Day Of The Dead is a remake of the 1985 version where the world is overrun by viscous flesh eating zombies. In this adaptation a brother and sister named Sarah and Trevor (Mena Suvari and Micheal Welch) are separated in their small town in Colorado as an angry outbreak of the flu has become air born. As sick people flock to the local hospital it becomes clear it is no ordinary flu. Something is killing the people of the town and turning them into flesh craving monsters. Sarah, who is in the army, meets up with a small group of people including another officer named Salazar, played by Nick Cannon. Hiding in the radio station across town Trever and his girlfriend watch terrified as the town is devoured and changed. It seems like there is no hope and no one will survive.
The original addition to the Dead trilogy back in ‘85 was not received very well, and it’s my opinion that this version won’t either. The character’s are boring, annoying and unlikeable even. Even with the seductive Mena Suvari and hilarious Nick Cannon, they couldn’t tear away from the distraction of the surrounding story. None of the characters will have a chance to connect with the audience and it will suffer the same problem 30 Days of Night did. No one will care who dies. Which is why the whole discussion about who was infected in the radio station’s intent to draw out fear will be lost entirely.
Even the zombies were obnoxious and boring. They were almost comic strip scary instead of realistic scary, which would be cool if I thought this movie was supposed to be funny, but I’m pretty sure a hysterical Shaun Of The Dead was not what they were aiming for. I’m still not sure if the zombie with a heart of gold was supposed to be funny or not, but by the time we reached that point any point of laughing has long since been lost. Then when they hand the military zombies guns to fire randomly at the Humvee….well, I admit to having a good chuckle at that.
When the story tries to explain why the virus is airborne but only some people are affected just because they are immune was an insult to anyone with intelligence and showed that no attempt was made to make this a story one with any substance whatsoever. To further insult to injury the movie gives a pathetic explanation for the bio-lab that explains how some of the zombies keep aspects of their personality, which makes the scientists uber scary or some nonsense of the like.
There were only two things that made this movie even slightly tolerable to sit through. One, was when they figured out how to kill the zombies and started decapitating them with whatever piece of weaponry or gun they had available. But that only lasted briefly through a few scenes and wasn’t as gross as I hoped since the zombies were pretty fake looking. The second was Nick Cannon. On the rare occasion he would deliver a line that was funny or offer some sort of obvious insight that made the movie almost make sense.
I felt like the whole idea that humans are more of danger to themselves than any outside force was also lost in this version. There is nothing scary or funny about this movie, in fact it was kind of boring. I’ve seen Lifetime movies with more substance. If I wasn’t required to watch the entirety of the film I would have turned it off an hour into it. Day of the Dead gets half a star and that’s only because of the cool decapitations. It was simply terrible.
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