So George Romero’s latest zombie flick has chosen to take a slightly unusual approach to getting an audience. There will be a limited theatrical release, but before you can see it in a theatre, there’s the option of renting it in your own home.. for about 12 dollars. Ouch.

It’s not exactly a painless process either; the HD version of the movie weighs in at 6.5 gigs, so it takes quite a bit of time to download. If you must watch the latest Romero ‘masterpiece’, I’d suggest downloading ahead of time. Hours ahead of time.

That brings us to the rental part. You have a 6.5 gig file to download, say, on your Xbox, but you don’t get to *keep* it. Rather, you have 2 weeks to watch the movie; once you start watching, you have 24 hours to complete it. In cost-terms, it’s better than the good old days of Blockbuster, but nowhere near Netflix. On the other hand, this is pre-cinematic release, and probably represents a lucrative alternative to the DVD rental market for independent types like Romero.

So the ZRC helped fund his *next* movie… great…

The video quality and sound on the file is very good, however. Since we chose the more expensive, HD version, the ZRC got to evaluate the movie in full HD, with gorgeous colors and crisp, clean video. This might be the best way the movie is ever presented for home viewing, since regular DVDs don’t support HD, and Blu-ray is still pretty rare for horror films, as I understand it.

I’ll leave it there for now; we’ve entered a brave new era in zombie movies, with Romero again a pioneer in the genre, prying open a pre-release digital distribution format that, despite its slight inconveniences, delivers on the promise of a high quality, easy to use product in the privacy of one’s own home. The remaining question is, “What has Mr. Romero chosen to say about Zombies with this unprecedented high-tech platform?”

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This entry was posted by John Sears on Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 at 1:47 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.