31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Land of the Dead

Land of the Dead

I feel like it's not really Halloween season if I don't watch a Romero zombie flick, but I'm rapidly running out of ones that I like. In fact, this is really the last one I'll probably watch for 31 Days. (I didn't much care for Diary of the Dead or Survival of the Dead.) Not to say that I was completely happy with Land of the Dead when it came out - in all honesty I was pretty disappointed.

And yet, I'm now hard pressed to say why. It may have had something to do with the release of the Dawn of the Dead remake the year previous . I enjoyed the hell out of that modernization, even if the film failed to make much use of Romero's deeper themes. I was, perhaps, expecting a little of that edge, that frenzied, more modern pace. Maybe I was expecting a bigger budget - and Land was Romero's only studio-produced Dead film - to create a bigger film than what we got. Maybe... ah, hell, it doesn't really matter. The bottom line is that I was disappointed - but I still liked the movie.

The Medium
I've got the "Unrated Director's Cut" DVD - just never got around to the blu-ray, and I'm not sure it's really necessary. The unrated version adds back in a few choice bits of gore - like a zombie ripping out someone's naval ring - but nothing that adds to the plot or backstory.

The Movie
Set several years after the events of the previous Dead films, the primary action takes place in and around Pittsburgh's "Golden Triangle" - a real feat, since it was shot in and around Toronto, Canada. Protected on two sides by rivers the city provides enough safety from the dead ('stenches' in this film - why does every zombie franchise have to use a different term?) to allow for civilization - of a sort - to reassert itself. The city has stratified into the haves and have-nots with the rich living in a luxury high-rise called Fiddler's Green and everyone else living in abandoned buildings, shacks and tents in your standard post-apocalyptic ghetto.

Top-drawer entertainment, however.

In a lot of ways Land of the Dead feels like an eighties film - a thematic cousin to movies like The Running Man, They Live and Robocop. Romero's always used his films as a way to talk about larger issues - consumer culture, urban alienation, societal nihilism - and with Land he's focused primarily on class struggle and wealth stratification, something those 80's films were also concerned about. It's also pretty simplistic in its concerns - the poor are good, the wealthy are bad, and those who attempt to elevate their station betray both their roots and their own survival. I've got no problem with the message - I just wish there had been a bit more subtlety. Of course when you've got Dennis Hopper as your big bad that may be asking for too much.

"Waterworld 2? Yeah, fuck it, why not."

The biggest addition to Romero's Dead cannon here is actually a logical continuation of Bub, from Day of the Dead. The zombies in this film are starting to remember who they use to be - and they spend much of their time acting out old habits and behaviors. An undead band struggles to carry a tune in the old bandstand, a long-dead couple still holds hands as they stagger around town, and Big Daddy, a former gas station attendant, shambles to the pump as if it was still working. In some ways it's almost an idealistic society - nobody wants, nobody struggles and best of all, nobody dies. Again, that is.

"Hey, Mr. Tambourine man..."

Except the zombie society and the human society end up in conflict. In order to maintain the human community, groups are sent out to raid surrounding towns for resources. Their leader is the clean-cut Riley (Simon Baker) - a man whose do-gooder nature is juuuust this side of saccharin. (I mean, he brings antibiotics for the preachers ill son.) His second in command is the more pragmatic - if not mercenary - Cholo (John Lequizamo), a man for whom death is part of the job description - as long as it's not his. We join the story on the night of Riley's last job. He's bugging out - leaving the rat race (and the rats) for the quieter climes of Canada. All he wants is for things to go smooth on his last job.

And of course it doesn't. Cholo isn't out getting food or medicine for the community - he's getting cigars and liquor for the guy who runs things, Kaufman (Hopper). His inattention leads to the death of a young man, which is bad, but the behavior of the group as a whole - running roughshod through the town, shooting zombies and setting fires - inspires the ire of Big Daddy. And this is one zombie you do not want to mess with.

Lequizamo's Cholo is actually my favorite character, primarily because he's the only one that shows any sort of complexity. I like Baker as an actor, but he's so straight-laced in this I'm surprised he's not wearing a white hat. Hopper is just as bad on the other side of things, but he hams up the sleazy CEO shtick so well I tend to cut him some slack. Cholo, on the other hand, is mercenary and self-centered and ambitious to a fault - but he also tries to help people (Kaufman's neighbor), inspires a twisted sort of devotion in his men, and is genuinely hurt that Kaufman doesn't consider him 'worthy' of the Green. He just wants to live the American dream, man!

*Insert Girl From Ipanema Muzak track here*

With his dreams of "movin' on up" quashed, Cholo steals a military truck called "Dead Reckoning" and threatens to shell Fiddler's Green with missiles unless he gets the money Kaufman owes him. (The whole idea that money still means anything in this wasteland is laughable - but hey.) Riley is drafted to take him out before he can do it - which Riley agrees to only to save his friends.

Meanwhile Big Daddy and his growing army of zombies moves steadily towards the bright lights across the river. And they're learning as they go.

Learning just how cold Lake Ontario is in the winter, primarily.

Things get apocalyptic, of course. It's a Romero zombie film. Though the zombies actually have a bit more agency in how things go down than is usual. (I expected more direct human screw-ups to be the cause of zombies getting in.)

The supporting characters are thin, but well handled by Asia Argento and Robert Joy. Eugene Clark as Big Daddy is also a standout - you don't often see outrage, grief or satisfaction in a zombie, but Clark manages it through an iconic makeup. He's no Bub, but he's still pretty good.

My main complaint about Land of the Dead is in how small everything feels. Even when they're shooting exteriors it all feels... claustrophobic. I don't feel the scope or sense of place - if it wasn't for the occasional establishing shot of the Pittsburgh skyline it could be anywhere. Maybe that's the point, though...

The Bottom Line
Out of the first series of Dead films (Diary serves a sort of re-boot to the series) this is my least favorite. I feels too small for the scope of the story and too broad in its message. There's still plenty to enjoy, however - it's a Romero zombie movie, after all.

Fear Flashback Friday: Day of the Dead (1985)

Day of the Dead (1985)

I have a confession to make: for the longest time this was my favorite Romero zombie movie. It was the first of his films I saw, which probably has something to do with it -though I'd definitely seen bits of Night and Dawn, probably through Fangoria. It came out when I was still in high school and video rentals were just getting going. The one movie theater in town had closed - not that they would have shown an unrated movie to begin with. While Evil Dead was the very first movie I rented, I think Day was in the very next batch of tapes.

I don't think it being the first was the only reason, though, as it remained my favorite of the bunch for a decade or more - long after I'd see the others. There was the gore, of course. The effects remain some of the most well-done of any horror movie - from 'Dr. Tongue' through the exposed brain to Rhode's disembowlment. Tom Savini is at his peak in Day and you can see his influence in every zombie productions since. (Particularly in The Walking Dead - special effects supervisor/co-executive producer Gerg Nicotero's first film was Day of the Dead, where he worked on both special effects and in front of the camera as Private Johnson.)   There was also the dark, introspective, almost nihilistic tone - particularly attractive to me as a depressive, introspective, and nihilistic teenager.

...down the halls of my local high school. Oh, wait, that's me.

But if I'm honest there's really only one reason why Day held the top spot in my affections for so long - and that reason is Bub.

The 80's had a lot of what I call 'character monsters.' In the 30's you had Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the Wolfman, Mummy, and others - protagonists as well as antagonists. In the 80's there was Jason and Michael and Freddy. Monsters that had their own agency - and fan followings. And there was Bub - a zombie, yes, but also a fully realized character who is also arguably one of the heroes of the movie. Out of all the 80's movie monsters, he was my favorite.

As I got older my tastes widened somewhat (though they remain relatively shallow), and Day has fallen out of favor. Night is now my favorite of the Romero films, followed by Dawn. I still love Bub, though. Even as I type this I've got the Amok Time Bub figure staring at me, his reward bucket at his side.

The Medium
I've got the two disk DVD (DiviMax) Anchor Bay release from 2003. It was an excellent release for the time - with a ton of extras, including two commentary tracks, hundreds of stills, a documentary and even a PDF of the 'first draft' script. It still looks very good for a DVD, but if you're thinking about picking the film up in HD, the new Scream Factory release seems to be the way to go, if only for the new feature length documentary. (It also includes the commentary tracks from the Anchor Bay release.)

The Movie
A woman wakes in a white, cinderblock room. On the far wall is a calendar with the month of October showing. All the days have been crossed off. It's October 31, Halloween. She approaches and holds her hand out to touch the picture, an idyllic presentation of a family in a sunny pumpkin patch. Suddenly numerous rotting hands burst through the wall to grasp at her. And she wakes again, this time she's in a helicopter flying low over what appears to be an abandoned coastal city. But appearances can be deceiving...

I want to make a 'watch the hands' joke here.

In some ways this is my favorite section of the movie. The opening bit with the white room/zombie hands is cool and startling, but it's the all-too brief exploration of the abandoned city that really sticks in my head. All those empty streets, the abandoned vehicles, the debris, the alligator. I think this was really the first time the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse was presented - so many films before and since are occupied  more with the apocalypse itself, rather than the results (though I'm sure there are exceptions). The Walking Dead has been great at following up on this, though - and the early episode scenes with Rick in the remains of Atlanta remind me of this sequence in Day.

Zombie apocalypse or San Francisco after the Giants won?

Of course the city isn't really abandoned - it just doesn't belong to the living any more. The new occupants respond to the sounds of people shouting over a megaphone and the dead spill out into the streets, looking for fresh meat. (Amongst these zombies is one of the greatest zombie effects on film - the so-called 'Dr. Tongue' zombie, who has apparently had his face blown away by a shotgun blast - his lower jaw almost gone, his tongue flicking about in the breeze. (I ran an All Flesh Must be Eaten game that included a jawless zombie - one character was gummed and the others almost shot him, thinking he'd been bit.)

Faced with the obvious - that there are no survivors in the city, or at least none that can respond - the helicopter leaves and returns to the military instillation that is their base of operations. It's an underground complex set in a old mine, a place where a ton of things, including boats and old government documents, are stored. This is where the movie settles down into its real story - about a military that wants control, scientists who want to understand, and two guys who want to just enjoy the last dying embers of a world that's already burnt to a crisp.

On the military side we have Captain Rhodes, a high strung commander with only the most tenuous hold on his men and his sanity. His second in command is Steel, a blowhard and a bully. A number of other soldiers round out the unit, including the barely-holding-it-together Miguel.

This is the least shouty picture of Rhodes I could find.

 For the scientists we have the extremely tough and capable Sarah (the woman we met earlier) and Fisher (played by John Amplas, who was also the title character in Romero's Martin). I'm... not exactly sure what it is they do, exactly - supposedly they're looking for whatever caused the outbreak of undead. The lead scientist is a man named Logan, though all the soldiers call him Frankenstein. I know what Logan does - he experiments on zombies. Sometimes he carves them up - there's a memorable scene in his lab that includes a brainstem still attached to a body and a zombie that literally spills its guts - and sometimes he trains them.

"And the good news is... well, there is no good news."

The third group is in some ways the most interesting, but is also the least active in the plot. John, the pilot, and Bill McDermott, the radio operator. They're outsiders both figuratively and literally - they even live outside the underground complex, instead setting up a homey trailer deep within the mine itself. While the other groups struggle to find meaning and reason in a world gone mad both John and Bill are just trying to get by - doing their jobs, but nothing more.

"Why is there no food on this plate, mon."

Most of the film is about the conflict between the soldiers and the scientists. Rhodes wants answers - really, what he wants is a solution to the problem they have, which is that the dead are coming back to life and civilization has gone down the toilet. The scientists are struggling with more basic questions - like HOW the dead are coming back to life and WHY. That is, except for Logan - who really is trying to figure out a solution, unfortunately his research requires a steady stream of 'subjects' from a corral of zombies the military keeps in the mine, and that leads to the inevitable collapse of structure and the deaths of (almost) everyone involved.

I actually skipped a group, and it's an egregious error on my part. The zombies themselves form a distinct fourth group, represented by the one zombie that Logan has managed to train - Bub. The other zombies do what zombies do, mill about aimlessly until a living brain ambles by and then they get real focused. Bub has regained some contact with what he used to be before he died. He tries to shave with a razor, read a book - he even listens to Beethoven with an expression of surprise and, maybe, joy on his face. Bub, in some ways, represents a hope for the future- the possibility of human experience living on beyond death.

Though you can tell he's not quite there because he's skipping to the end of the book.

All the other characters don't seem to represent anything but hopelessness, really. The military just want to shoot their way out of everything, a physical and military solution that has no chance of succeeding. But the scientists are just as deluded - they're looking for an answer where there may be none, assuming that answering a hypothetical WHY is more noble and useful than just trying to get on with HOW. And John and Bill are really the worst - though their point of view seems to be the one Romero favors. And that point of view seems to be "we fucked everything up and even if we didn't God hates us so let's just give up." The sum total of human civilization, achievement and history should be dumped and forgotten. Yeah, there's a lot of absolute crap saved away in deep places as if it should mean something, but there's a lot of good as well. Baby. Bathwater. Whatever man, let's just get high and have babies that we never teach about anything. (And how offensive is John as a character, looking back at it - a lazy, weed-smoking black man from Jamaica? )

As long as I'm aimlessly ranting, WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH THAT CLOWN?

Man, there's just something about this movie that provokes me to ramble about nothing - I guess because that's what most of the movie seems to be about, rambling about nothing. Luckily we get a lot of gory zombie-related goodness in between the shouty bits and an extended zombie assault on the base that provides some of the only comedy available in the film. Bub is awesome and Sherman Howard just kills with his performance - bringing more life and humanity to a zombie than most of the other human characters provide.

The Bottom Line
On one level Day of the Dead is a depressing shitstorm of violence, nihilism, pseudo-philosophical bullshit and indictments of both the military and science. On another it's a thoughtful, introspective look at what humanity means and what, if anything, is worth saving about it. And on yet another level it's a gory zombie romp with a fantastic zombie character and fantastic effects sequences.

I feel like I've been overly hard on Day while writing this - and the truth is it's only in the dissection of the film that I get annoyed with it. As a whole, I still very much enjoy the film - and Bub forever, man. Bub forever.

No, we salute YOU, Bub. We salute YOU.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Creepshow 1 & 2

It's catchup time! Monday and Tuesday nights movies were of a theme - Stephen King and George Romero collaborations. No Dark Half, though.

Creepshow

George Romero. Stephen King. EC Comics... well, in spirit, anyway. Creepshow was a staple of Halloween in my teens - one of those films that always got rented (if it was available, that is) around the 31st. It has a certain kind of ghoulish glee that I associate with a childhood love of monsters and horror movies. When horror was fun AND creepy. (One of the reasons I love Trick r Treat is that it seems to embrace that same level of love for Halloween.)

Back in 1982, when Creepshow was released, I hadn't actually seen any EC comics. I think they were out of print at the time, or only available via expensive hardcover reprints. Instead I associated the movie with the more palid horror comics that DC put out in the 70's - The Witching Hour, House of Secrets and House of Mystery. I loved those comics - the illustrated equivalent of a fire-side ghost story - and never realized that they were watered down by the Comics Code Authority until much later, when I finally got to see copies of Tales From the Crypt and Vault of Horror.

At one point I had the comic adaptation, illustrated by Bernie Wrightson, and I just about wore it out reading it. I wish I still had a copy, but it's disappeared in the intervening years - perhaps finally falling apart or maybe just lurking in a comic box in the basement, biding its time until it can lurch forth and... I dunno, give me a paper cut or something.

The Medium
I've got the Warner Brothers DVD release which has the widescreen on one side and a full screen version on the other (both written on a tiny black band around the center hole and impossible to read in dim light). The 'special features' are pretty much the trailer - I'm not calling 'interactive menus' and 'scene access' special. From what I understand the US Blu-ray release also only includes the trailer. I'd love to have some commentary, some featurettes on the creature/makeup design, info on the Berni Wrightson comic adaptation... ah well.

The Movie
I'm breaking this out by segment.

Prologue
Both the prologue and epilogue feature a boy named Billy and his parents. In the prologue Billy's getting a dressing down by his father for reading horror comics. After a fatherly slap across Billy's face the comics are thrown out. While a self-satisfied dad sits in his easy chair Billy sits upstairs, cursing his father. At the window appears The Creep from his horror comic, beckoning Billy to come closer...

The boy, if I remember correctly, is played by one of Stephen King's sons. Tom Atkins (The Fog, Halloween 3) is the dad.

"Father's Day"
This starts things of in typical EC comics style, with a wealthy family of degenerates and a family secret. Every Father's day the Granthams get together to remember their patriarch, a domineering and abusive man named Nathan Grhantham. The youngest of the group has a new husband, which conveniently allows for the rest of the family to tell him the tale of Nathan's murder - by his own daughter - many years before.

This is Aunt Bedelia, who arrives late and goes to the old man's grave to drink and curse at him for having her lover killed (the event that precipitated Grantham's murder). She spills her drink on the grave and, seemingly in response, Nathan rises from the ground and sets about killing people and asking - in a literally gravel-filled voice - for his Father's Day cake.

"120 years old and still go all my own teeth!"

This is actually my least favorite segment, but it's still loads of fun. Watching Ed Harris be the hick is a hoot, and the maggoty remains of Nathan Grantham are a memorable effect (as is the Father's Day cake he eventually makes for himself). The segment also establishes the visual theme for the entire movie - bright reds and blues with graphic backgrounds reminiscent of EC comics. Transitions and end sequences are often in actual comic book format and some scenes are even shown with a traditional comic book 'gutter' - the white area around each frame.

"The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verril"
A down-on-his-luck farmer sees a meteor crash on his property and goes to investigate. Dreams of selling it to the local college are dashed when he pours cold water on the steaming meteorite, cracking it. He puts the pieces in a bucket - after pouring the glowing contents of the hollow meteorite into the crater - and goes to have a beer and watch wrestling.

Soon he realizes that the fingers he used to touch the meteorite are turning green - growing fuzzy with something plant like. Over the course of the evening the growth gets worse - everywhere he's touched and been. "Not down there!" Oh yes, down there too. Outside, the cabin is becoming overgrown and plant life spreads in a circle out from the crater.

"Did I scratch my ass? Oh God...."

In a desperate attempt to alleviate the itching Jordy jumps into a tub full of water - but that's just what the green growth wants. In the end Jordy finds a way out, but given the weather report the rest of the world may not be so lucky.

Let's just say up front that acting is not one of Stephen King's strong suits. I've always had a soft spot for this segment, though. Watching it again this time I realized a chapter in my Monster War novel - where a lawn comes to life and tries to kill the heroes - is completely inspired by this segment. I didn't realize it at the time, but it's obvious looking at it now.

"Something to Tide You Over"
This segment could also be called "Leslie Nielsen, Super Asshole" - just like Day of the Animals.  A wealthy man finds out he's been cuckolded and takes revenge on his wife and her lover by burying them in the sand up to their necks and waiting for the tide to come in. He even watches the whole thing on remote video. Unfortunately for him, they come back. And it doesn't matter how long he can hold his breath.

"Do you have a few moments to talk about Dagon?"

This one is always fun. Nielsen is a ham sandwich of crazy, but it's fun to watch. Ted Dansen is more interesting as a water-logged corpse than he is as the lover. The makeup effects are great - particularly the spurt of dark water when the zombies are shot.

"The Crate"
A college custodian finds a crate under the stairs and calls a professor, Dexter Stanley, as it appears to be very old. When the two open the crate a monster inside attacks and kills the custodian. Stanly flees, running into a grad student who also ends up being killed by the monster. Even more distraught, Stanley flees to the house of his friend, fellow professor Henry Northrup.

Northrup, a mild-mannered man who is severely hen-pecked by his wife Billie, sees the crate and the monster as an opportunity to rid himself of his wife for good. He sets about cleaning the mess before luring his wife to the college, where the crate - and the monster - wait.

C'mon, that monster is awesome!

This has always been my favorite. I just love monster stories, and the thing in the crate is a great monster. Yeah, upon close look it's just a monkey with sharp teeth - but damn, it's effective. Hal Holbrook as Henry and Adrienne Barbeau as Wilma "Call me Billie" Northrup are pretty good, but Fritz Weaver is fantastic - one of the few times in a horror movie I've seen an adult male actor appear believably traumatized by the goings on.

Also, is it just me, or is this the basic plot for Relic? Just me? Okay then.

"They're Creeping Up on You"
A ruthless businessman, Upson Pratt, who's afraid of germs and bugs spends the night fighting cockroaches in his pristine, hermetically sealed apartment. When the power goes out because of a storm the insects invade in a flood and Pratt locks himself in his bedroom - which is no escape.

This one is always fun as well - unless you're afraid of cockroaches, in which case you might want to skip it. E. G. Marshall plays Pratt so over the top villainous that you're pretty happy when he finally gets his comeuppance. The effect of all those bugs bursting out of his body is a pretty gross.

He is SO not getting his deposit back.

Epilogue
A pair of garbage men - one played by Tom Savini - find the comic from the prologue still in the trash. They look it over and discover that an ad for a 'real' voodoo doll has already had the order form sent. Back in the house Billy jabs away at the voodoo doll as his father screams in pain.

The Bottom Line
Creepshow is always a good time. It's not the best work of either King or Romero, but it's got a sense of wicked fun to it that really captures the comics it's inspired by. As with those old EC comics there's a definite sense of old-testament revenge running through the segments, with bad people getting exactly what they deserve. (Except for poor Jordy, that is.) It doesn't bear a lot of scrutiny, but it's a fun movie to watch while the ghouls and goblins queue up for some candy.

---

Creepshow 2

Five years after the first Creepshow was a surprise hit at the box office we got Creepshow 2, with a screenplay by George Romero based on short stories by Stephen King.

I haven't actually watched Creepshow 2 since it was released. I didn't like it much, though I do remember croaking "thanks for the ride" to friends whenever they dropped me off. Though the segments were based on existing King stories and something I wanted to see, the general quality and tone of the film was significantly different from the original and had lost most of the 'wink wink, nudge nudge, aren't we having fun with this horrible stuff' aspect as well. It no longer felt like a labor of love - more like a budgetary decision.

The Medium
Creepshow 2 is available via Netflix streaming. The image is fine, but it's not really a movie that demands a high-def picture. In general the cinematography is just above TV movie quality - a disappointment, seeing as the director is the cinematographer from the first film.

The Movie
I'm breaking this out by segments again.

Framing Sequence
The animated sequence this time runs more of a story throughout the film. It follows a young boy named Billy (no relation to the kid from the first film) as he excitedly receives a new copy of the Creepshow comic from The Creep himself (played by Tom Savini). Over the course of the film he receives a venus flytrap in the mail (ordered through the Creepshow comic, natch), runs afoul of some bullies who crush his precious flytrap, kicks one of the bullies in the crotch and flees to a deserted clearing where the bullies are devoured by enormous flytraps. The animation is serviceable, if jerky, and has no real mood or atmosphere to it.

"Old Chief Woodenhead"
This is a terrible segment. It follows an elderly couple who own a general store in a dying town. They've got a wooden, cigar store type indian out front that they call Chief Woodenhead. The local Native American elder gives them a number of tribal valuables as collateral for debt the tribe owes the kindly store keepers. Later the nephew of the elder kills the couple in a botched robbery. Old Chief Woodenhead comes to life and wreaks vengeance on the killers.

Does no one else find this problematic?

This is really annoying on a number of levels, but it's also just not very good. The effects are okay, but there's more time spent waxing poetic about the bad guys' hair then in the stalking and killing. And I have no idea what to make of the whole Native American/White paternal figure/Spirt of Vengeance crap.

"The Raft"
Just FYI, in Maine such a device - a free-floating wooden platform for swimmers - is called a float.

Two young couples head fifty miles into the middle of nowhere to go swimming at a lake in October. Some kind of malevolent oil slick stalks them and kills them one by one.

"Guys I think I'm okay."

This is actually one of my favorite King short stories (though it suffers from Inappropriate Sexy Times in both the print and film versions). This adaptation is... okay. Actually, it's not bad. It's definitely the best of the bunch. It's pretty suspenseful at times and the effects are fairly well done when the creature is attacking. At all other times it looks like a dirty floating tarp. The only likeable character is killed first, which leaves us with jackasses for most of the segment - but they all go in bad ways, so I guess that's okay.

"The Hitch-Hiker"
Wealthy adultress creams a hitch-hiker. Said hitch-hiker then keeps appearing as she goes to greater and greater lengths to rid herself of him. Each time he appears (more and more damaged from her attempts to dislodge/kill him) he mutters "Thanks. Thanks for the ride, lady."

"I'm just going to Brewer - you can let me off at the exit."

This one is okay too. Not great, not good, but okay. The gore effects are well done and the only humor in three segments is found in this one, particularly with the repetition of "Thanks for the ride, lady."

The Bottom Line
There's no heart in this film. While the first one had fun with the concept - lighting and framing and even the general tone of the segments - this one is simply a straightforward horror anthology dressed up with some animation. And it's not even a particularly good anthology. I'd suggest watching "The Raft" and skipping the rest.