This is a movie that isn’t thought provoking, scary, or fun.
The one thing it has going for it is a cast punching far above the screenplay. There are some good performances here in a story that, frankly, doesn’t deserve them. Bicondova’s Iris is a bad ass. Easily the most entertaining part of the movie. She’s brave when the situation demands it…but also carries fears and doubts along with her. Anthony plays a good guy you love to hate. Moore acquits herself well given a character that the script goes out of its way to make unlikable more than once. Her natural likability shines through the mess and allows Ash to be a character you can follow.
About halfway through Festival of the Dead the group locks themselves inside an abandoned house with the dead surrounding them. This, I though, is the opportunity to for Festival to do something…anything…with its insistence on being a sequel to Night of the Living Dead. Perhaps a modern take on the paranoia and tension of the original. Maybe a comment on the evolution of the genre since then. It doesn’t do anything. Their time there is brief. While it does give us some of that fear and paranoia…it has nothing to say about it. Nothing you haven’t seen dozens of times before.
There was reason to believe that Festival of the Living Dead would offer something more. It’s helmed by the Soska Sisters (American Mary). They have a fine track record of watchable, entertaining independent horror movies. They can’t do anything with Festival of the Living Dead. Well…they can cast it really well and get solid work out of the cast. But there was no salvaging a script that never rises beyond “zombies at a music festival…sometimes”.
Scare Value
Festival of the Living Dead is somehow made worse by its forced connection to Romero’s original. Not because that comes with expectations…those died off several knockoff sequels ago. Because this is a movie with nothing new to offer. Romero’s series had something to say. Festival isn’t saying anything. If it wasn’t for a surprisingly strong cast…there wouldn’t be anything here at all. Yes, you too can make your own legacy sequel to Night of the Living Dead. Please try to have a purpose before doing so.
1.5/5
Festival of the Living Dead Link
Streaming on Tubi
