Day of the Dead

A Film by Steve Miner. Now let's begin there. I honestly like Steve Miner. He's directed Soul Man, Friday the 13th parts 2 and 3, as well as producing the original and The Last House on the Left. That's not a bad resume. That aside, he hasn't done anything worth noting in about 20 years+.

Screenplay is by Jeffrey Reddick who wrote all the Final Destination screenplays, so that can't be too bad right?

Let's talk casting.

Mena Suvari (American Beauty, Spun) Nick Cannon (Drumline) Michael Welch (Joan of Arcadia) AnnaLynne McCord (Made quite a splash on Nip/Tuck last year) Ian McNeice (HBO's Rome) Ving Rhames (Mission Impossible)

Altogether not a bad looking cast.

So that in mind, we start the film...

We begin our journey on a lighter note typical of the '80s slasher flicks, in an abandoned barn in Leadville, Colorado. Full of candles and horny teenagers, and there's nothing wrong with that. One couple decides to explore the rather creepy barn.

The movie actually starts out alright. Decent directing, acting, dialog if it keeps up like this, it might not be such a bad movie after all... but lets keep watching... where angels fear to tread...

First lets discuss spider monkey zombies. Now we have become so accustomed to Romero's slow moving zombies that the atmosphere has been set in stone for the standard, but I see nothing wrong with trying new things in horror, in fact I long for it. Now this isn't the first time fast moving zombies have been done, but it was probably the best explained of the type out of the ones I've seen.

The first few kills are fantastic, and holy the zombies were pretty scary, and in all honesty I haven't been scared of a zombie in a long time.

But the show must go on, even if it goes on like spider monkey zombies on crack.

If you want this to be just like the original, go watch the original. I have yet to read one decent complaint about the movie.

The faces decaying rapidly through the change was really unique, I don't think I've ever seen that used before so I thought that was pretty cool.

I actually enjoyed the movie for what it was. It had good pacing, took liberties, and took zombies into a new direction which is pretty hard to do these days. I've seen a lot worse. A whole lot worse.

I love how the people who can't let go of the idea of walking zombies thinks walking zombies is more realistic, like any kind of zombie can be realistic.

If this movie had not been called Day of the Dead I guarantee it would have been better received, because die hard fans expected it to stay true to Romero's zombie mythology which it did not do.

And though this was not adhering to Romero's preconceptions, it had a few things going for it. It brought it's own ideas to the table which worked. Such as the people going blank just before turning. As the last particle in the blood stream switched them on. I thought that was rather realistic, and a nice little piece of detail. The action was fairly non stop with good pacing. And in all honesty it was far more enjoyable than Diary of the Dead. A movie that turned out to be a huge disappointment, as was Argento's latest installment, "Mother of Tears". The two horror masters have taught a new generation well it seems.

Now not to downplay Romero, the original Night of the Living Dead is a classic that will likely never be topped. And the mood of the original Dawn of the Dead is intensely scary, but for a direct to video movie it was pretty good.

Now the idea of "When there's no room in hell, the dead will walk the earth", was never intended to be true. It is the religious reasoning to unreasonable things. But we also must conclude that there is a scientific explanation as well, and zombie movies these days attempt to take the genre in a direction of the more realistic explanation.

And it isn't specific to the horror genre either. We see how it worked for Ang Lee's Hulk and Nolan's Batman, we must be able to appreciate it here as well.

For all the differences between this and Romero, the one that stands out the most in my mind is the lack of political and philosophical importance which Romero is famous for including in his films. And while I respect that in a film, though this remake lacked that angle entirely, it was at least enjoyable.

Remake of George Romero's original "Day of the Dead (1985)"… no way! How could you. Well I'll admit, I didn't mind Steve Miner's superfluously clichéd straight-to-DVD b-grade take, but it's far from a traditional scene by scene/scenario remake with the film only sharing the same title (even though most of the zombie action centres around night time), featuring zombies (who bestow very impressive psychical abilities like sprinting, leaping and thinking) and having a character named Captain Rhodes (played by the commanding Ving Rhames in nothing more than a support role). Really that's it, but also shares some common similarities to Romero's 1973 'The Crazies' (which a remake is on the horizon), as it features the US army posting-guard in a virus-infected small town turning the locals into blood crazy zombies. I don't seem to share much of the hate towards it (maybe hearing a lot bad things before hand to work in my favour as I didn't have expectations for it), although I agree it does have some dumb plot devices (mainly centring that of certain zombie soldier, but is it any worse than the 'Bub' creation in the original film?), but despite that and its formulaic patterns. I remained easily engrossed.

The talented Meni Suvari is agreeably sincere in the central role, but does feel a little miss-cast. Her turn is better than what the stereotypically thin material (and there's no social commentary here) and lazy script ("It's complicated") offers up. The performances are mediocre at best, but some do standout more than others like Nick Cannon as a macho gun-tooting soldier with a smart attitude, Stark Sands as the clumsy private and Ian McNeice as the town's radio DJ. As for Ving Rhames, he's wasted in what ends up as a nothing part for such an infamous character.

Director Steve Miner's orthodox, if tight handling is broken up by kinetic editing; flash camera tilts that keep on the move and jerky action placement (where surprisingly random stages manage to hold a certain amount of chaotic tension). At least the story gets right into it and at only 80 minutes it doesn't seem to sag much… well towards the end its persistent style wears thin and the ending was feebly done. Now the blood-soaked gore… naming its self under day wasn't good. While having moments of bloody carnage and some decent make-up FX, it's rather watered-down with over-the-top CGI taking over the show. The CGI wasn't bad, but it's no substitute for latex.

Sure it doesn't come close to the 'Dead' franchise (and as it stands it better off as a stand-alone), but for cheap, quick brainless entertainment it's adequately done.

Day of the Dead (2008)

1/2 (out of 4)

Remake of George Romero's film has a small town in Colorado being shut down for what they're told is some sort of flu virus. Of course, the government is lying and they're actually turning into zombies. It's no secret that I'm not a fan of the original film but it's a masterpiece compared to this thing, which is just another cheap rip off that ranks as one of the worst remakes out there but, to be honest, this isn't nearly as bad as the name-only sequel to Romero's film. I'm not one against remakes so that's not my problem with this film. My problem is that it's so incredibly cheap and poorly written that you can't help but be bored throughout the entire film. Once again we get horrid CGI effects, which are among the worst I've ever seen. The effects are so fake looking that you can never take them serious and why producer's opt for this poor effects is beyond me. Another problem is the direction, which makes for one incredibly ugly movie that never has any sense of direction. The movie also uses CGI effects to speed up the action and this again just makes the film look incredibly poor. The cinematography will certainly give you a headache as it moves around with no sense of what it's trying to show (or not show). The performances are all pretty standard and that includes Ving Rhames in his small role. As bad as the movie is there are a couple good moments including one where Rhames, turning into a zombie, eats his own eyeball. As for the zombies, they are all incredibly bad and lame. When the humans turn into the zombies, we get more CGI effects that transforms them in the matter of seconds but none of them have anything going for them. The gore effects are equally bad as well. This is more of a reimagined version of the Romero film but there are a few hold overs from that film including the character Bub, although he's called Bud here.

Zombie movies are more popular than ever since the beginning of the new Millennium, and we particularly notice an undeniable revival of George A. Romero's legendary trilogy of the dead. The Man himself released two more genuine sequels to his own franchise ("Land of the Dead" and "Diary of the Dead", which can't live up to the older movies but are still very much worth checking out) and no less than two of the three original classics already received modern makeovers. Actually, they aren't prototypic remakes to be honest. Zack Snyder added a lot of personalized style and ideas to his interpretation of "Dawn of the Dead" in 2004 and, well, to link this straight-to-video reworking of "Day of the Dead" to Romero's legacy would be blasphemous and a complete disgrace. This isn't a remake of the brilliant 80's milestone, but a mundane and inconspicuous splatter B-movie that simply needed an eye-catching gimmick in order not to dive into oblivion straight away. So what they did here was steal the title and borrow a couple of story elements from Romero's film (like the obedient zombie and the underground laboratory), but otherwise this is just a lame and uninspired zombie movie like there are thirteen in a dozen nowadays. Nearly the entire population of a small Colorado town overnight becomes infected with a hideous virus that causes their bodies to rapidly decompose and inflicts an insatiable hunger for human flesh. The army is called in and young soldier Sarah Bowman, who's from around the area, discovers a link with scientific experiments that took place in an abandoned factory nearby. There's absolutely nothing original about "Day of the Dead", unless you consider a vegetarian zombie to be innovative. To me, that was simply the most ridiculous and embarrassing moment of the entire movie. The CGI-effects look horrible and this is yet another film that doesn't comprehend that zombies need to move slowly in order to look menacing! The rotting cadavers here run faster than African athletes and, for some reason, they can even walk upside down on the ceiling! I mean, were they actually trying to make the movie look stupid? Just trying to imagine Mena Suvari as a hard-boiled and stern army girl is already impossible and, even though his name parades on the DVD-cover in thick bold letters, Ving Rhames' role as Captain Rhodes is hardly more than a cameo. That was perhaps the biggest disappointment of all, since the Captain Rhodes character of the original movie is one of the notorious "bad guys" in the history of horror. This is by far the worst thing Steve Miner ever got associated with. Otherwise he's the respectable director of several modest competent horror movies, like "Friday the Thirteenth Parts 2 and 3", "Warlock", "House" and "Lake Placid".

I saw the screening for Day of the Dead in LA in September... I wanted my money back, but i didn't even pay for the movie.

Cardboard acting, completely ridiculous character traits that defy all sense of realism (Marines do NOT act like that, ever), and very odd casting that didn't work out (Mena Suvari and Nick Cannon? Come on). Also, there was definitely no style to this movie at all! Dawn of the Dead had style, Grindhouse (although not a Zombie flick, but of a similar genre-style) was greatly stylized, Sin City was exciting visually as well, but this movie could have been shot in daylight outside of LA over a weekend. It had no "Feel" to it. I love Zombie movies (James Gunn's Dawn of the Dead, awesome), but this one was true Hollywood schlock and a big disappointment.

Who ever thought a ZOMBIE movie could be Boring?