Zombie (1979)

Boring zombie outbreak movie with a voodoo twist that cannot find a story to justify the great zombie death scenes. The plot starts in New York, as a few zombies attack offshore boats, leading several people to an island where the zombie epidemic is beginning. The decision to leave New York, which is actually used decently well for a foreign production, and take these main characters, who are dull, poorly written and acted, and have no emotional investment from the audience, to an island where they are the only potential victims is a mistake that kills any momentum the film achieves on sheer ingenuity, such as the scene where a zombie eats a shark underwater. The deaths are well designed, as in Fulci's The Beyond, but, like that film, they are the momentary breathers squeezed in between a lifeless, tedious narrative. The shoddy special effects in these scenes (most evident in a dummy head that gets impaled) would be okay if the rest of the film did not take itself so seriously and melancholy and embraced, like the best Argento films do, the pulpy, larger-than-life aspects of the story.

Skip it, save for zombie film nuts that just HAVE to see that movie where that zombie eats that shark...that was me, hee hee.

P.S. The best scenes (zombies crossing the brooklyn bridge, zombie vs. shark, eye piercing) can all be found on youtube to save the hour and a half. THAT is highly recommended.