DAY OF THE DEAD (2008)
(Review)

Welcome to Leadville, Colorado, on the day the dead start to walk the Earth.
A remake of George Romero’s third installment in his Dead series, this is a straight-to-DVD feature starring American Beauty’s Mena Suvari as Sarah Bowman, born and raised in Leadville, and back as part of a supposed military exercise that quickly turns into a tour of zombie Hell.
Sadly—and much like the surprisingly rapid decay and decomposition of newly-turned zombies—the film itself likewise quickly degenerates into a tour of low budget horror Hell.

First of all, we really didn’t need remakes to Romero’s originals. That’s a given.
But, however unnecessary the remakes may have been, it’s to the credit of directors Tom Savini and Zack Snyder (who gave us 1990‘s colour redux of Night of the Living Dead and 2004‘s adrenalized zombies in the revisited Dawn of the Dead) that the first two were actually well-made and ultimately, excellent additions to the ranks of zombie cinema.
This Day though, is frankly a terrible mess.
Brought to us by Steve Miner—who directed the second and third parts of the Friday the 13th franchise, as well as Halloween H20—the Day of the Dead remake should really just have stayed dead, or at the very least, spent a little more time in deep freeze while another draft of the script was cranked out, and another, more capable director chosen for the unenviable task of walking in Romero’s shadow.

To begin with, why the script by Jeffrey Reddick (who co-wrote Final Destination) chooses to favour a youngish cast is a mystery, as this feels like nothing so much as part teen horror flick, part kids dressing up to play soldier.
Now, just to be clear, I actually thought Suvari was passably effective here; save for some rather screamy bits, she passes muster, as does Stark Sands (Conor McNamara, in Nip/Tuck’s “2026” flashforward episode), who brings a curious pathos to his role of Bud. (If you’ve seen Romero’s original, you’ll get an idea what ultimately happens to Bud, based solely on his name.)
The script though, doesn’t really treat their characters with any real respect. But while Suvari and Sands attempt to make the most of what little is given them, the other performers aren’t so skilled or lucky.
Joan of Arcadia’s Michael Welch (as Sarah’s younger brother, Trevor) and other Nip/Tucker AnnaLynne McCord (as his girlfriend Nina) are vaguely ridiculous, as is Torchwood‘s Matt Rippy (as CDC doc, Logan). Nick Cannon meanwhile, as Salazar, is merely amusing, but not in a good way.
It’s also telling that the two older members of the cast, Ian McNeice (as Paul, the local DJ; you’ll recall McNeice as Robert Drudge, the police surgeon in From Hell) and Ving Rhames (who plays Capt. Rhodes, the brother mentioned by Rhames’ character in Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead), are given ultimately thankless roles here. Rhames, in particular, is made to look like quite the fool in his final onscreen moments in Day.

Why the script chooses to forego the claustrophobic setting of the original Day is also another mystery, instead opting to show us the disaster that befalls Leadville, when the film’s budget clearly can’t afford to.
And while there is an anti-military swipe towards film’s end, it’s piddling compared to the socio-cultural commentary Romero manages to squeeze in amidst the gore of his originals.
Also, for those of you who took issue with the running zombies from Dawn, well, you’ll ab-so-frakkin’-lute-ly abhor Miner’s Day zombies, who not only leap, they also actually spider climb across ceilings.
I kept on waiting for them to go all Yamikazi on Suvari’s a$$, but sadly, they didn’t.
And while some of the gore effects are adequate, there’s also some rather dodgy CGI and visual effects in here, particularly when we get some zombie BBQ on the menu.

Miner’s horror record had been spotty before this—Friday the 13th Part II was the last time Crystal Lake was any fun, but his Part III and Halloween H20 were not particularly good. (Though the on-screen pairing of mother and daughter Scream Queens Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee Curtis in H20 was admittedly a great and knowing nod.)
Now he’s touched a third classic horror franchise and left behind an odious reek, like an alley cat marking its territory.
The man should stop while he’s behind…
And the remakes of Romero should stop too.

(Day of the Dead OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)

reVIEW (31) 
LAND OF THE DEAD
In preparation for the upcoming Diary of the Dead, here’s a look back at George Romero’s Land of the Dead.

In 1968, then 28-year old George Romero shot a little black-and-white movie in Pittsburgh, and in the process, not only gave birth to the zombie film as we know it, but also became the Father of the Horror Film as Social Commentary. That movie was the original Night of the Living Dead.
Nearly four decades later, and Romero has returned for a fourth zombie outing in the Land of the Dead, ushering us back into the world whose rules he pretty much wrote in Night, Dawn of the Dead (1978), and Day of the Dead (1985).
Here, Riley (Simon Baker, TV’s The Guardian and The Ring Two) and Cholo (John Leguizamo) are mercenaries on the cusp of retirement, about to pack in the supply raids and zombie shooting for new lives, while Kaufman (Dennis Hopper) is the big man of Fiddler’s Green, an exclusive community for the powerful and influential, surrounded by the hordes of have-nots huddled around its skyscraping, climate-controlled glory. And in the ruins of suburbia, the walking dead seem to be regaining a semblance of sentience…

Navigating this simmering cauldron of societal unease with the confidence of a well-traveled journeyman, Romero once again tells a tale of survival horror which is far more than just flesh-chomping and head-exploding grue.
In the wake of modern civilization’s fall, trod upon remorselessly by the shuffling feet of the living dead, Romero posits the emergence of three discreet societies: Fiddler’s Green, the co-opted, jury-rigged society for the privileged few; the urban squalor of the sprawl, a more organic community, growing fungus-like in the leavings and detritus of the Green, the masses scrambling for warmth and protection through osmosis; and the living dead of suburbia, finally waking from their long sleep of apathy.

It is by the clash and grind of these societies that the tale of Land of the Dead is told, a tale of individuals trying to make some sort of sense of the world they find themselves in, of the hand Fate has dealt them.
Riley wants out, Cholo wants in, while Kaufman, the author of much of the misery and injustice we witness in Land of the Dead, sees the Green as his God-given right, by virtue of his having taken it and molded it into what it is; very American attitude, that.
Paradoxically, Kaufman even turns the milling masses into a mirror image of the walking dead, taking the “bread and circuses” maxim and giving them vice and entertainment, keeping them oblivious to the inherent wrongness of the situation.

Ironically, it is the dead of suburbia, cruelly stripped of their cognition and humanity, who first begin to stir themselves into concerted action, finally tiring of the abuse heaped upon them by the bands of the quick who repeatedly invade their territory to steal food, medicine, and supplies. (Admittedly, all of this is now useless to the dead, but it is, after all, the principle of the thing, and the flagrant disregard the quick have for them, that becomes the bloody bone of contention here.)
In the sprawl, it is only agitators like Mulligan (Bruce McFee) who try to stir up the flames of revolution, while the masses are kept occupied by gambling and bloodsport (just as the zombies are, initially, fixated by the fireworks displays of Riley’s “sky flowers”; this, in itself, a chilling echo of man’s own inherent tendency to stare, fixated, at gaudy displays of hollow “entertainment,” while his world crumbles and decays around him).

Admittedly, Romero does what he does best in Land of the Dead; manage to pack all of that (and more) into a movie that is ostensibly about flesh-eating zombies. Somehow though, there was still a part of me that wondered why he chose to return to territory he’d already charted so well in the past.
Yes, in the wake of the success of 28 Days Later, the Dawn of the Dead remake and Shaun of the Dead, zombies are once again part of the horror du jour landscape, but Romero is so much more than the zombie guy.
As I recall, Monkey Shines was a tense, nasty little shocker, and all that had was a psychotic monkey. Nope, no shambling, hungry undead there.
Of course, what did he choose as a follow-up but yet another zombie movie, Diary of the Dead.
Strangely enough though, given my tainted approval of Land of the Dead, I’m actually anticipating Diary, as it appears to be Romero’s return to independent filmmaking, and he seems very excited about the work.
And hey, if George Romero is excited about something, then any self-respecting horror geek would be excited about it too.

Parting shot: Asia Argento (daughter of legendary Italian director Dario Argento; who starred opposite Vin Diesel in XXX and headlines the highly anticipated La Terza Madre) is Slack, the nominal love interest here.
Also, appearing in zombie cameos are long-time Romero collaborator and special make-up effects guru Tom Savini, as well as Shaun of the Dead duo, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright.

Parting shot 2: A review of The Ring Two can be found in the Archive.

(Land of the Dead OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

(The above is an altered version of the review originally titled “Dead Like Me.”)