When another remake of Day of the Dead was announced, the horror community was already up in arms. And for good reason. The last two attempts at "reinventing" Romero's nihilistically grim third installment in his "Dead" series were total unmitigated disasters. And from the sounds of it, this one was going to be no different...
Low and behold, the film is released to scathing reviews left and right. And I won't sit here and pretend I don't get it, because I do, but I will say this...for whatever the hell it's worth, I personally thought it was very fun. It's trashy, cartoonishly violent (literal EXPLOSIONS of blood whenever someone gets bitten) and just plain silly at times. But I think that's why it works. It reminded me a bit of the Italian zombie flicks that were made in the wake of Dawn of the Dead and it seemed more focused on being an entertaining movie than trying to top the original.
The cast is generally pretty poor with Sophie Skelton making a bland protagonist (a sort of cross between Sarah and Dr. Logan from the original), Jeff Gum being an incredibly lame substitute for Joe Pilato's legendary Captain Rhodes and Marcus Vanco just being plain old boring.
The big exception here would be the top-billed Johnathon Schaech as our main antagonist Max. Max is essentially meant to be this movie's version of Bub, but whereas Bub was a lovable and sympathetic character, Max is a flat-out despicable monster from the get go. He makes a solid villain and the scenes where it's just him interaction with Skelton are genuinely effective. The third act really picks up thanks to shifting its focus mainly onto him.
So at the end of the day, it's not going to blow anyone's minds and if you walk into it wanting something on par with the original, then you're just asking to be disappointed. But if you're craving some old-fashioned splattery direct-to-video zombie action, you'll probably have a fun time with it.
Low and behold, the film is released to scathing reviews left and right. And I won't sit here and pretend I don't get it, because I do, but I will say this...for whatever the hell it's worth, I personally thought it was very fun. It's trashy, cartoonishly violent (literal EXPLOSIONS of blood whenever someone gets bitten) and just plain silly at times. But I think that's why it works. It reminded me a bit of the Italian zombie flicks that were made in the wake of Dawn of the Dead and it seemed more focused on being an entertaining movie than trying to top the original.
The cast is generally pretty poor with Sophie Skelton making a bland protagonist (a sort of cross between Sarah and Dr. Logan from the original), Jeff Gum being an incredibly lame substitute for Joe Pilato's legendary Captain Rhodes and Marcus Vanco just being plain old boring.
The big exception here would be the top-billed Johnathon Schaech as our main antagonist Max. Max is essentially meant to be this movie's version of Bub, but whereas Bub was a lovable and sympathetic character, Max is a flat-out despicable monster from the get go. He makes a solid villain and the scenes where it's just him interaction with Skelton are genuinely effective. The third act really picks up thanks to shifting its focus mainly onto him.
So at the end of the day, it's not going to blow anyone's minds and if you walk into it wanting something on par with the original, then you're just asking to be disappointed. But if you're craving some old-fashioned splattery direct-to-video zombie action, you'll probably have a fun time with it.