Feed the Trolls!

I’m a firm believer that one should never feed trolls, but the other day I received this lovely comment out of the blue. It was based on my review of 28 Weeks Later.

I cannot beleive you gave this beautiful movie 2/5 and you give Day of the Dead 2008 the same mark
Your a crackhead.
Anonymous

Interestingly, this is the first time I’ve received this sort of feedback and, truthfully, the troll amused me. In the interest of full disclosure, here’s my response:

Dear anonymous,
Ahhhh! The anonimity of the internet... it gives voice to all the myriad morons who somehow think their voice is important! Next time, be less of a coward and sign your name. And, while you're at it, maybe you can use the crackling, weakly firing neurons in that vast empty space between your ears to formulate an actual literate sentence... one that explains why you think 28 Weeks Later was a better movie. Until then - fuck off, coward.

Oh! And let me help you here... it's spelled 'believe' not 'beleive', and 'you're' is the proper contraction for 'you are' -- not 'your'. Normally I'm not a grammar Nazi, but your extreme idiocy has grated upon my grammatical nerves.
Please do us all a favor; go back to your kiddie porn sites, spank one out to some poor exploited Malaysian kid, and let the adults continue their conversation.
xoxo,
Dr. Z

The thing is, this has kind of been on my mind for the last few days. No, not the grunting and atavistic monkey-sounds the Anon left. His abhorrent stupidity is inconsequential; what’s been on my mind is that I’ve never really explained what I base my movie ratings on.

The thing is – it’s a wholly subjective criteria. My comment to Anony-dork was true to the extent that the Internet has given voice to the multitudes, no matter how painfully dumb they may be. And that applies to me as well. My opinions are my opinions, and my voice should carry no more weight than that of any of the other bazillion web denizens who are screaming raucously into the ether void.
And I can’t tell you that I have a checklist I run through whenever I watch a movie for review. I don’t have a magical or logical scale that assigns a statistically sound rating to any movie I review.

Seriously. I don’t. I’m not smart enough to do anything like that. I’m just a dork with most of an English degree that just happens to have an unnatural love for horror movies.

What I can tell you is that I rate every movie based on my own criteria. For instance, in the case of 28 Weeks Later, I judged that movie based solely upon my expectations. Now – Mrs. Zombie will be the first to tell you that I am notoriously hard on sequels – but I feel very strongly that a sequel should build on the original. Otherwise – don’t fucking bother (that’s right AVP and AVP: Requiem – I’m looking at you!).

With 28 Weeks Later – it received the rating it did because it was very much a disjointed, predictable, action flick. It lacked the brilliance and horror of the original. It foreswore a great idea for an action movie with thinly veiled anti-American sentiment. It received the rating because it was a sub par movie.

It’s not to say it didn’t have its high points… it was visually stunning and the intro was fucking awesome. But the highs were far outnumbered by the lows.
Day of the Dead 2008, on the other hand, received the rating it did because it sucked through and through. I was not expecting much from it, and it didn’t disappoint. It was a big bag of crap. 28 Weeks was just a disappointment.

The reviews are independent of one another.

So – what am I saying? Well the key is to realize that I write my reviews with the hope that I can make a difference to someone who is on the fence. I understand that there will be those that disagree (like Anonymous – bless his poor, retarded heart) and I welcome their disagreement. I also fancy myself something of an expert on the genre of zombie flicks – so I think I have a grasp on it. Or at least I hope.

And Anonymous? I know Anonymous – and you are no Anonymous.