Day Of The Dead DVD Review
In Day Of The Dead, a small Colorado town is struck by an aggressive flu. The towns people are trying to leave, but the government has sent the Army to blockade any roads out of town and quarantine the area. The emergency room is filling up with stricken citizens and before long the sick die, rapidly decay and aggressively feast on the flesh of the living, turning them into the same ravenous zombies. One soldier, Sarah, a local girl, tries to keep her family together and stay alive with as many people as possible as they try to find out just what happened along the way.
To call this a remake is a complete farce. The Taurus Entertainment Company, the people behind Day Of The Dead 2: Contagium are the ones behind this mess. I suppose that if I were to look at this movie as it’s own thing, not as a remake, it might be watchable, but I can’t. It’s not like they just made a movie and tagged the name Day Of The Dead on it. All of the main characters share names and minor attributes with the characters from George A. Romero’s Day Of The Dead - Sarah, Salazar, Capt. Rhodes, Dr. Logan and then there’s Bud. ***SPOILER ALERT*** Bud is the zombie that’s nice to our main characters and takes orders. I guess they couldn’t make “Bub” work in the new millennium. The explained reason why Bud doesn’t attack and eat people is because he’s a vegetarian. Weak! Stark Sands, the actor who plays Bud, seemingly graduated from the Jennifer Love-Hewitt school of acting. It’s pretty obnoxious.
I’ll just say right here that if you don’t want the movie spoiled for you, skip to the last paragraph, because I don’t believe that I can properly vent my anger and give this production the amount of derisive comments it deserves without fully ruining it from here on out.
Now, the zombies look pretty good for really decayed corpses that have come back to life. But, these are all fresh zombies. The zombies in this movie fall ill of this super flu. They get woozy feeling, have nose-bleeds, then they die. Seconds later they open their eyes that turn immediately white and their flesh instantly decays and oozes blood. As zombies, they are afforded the power of near flight (like chickens!) and Benny Hill-like speed. The first zombie you see goes from being on his back in bed to suddenly flying across the room at his victim. Some of the zombies even crawl along the ceiling like Spider-man in a Keystone Cops episode. I think they were instructed to act like rabid orangutans when they run, which is a pretty silly sight for a zombie. At the end they go up against a zombie that used to be a really smart doctor which makes him this super ninja zombie that can crawl on the ceiling and snatch his victims from the back of a walking group and drop them at the feet of the leader of the group, all eaten up before he’s even seen. Evidently they wanted to take Zack Snyder’s take on zombies and amp it up to the point of stupidity.
The production has a very Sci-Fi channel movie quality to it. It looks like the director of photography could have benefited from using a different lens or two in some of the closer shots, but they probably saved money by not having them. The whole production is treated with a sort of teenage slasher movie vibe that belittles the work of George A. Romero and the cast and crew of the original movie. This is just a nonsensical puke fest of gore and garbage, rather than an allegory for military dominance.
Anybody that loves George A Romero’s Day Of The Dead will be pissed off by this “remake”. Anybody that likes good cinema will be pissed off by this production. If you are a fan of B-movie splatter films without much substance you could do better than watching this film, but you may have 70 minutes of your life to waste on watching it. I don’t recommend watching Day Of The Dead unless you have a good outlet like writing a review such as this.
Yeah I pretty much feel the same way I watched this at work so I was at least getting paid while I watched it. All and all it wasn’t the worst zombie movie I’ve seen but it was far from a good zombie movie. Granted I’m still bitter about not being able to find “Diary of the Dead” playing anywhere near me. :-( Oh well I will certainly be buying it whenever it goes to DVD.
Just screened this for the first time today, and that is NOT my final rating. Definitely a movie that demonstrates why piracy is good for the industry: another way to filter the junk.
I can’t say this won’t become a guilty pleasure of mine, but I can say with extreme certainty that this is no more a significant movie for the zombie genre than say….Return of the Living Dead: Rave 2 the Grave. It’s just an action fest; and if all you want is a zombie shooter, watch Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Land of the Dead, or the 04 Dawn of the Dead remake because this is just gratuitous without being focused or trying to accomplish anything. If you want gratuitous and self-indulgence that accomplishes something, watch the first Return of the Living Dead, any Fulci zombie movie, or the modern tribute Planet Terror.
What is wrong with this movie:
The zombie makeup: the zombies turn into blistered ugly things immediately in a way that is more akin to Argento’s “Demons” than a person who has become infected with a zombie-ish strand. The makeup look for the faces is a uniform aesthetic, but unfortunately it is a very poor aesthetic design concept.
-Zombies with super-powers: again, these creatures are more reminiscent of “Demons” or “Dead Alive” than even the “28 blah Later” series or the 04 Dawn remake. These zombies can instantly leap like Spider-Man, bash barricades like the Hulk, cling to vehicles like treefrogs, and even dodge bullets Matrix-style. It is absurd and quite unscary.
-The zombie “intelligence” factor. These zombies can fire weapons, drive cars, and use stealth like Solid Snake to capture their victims. The filmmakers have to the gall to do another “Bub” but they don’t have the sense to give him characterization and a clear plot purpose because they’re too busy firing uzis at hyperzombies.
-No time spent developing our human survivors, or at least not any effective attempts. The younger brother and his girlfriend are on the right track in terms of characterization needed. Everyone else is under-developed because the movie is obsessed with showing nothing but zombie violence. Clocking in at a mere 81 minutes, too many opportunities to build characters we don’t want to die are dismissed as quickly as the zombies overrun the town. The more I muse on this movie, the less I like it. But I am of the school that would prefer a zombie story that focuses more on the people trying to survive and, by doing this, reveals some interesting facets of human nature. I agree with Roger Ebert that “Land of the Dead” should have been a social drama set entirely inside Fiddler’s Green with only the occasional mention or glimpse of zombies and Romero would have made a more resounding film. I whole-heartedly agree. These zombies run 50mph in the other direction, and they don’t even give a scare like Snyder’s version did.
oh my “rating” was 2.5/5 stars