The Dead Hate the Living! (2000)

Let's be realistic.

Just perfect...

Brilliant and touching

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

1. Avoid all movies with exclamation marks in the title - you'll only be surprised in a baaaad way; 2. Avoid all movies which the director claims to have made to be deliberately bad: if he's lying, he's a bad director covering up and if he's telling the truth he must have all rights to direct surgically removed; 3. Avoid all movies which have as their sole premise the quotation, sorry that's "QUOTATION", with an elbow in the ribs, the fruits of others' honest endeavour; 4. Remember - just because it has 'living' and 'dead' in the title does not mean you will like it anyway even if it's cheesy as hell, with rubbish dialogue and skanky SFX; 5. Life is too short for such stuff.

"The Dead Hate the Living" is a really fun and entertaining zombie film.**SPOILERS**Inside an abandoned hospital, David Poe, (Eric Clawson) his sisters Shelly, (Wendy Speake) and Nina, (Kimberly Pullis) and crew Topaz, (Jamie Donahue) Paul, (Brett Beardslee) Eric, (Benjamin P. Morris) Marcus, (Rick Irwin) and Chas, (David Douglas) begin shooting their low-budget zombie movie inside. Scouring the place for some locations, they find a corpse buried inside a giant chamber, and decide to use them in the film. While shooting the scene, the chamber turns out to be a portal to Hell, and the corpse revives, bringing back a series of zombies from Hell to serve as his minions. The corpse, Dr. Eibon, (Matt Stephens) had used the hospital for his experiments with bringing the dead back to life, but had been overtaken by his subjects before finishing. Trapped inside the hospital with a growing legion of ghouls, they fight to survive before the zombies can turn the group into them to take over the world.The Good News: This is a rather fun and exciting zombie film. There's plenty of gore that, at times, comes off looking really impressive. One of the main zombie leads' head-wound makeup looked pretty hot, the zombies themselves were phenomenal, especially Maggot. There's a fair amount of gore here, including some decapitations, a disemboweling, a punch through a head, a torn out throat, and some chainsaw carnage as well as one of the best scenes. Upon being confronted by Maggot in a darkened hallway, he assumes it's just a make-up effect. Maggot punches a hole with his fist through the character's gut and rips out his intestines, killing him. He then proceeds to drag drags the dead man's corpse up a hallway out of the room by its entrails. That was a really gory moment and is hands-down the highlight of the whole film. The set design and lighting are two areas in particular that really stand out, both looking far more impressive than you'd expect from a low-budget production. Lurid greens and blues color many of the sets, evoking memories of the color scheme of prime-era Argento. Meanwhile, the sets themselves are equally impressive, they're dark and shadowy and look fairly authentic. It's clear that a lot of work went into the visual design of this film. Equally enjoyable is the fact that the fate of the characters paralleled their significance to the script. The one character meant to have their head ripped off was decapitated in real life. A featured zombie's final-look is strikingly similar to the make-up job that had been done on him. He also brings back to undead life the same one in the movie. The fact that this also contains a really fast-moving pace is quite nice, being just a really quick one which doesn't stop. As most of the real rampage comes at the second half, for a front-half that was bearable is a major plus. That rampage is also quite exciting. When the mass hordes erupt from underneath the movie set in front of the survivors like any other zombie film, this just gets really wild and pandemonium simply fills the screen. This is one of the better zombie films around.The Bad News: There isn't a lot wrong with, but what there is comes from the special effects. Even when one character truly became a zombie, the face looked like little more than spray-painted latex, as it's over one eye and a throat wound. Maybe they shouldn't have gone for that exposed skull bit. It threw the whole effect off kilter. The most unforgivable special effects took place due to the atrocious CGI inserted into it. The most obvious is when one of them sets the three main zombies on fire. The flames were obviously animated and don't even have the slightest hint of believability. A couple of later shots, where lightning from an electrical fire and later a gunshot wound which is screamingly fake. The fact that most of the zombie action does occur late in the film might be a source of complaint to some, but it's not an obvious flaw. Overall, this only has a few slight off-kilter aspects.The Final Verdict: With a lot to like and only a few small problems, this becomes one of the better zombie entries in the genre. While by no means one of the defining films, it's still got enough zombie action to give a fan a real good watch, while those not necessarily into the genre might exercise caution with it.Rated R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language

Maybe it's because I've seen too many overrated and disappointing wannabe-artistic horror titles lately, but I hugely enjoyed this low-budgeted zombie-splatter flick. "The Dead hate the Living" is unpretentious and enthusiast horror entertainment; obviously scripted and directed by a guy who's obsessed with gory genre classics from the past. By no means this will ever be regarded as a masterpiece but the makers probably couldn't care less about that! They all really wanted to make a movie that brings homage to their childhood favorites and you should try to look at it like this as well. The story handles about a clique of young horror rookies that break into an abandoned hospital to shoot their own independent movie. Naturally this ominous location hides a couple of dark secrets and, through a portal in the catacombs, zombies start to showing up. These living dead are led by a deranged doctor (looking an awful lot like Rob Zombie) who wishes to exterminate all forms of life ever since his beloved wife died of cancer. As you can tell, the plot is all but original and features every possible cliché this genre can suffer from. But if you're not being too skeptical, there's not a dull moment throughout the entire movie. The gore and splatter only kicks in 45 minutes into the movie, but even before this, the story is pure fun with an incredible amount of inside jokes and references towards the oeuvres of Fulci, Romero, Savini, Carpenter, Raimi and others. The digital effects are lousy, but the good old-fashioned gory make-up effects make up for them. We have torn off heads, severed limbs and ripped out intestines. Enjoy!

It's a shame that this film has such a low rating on IMDb because it really is quite an entertaining film if you are prepared to wait. The problem with this film is that it seems to take forever to actually get going which can be a problem with a lot of the cheaper horror films ( I think that dark power is the worst of those I've ever seen). But for a film with a low budget when it does get going the going is good okay so its not brilliant but you shouldn't really be expecting it to be. A good little horror film made on a low budget and if you have no patience at all just skip forward for the first half hour you'll still get some background info before the action starts.