Day of the Dead (2008): D-

Steve Miner is responsible for many a crappy horror film (Friday the 13^th Part 2 and III, Halloween H2O), so it’s no surprise that his Day of the Dead is incompetent in every respect, right down to its having nothing to do with the George A. Romero classic whose title it appropriates. In this thoroughly generic zombie-outbreak saga, a small Colorado town is quarantined by the military for mysterious reasons which become not so mysterious once the townsfolk start mutating into pizza-faced monsters with a taste for human flesh. The plague magically spares a corporal (Mena Suvari) who, along with a few survivors, endeavor to escape the hordes of hungry creatures, whose heads are prone to explode in great big phony CGI blasts when shot or set on fire. Miner’s special effects look terrible but they’re in keeping with a script that refuses to have a single character act as one might logically expect, with civilians becoming suddenly adept at firearms, and military personnel talking and behaving like either civilians or comic book superheroes. Inconsistency runs rampant throughout this dreadful direct-to-DVD effort, as the infected are alternately berserk animals, canny tacticians (they even hide corpses in closets!), and – in the case of wimpy soldier Bud (Stark Sands), who’s meant to recall Bub from Romero’s original – conscious beasts who don’t chomp on people because of love and, I kid you not, their vegetarianism. Toss in Nick Cannon as an insufferable tough-guy with a penchant for painful pop-culture quips, and rarely has a film about mankind’s last stand against bio-terror made such a lousy case for humanity’s continued existence.

Comments

[Dan]

I'm not going to start defending the talents of Steve Miner but I did think Halloween H20 was one of the better post-Scream slasher films and certainly (after 1 and 2) one of the best movies in the Halloween franchise.

[Mark Notarberardino]

With the exception of the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, Romero's films are as cheesy as Miner's and do not deserve their reputations. Where did George get his legion of fans-the original wallking (brain) dead?

[Incrediblebrightness]

I think everyone can agree this remake shouldn't have happened. But I hope you (Mr. Schager) don't take Miner's film here personally, as an insult to Romero's original- since you defended the equally (if not more) needless remake of Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left.

Mark definitely has a point too- Romero is cheese man (though Dawn of the Dead and Creepshow are of the absolute highest vintage). And I say Miner has made several good horror movies - Friday the 13th Part III, House, Warlock. I'd certainly rate all of them above something like Splinter.

[Wari]

i love this review......the DVD commentary was weak aswell

[Kboom1]

To be fair, the military doesn’t speak like a bunch of robots. We speak just like any normal civilian would lol. The superhero part was funny though.