After 2004’s decent remake of Dawn of the Dead, I’m sure everyone was expecting a remake of 1985’s Day of the Dead. Well, it took 4 long years, but it finally happened. And, boy, do I wish it hadn’t. This movie started out…terribly, and it stayed that way all the way through. Granted, I did watch the whole movie, but to be honest I completely lost interest in the movie after the first hour and I wasn’t paying attention anymore. So I have no idea how it ended or anything like that, but nothing could save this terrible piece of trash. George A. Romero must be kicking himself for giving up the script for this movie, although I’m sure he was happy with his check.
This movie is extremely loosely based on the 1985 original. And when I say loosely, I mean the only thing that stuck was that it was all about the military. They tried to make it like Night of the Living Dead with no one knowing exactly what is going on, they don’t know anything about the zombies. Which makes absolutely no sense in this realm of remakes. If this is a remake of Day of the Dead then by all logical it should be a sequel to 2004’s Dawn of the Dead, so everyone should know about the zombies and everything, but no. Another thing that makes no sense is Ving Rhames is back in this movie, fine he escaped at the end of the first film, but he’s not playing the same character. In fact he is playing a character who was the main villain in the original film, but Rhames is in the movie for all of 10 collected minutes and is not a villain. So, why would you have the guy from the first film back simply to play a different character that gets killed immediately? Was this their sad attempt at getting a cameo by a previous Dead actor? If so, it was pathetic.
When I first saw the remake of Dawn of the Dead I was not happy either. But, with time it grew on me. What I hated the most about that movie was that the zombies could run now. In all of Romero’s movies the zombies could not run, they were slow moving creatures and I liked that. Well, in this movie not only can the zombies run, but they are basically acrobats now. They jump in the air, fly off walls, crawl on the walls, anything they want to now. The zombies in this film have become invincible, and that is awful. Also, I’m having a hard time accepting Mena Suvari as a tough military woman. And what the fuck is Nick Cannon doing in this movie? He plays the typical black guy who thinks everything is racist. Oh, that’s good for a laugh (notice the sarcasm).
This movie was released in April of 2008, direct to video. So that pretty much says it all. In short there was a reason why this was released direct to video.
