Day Of The Dead 2: Contagium Review
If you are a fan of the zombie genre, you’ve seen it sitting there next to the best in the video store, calling to you, saying “Contagium is a big word, this movie is obviously crossing Romero’s zombies with that new fangled ‘it’s a viral infection’ sensibility. No, it won’t necessarily pick up where Romero left off, but it will certainly kick it up a notch, what with all we know about science and medicine these days, not to mention the leaps and bounds that Special Effects people have been making recently. It’ll at least be half a hoot.” Okay, well, that’s what it said to me.Evidently, the Taurus Entertainment Company holds the rights to the name Day of the Dead and decided to make a little more money off of it by pretending they made a sequel. Let’s get this out of the way: this movie has absolutely nothing to do with Day of the Dead, George A. Romero or anything connected to anything connected to either of them. The movie barely has anything to do with zombies.
The film opens up with a feeble attempt at a zombie outbreak in a military building. Some guy smuggles out a Thermos which contains something that is eluded to as being the cause of it all. The thermos is lost when the smuggler is shot by the army who are trying to contain the outbreak. After that, it’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest meets Patch Adams for over an hour. 30 years later, the military building is now a nuthouse that lets the nuts out to clean up trash. One of the nuts finds the thermos. After opening it later on, they find a tampon applicator that fairies come out of that fly around the nuthouse. Over the course of way-to-fucking-long, the nuts and their doctor that came in contact with the fairy dust experience coughing, chaffing, mind reading, black stuff in their mouths and a craving for human flesh. This all takes forever because we gotta see how life in the nuthouse is so trite and told by so many other movies before. Some of the exposed turn bad, some of them stay good. Then they infect the whole nuthouse and go outside and eat a few people. The End.
This movie is the worst case of bait and switch bullshit that I’ve ever heard of. I defy anyone to find a good review of this movie anywhere. If you enjoy George Romero movies, zombie movies or even regular movies, this movie will piss you off. Don’t be suckered by the title. You’ve been warned!
I couldn’t agree with you more. I bought the movie thinking what the hell at the very least it will be a crappy zombie movie only to find myself falling asleep through it. I never fall asleep through movies but this thing bored me to tears.
[...] On the other hand, this movie has a lot more recognizable names than their other tanker releases, so maybe there’s more being put into this release. I guess we’ll see on the 8th of April. I’ll try to let you know ASAP so you can spend you hard earned cash on something more worthwhile, like using it as toilet paper. Until then, feel free to read how I felt about the other movie that was a product of Taurus Entertainments acquisition of the Day of the Dead title, Day of the Dead 2: Contagium. [...]
So you defy me? Does one’s own review count? Here’s mine (from ZMDB.org) entitled “Neither a sequel or a prequel”:
This could very well be the most disliked zombie movie ever. The reason is of course the title, since the movie doesn’t have any connection what so ever to Romero’s masterpiece. There are, however, some references to Romero and his work, but to call the movie a tribute of sorts doesn’t begin to excuse the use of the title “Day of the Dead”. If one can look beyond what most likely is a marketing decision on the filmmaker’s part, the movie isn’t nearly as bad as it’s made out to be. Sure, like most zombie movies it’s amateurish in more ways than one, but should we hold something like that against the many classics of the genre? (Romero himself has been captured on tape saying that the original Night of the Living Dead is amateurish.)
The theme here is death and immortality, and the philosophical contemplation thereof is tenuous at best. The zombie concept in itself is more original than most, and includes three stages or generations of zombies. At least I haven’t seen anything like this before and it allows both a “personal horror” angle in the movie (as the protagonists are transformed into the undead), some sort of a mutant monster concept that kind of works ok, and more regular flesh eating ghouls. Something for everyone’s taste?
The movie starts out, like many other zombie movies, with some rather good zombie mayhem including a military response. Then the story kicks in years later and the attempt on drama it is admittedly both boring and silly, even if the setting of a mental asylum is also somewhat original. After the characters have been introduced properly, things start to evolve slowly. The movie of course ends in total zombie mayhem, gore and violence, which one would think most zombie movie fanatics should be able to enjoy. The ending is also according to all genre conventions. But alas, the fans simply can’t see beyond the blatant misuse of the Romero title, so there you have it.
[...] with George A. Romero (concerning Diary of the Dead, zombie films in general and the travesty of Day of the Dead 2: Contagium) and articles on Babylon Fields (the zombie series CBS passed on picking up), the re-mastered DVD [...]
I bought this movie for 9.99 and I thought it was a good film