The Glorious Dead is a bleak, mean-spirited film that asks; What if the end times started as just a regular day?
The Adams Family returns to Fantastic Fest! This time, they bring us the apocalypse as it reigns down on a grieving sheriff and the rest of the residents of a small, snow choked town.
Right at the top; The Glorious Dead is a bit of a slow burn. We spend a good chunk of the 80 minute runtime driving alongside sheriff Deb (Toby Poser), as she does her rounds around town, doing wellness checks and trying to determine when the power is going to be restored to her small hamlet. It is deliberate in its pace, revealing only so much as it goes, never really allowing for a full picture of what is happening beyond the most recent task the sheriff is up to.
But, it is in this slow turning of the wheel that the dread of this really starts to set in; something isn’t right about the world of The Glorious Dead, but all we have to go on is missing people and animals, a few scattered sightings of a…thing in the woods, and the continued findings of holes filled with blood and gore, which the film affectionately call “bloody assholes”.
Soon, though, the activity around town starts to pick up; namely, the dead begin to rise. Not in a classical zombie way, but in a quiet, almost pathetic way, as they can do no more than stand in place, their face slackjawed and their vision either vacant or pleading. These are not the horrors of the shambling dead, but the horror of the emptiness of death.
The Glorious Dead shifts in its final reel, as we are introduced to the full scale of what is occurring, and the hopelessness of everyone’s situation. It’s both the escalation to this point, as well as the shift into an accepted oblivion, that this really felt like a Romero film. That same sort of small town bleakness and hopelessness that Romero so perfectly illustrated in films like The Crazies, Knightrider, The Amusement Park, Martin, and the Dead films is very much alive in the Adams work, the filmmaking team being able to mine that same sort of blue collar malaise and helplessness here.
The Glorious Dead won’t be for everyone. It is a micro budget slow burn that is filled with non-actors and more than a few seam-showing effects. But, for those who can appreciate a piece of art for its ambition and narrative, and overlook the limitations of a shoe-string production, this is an incredibly bleak and unique take on the end times. Also, one hell of a final shot, as well!
