Review“I’m a vegetarian by the way.” – pre-zombified Bud.Well aren’t we having a busy year reviewing, number two in what would appear to be a never-ending cycle of remakes of George A. Romero’s dead movies. The dead surely do keep on walking, although this movie like the previous Day of the Dead flick shuffles to an entirely different beat to the one Romero laid down. Gone are the political angles, the deadly serious intent; in are the post MTV shenanigans that had this reviewer rolling his eyes. There’s probably a positive to be taken from DOTD 2008 and during the course of this review I will try and discover what that positive is, it’s probably hiding under a rock or behind the sofa or something. Hang on tight kids, here we go now! The small Colorado town of Leadville is currently undergoing a flu epidemic as our movie starts. Strangely the military has the township quarantined, so two guesses as to the cause of the flu outbreak, and if you said that seemingly disused military research building out in the forest may have something to do with it then award yourself a gold star.
Hometown gal and corporal in the military Sarah rushes on in to check on younger bro Trevor, who right at that moment is getting busy with his girlfriend Nina
on the family sofa. Miner blows that scene and it’s all downhill from there as Sarah rushes her mum, suffering from the flu, to the hospital. Talk about your
Sarah, the requisite comic relief Salazar, Trevor and Nina, oh and the “showing signs of intelligence” zombie Bud, try to survive through the night in the face of the zombie hordes and bad CGI. Naturally they discover what caused the outbreak as things resolve at the disused military research building. At least a well-paced movie ensues. Director Miner of course is an alumnus of the Friday the 13th franchise and has the odd other movie credit to his name with Halloween H20 being probably the most well known. There’s a good reason he doesn’t have a few Oscar titles to his name and DOTD 2008 would probably be indicative of what that reason is – simply put, the dude doesn’t know what he is doing here. Leaving aside the fact that this movie is a remake in name only, Miner fails to nail the political/social angles, does nothing with a below average script, and simply throws a mess of special effects editing onto the screen in the hope that somewhere someone may like this movie. Miner is pretty kinetic here with fast cuts, slow mo going down in places, and some of that stop-start filming gravy that probably congealed on everyone’s plate when it was first used. In short the Director is throwing everything in the post MTV arsenal at the screen, and you are left wondering why the hell he bothered. The effects aren’t working, and yes in places improbably we get shaky cam for no reason what so ever, that take the viewer out of the movie. There’s a couple of places where Miner does get it right, but they happen in the first ten or so minutes of the flick and it’s all downhill from there – watch for a certain tattoo early in the movie. To a certain degree we can forgive Miner his indiscretions behind the camera when we take into account the script he was working off. This movie got pushed as a remake of Romero’s grossly undervalued original but there are only a few common features between the original and the remake, good moviemaking not being one of them. We have an intelligent zombie named Bud (he’s a vegetarian – I kid you not), a soldier named Rhodes, and a missile silo. That would be about where the original and remake part company on bad terms. DOTD 2008 dispenses with Romero’s social commentary and heads into the most asinine country imaginable. Sarah joined the army because her brother couldn’t come up to speed fast enough to open a bicycle shop? That’s what passes for character development in this movie. What is it with Hollywood and zombies currently? Back in the day, zombies either died and re-animated as the living dead complete with decomposition, or they were victims of heinous voodoo rites and stuff. Now we have zombies as a result of infection, who move fast and in DOTD 2008 can climb up walls and crawl across ceilings like, well like Spiderman! Can we even call them zombies any more? Supply your own answer there which is no doubt dependant on whether or not the undead should be eating people like any self respecting member of the walking dead club. Miner has certainly tried a few things and attempted to bring something new to the dinner table. We have zombies that can drive pickup trucks, who can track down errant family members, and who would no doubt be top of their undead class. Whether or not this works for you once again depends on your definition of the undead and just how exactly they should retain the shreds of their previous existence. It wasn’t working for me, and quite frankly just made me wish to watch one or more of the Return of the Living Dead movies. Whether or not the director was aiming for some light relief is debatable, there was for sure no laughs coming from my end of the sofa. At least Miner gets the pacing right here, after the first twenty or so minutes he puts it into top gear and simply floors it. This movie is in overdrive for pretty much its entire second and third acts, which is just as well as most audience members would be laying down some heavy REM action otherwise. Mena Suvari (Sarah) is woefully miscast here – did the casting agency seriously think we would be fooled into thinking Suvari was a kick arse heroine of the Ripley kind? Suvari looks like she should be hanging next to a pool in a bikini, to be honest, and would pretty much fit into my jacket pocket. Don’t get me started on Nick Cannon (Salazar), who brings new meaning to the term “odious comic relief”. Clearly the scriptwriter has no idea that there are differing degrees of racism, as Cannon is so stereotyped here that it will cause your hair to go white. Michael Welch (Trevor) was kind of working for me in a “at least he’s not looking at the camera” kind of way. Okay, the part is pretty threadbare in terms of character development but Welch sticks it. AnnaLynne McCord (Nina) was the required hottie and for dudes, or chicks for that matter, into gals toting guns, is perfectly cast. Stark Sands (Bud) actually looks like a half decent character actor and as such is head and shoulder above anyone else lumbering around this flick. Matt Rippy (Dr Logan) plays the corporate/government evil dude and as such simply adds to the yawn factor; this is another overblown plot device that needs a bullet to the head. T&A is seriously lacking in this half-arsed attempt at making a movie: for dudes AnnaLynne McCord gets down to her white bra early in the movie, the ladies are probably not going to be stupid enough to invest any time or money in the movie anyway and hence are not catered for, in one of the few decent decisions the filmmakers actually arrive at. Tyler Bates provides the score and it actually works for the movie Miner delivers, i.e. it’s not likely to be on top of your music procurement list anytime soon. While acknowledging all the half-arsed aspects of this movie it was still fast enough in pace to keep me watching till the final credits and the expected final few frames. Possibly I was simply immune to how bad this movie actually was or something – zombies driving pickup trucks? – but I didn’t manage to get angry or all upset about what a colossal cock up Steve Miner delivers. Perhaps where the movie did get it right was to dispense with being a remake in anything but name – see there is a silver lining and I’m calling that turning a frown upside down. As a stand-alone zombie flick I found this one to be substandard, if it had been about anything remotely to do with Romero’s “dead” universe then I would have been throwing my screen out the window. In a movie that will have you shaking your head over some of the content, one thing stood out for me: if you set zombies on fire they combust just like vampires in the Blade universe. Why that should be the case is never explained. Hey, it was straight to DVD so no box office figures and it’s simply too depressing to try to dig up some trivia. There are only two reasons you might want to see this “remake” of Romero’s third “dead” movie. Either you really enjoy crap second-rate zombie flicks, and let’s face it who doesn’t, or you are a completist who must watch everything remotely to do with Romero’s movies. I sort of fall into both camps so this was must-watch viewing time, but for most movie fans it’s more in the “give it a miss” bucket. Finally a zombie movie that doesn’t take a bite out of you, but does sort of nibble at your fingers.
ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ... Watch the Romero movie instead.
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