Remake: Day of the Dead (2008)

Day of the Dead (2008)

Director: Steve Miner
Writers: Jeffrey Reddick (screenplay) and George A. Romero (motion picture "Day of the Dead")
Genre: Horror/Thriller

Story

What story? I am not sure why they decided to try and work out getting the rights to the name since there is very little it has in common with the movie it is supposed to be a remake of. The film starts off without anyone really knowing about the zombies and takes place in a small town. The town is being quarantined, but it is unclear as to why it is quarantined or what made the military decide to do it since none of them know there is anything wrong. Sarah (Mena Suvari) is a soldier and also a resident of the town. She is trying to help with the quarantine when strange things start to happen with people in the town and her family. People start to turn into “zombies”? This Day of the Dead only came to video for good reason.


Everything Else

The acting was not half bad. Of course Ving Rhames does well after being in Dawn of the dead, but he does not play the same character since no one could because there is no continuation from the previous movie (this is the biggest problem with the remakes as a whole; they should have gone with the assumption in Dawn and Day that we already knew the zombies were around). The zombies are being discovered all over again and there is a new explanation as to why. The zombies also act differently and seem almost super human. They can now jump really high and far and climb buildings with ease. Mena Suvari does well in this film, but it seems like she has taken a step back from other roles to play this one. She had a lot going for her when she was in American Beauty. Maybe she needs a new agent.


Day of the Dead only copies a few things from the original: there are zombies, there are people trying to survive (military involved as well), and there is a zombie that remembers and acts sort of like the person he used to be. He turns into a zombie and then does not attack anyone (because he is a vegetarian….poor, oh so poor) seemed like a lame attempt at copying something that was great about the original. The zombies look much worse now than they did in the Dawn of the Dead remake, but this is because of the low budget. The directing is shaky and the acting is only decent, but it really comes down to the lack of decent zombie action. These things do not feel like zombies. I will give 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead (2004) the fast running zombies, but the ability to jump to extreme heights is just stupid. It took away from the whole movie.


The Real Deal

This was a terrible movie. There were some entertaining scenes (like the one where Ving Rhames ate his own eyeball), but the plot and overall purpose of a zombie flick seems to have been lost in the mix. This movie could have been a whole lot better had it not tried to make the zombies “more exciting” and if the plot had made more sense. There is plenty of gore, but it had too much computer generated aspects to it and the makeup was simply not good enough. Skip this one even if you are a fan of stupid zombie flicks. It really made me want the slow and dumb zombies of the originals back.


The Short Version

Raw Score: 438,220
Sharon Movie? No

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