Day Of The Dead DVD Review

The remake of "Dawn of the Dead" helped rejuvenate the zombie genre this decade. For that, it has my thanks. That film is not only a dazzling showcase of zombie action and soon-to-be-300 director Zack Snyder's hyperkenetic style, but a strong indication that zombie classics are indeed bankable and very much apart of the classic movie lexicon. The success of that film gave the genre a huge boost in not only quality but respect. It was also one of the best horror remakes ever because it improved upon Romero's otherwise brilliant concept by softening the cheese factor and heightening the feeling of overwhelming terror due to the odds those mall-bound band of humans survivors faced, both against the zombies and themselves. Plus, that film killed off a Jay Leno zombie and you can get more awesome than that. This year's follow-up is the farthest thing from awesome--a word like "anti-awesome" should be invented just for it.

Set in one of humanity's last zombie free zones, the original bunker busting "Day of the Dead" (1985) is a claustrophobic classic that espouses grand notions on humanity and the inevitable fall, and re-fall, of man due to his gnarly hubris and an innately human force of hatred and xenophobia that surpasses whatever "evil" the simple-minded zombies could cook up and tear out. Sadly, the new "Day" has as much to do with that "Day" as Monday does to Friday. Arriving straight to DVD (shudda gone straight to hell) with no buzz and even less interest from fans (a baaaad sign), famed horror director Steve Miner's "Day of the Dead" is quick cash-in flick that comes out of nowhere and will return just as quickly to that void. It is a remake in name only and a defanged one at that. Unlike Snyder's "Dawn" remake, this film does not even attempt to improve on Romero's idea. In fact, it doesn’t even do much to improve on itself. Set in present times and starring Mina Suvari (I guess we can now call her the poor woman's Sarah Polly), "Day" is a small town zombie movie with aspirations that match the newly infected citizen's goals in life. To do nothing but consume, vomit and consume some more.

To be positive for a moment, one teeny tiny way to forgive this film's atrocious infractions may be to approach it as a minor Steve Miner (Friday the 13th part 2 and 3, Lake Placid) horror film. That is to say if it wasn't a "remake" it would be merely bad instead of simply awful. That the title GOES THERE by unfairly evoking a zombie classic kills any good will one might bring to the film. As do the myriad clichés such as bad puns, the guy that gets bitten and spared only to "turn," the a-hole of the group, the wimp of the group, the guy who hides his infection until the last minute (or what I call the Harvey Keitel surprise), the hot chick, the tough chick, the conniving scientist with a mysterious connection to the outbreak, Ving Rhames, the ammo loading sequence, the final showdown, etc. Worst of all, there's also Nick Cannon as a goofy army reserve riding shotgun and jive talking his way through hordes of infected monsters like he's on TRL; "that's gangster, huh?" Cannon throws out with a lot of attitude but no feeling or soul whatsoever. No, Nick, there's nothing gangsta about what we're seeing. Same goes for the "28 Days Later" infected human plotline which is anachronistic at best.

Not only does "Day" betray the film it's supposedly remaking but it betrays the zombie genre as a whole! That, plus, did I mention: Nick Cannon. The same Nick Cannon who tells two bickering "bitcheaaas!" to "save thaaeet sh*t for Oprah." Oh-no-he-dideeenn! If anyone even cares at this point, the writer-for-hire of this film explains the film's dilemma. "[Day] could only be a standalone movie. It couldn't be a continuation of Night or Dawn. It couldn't be in the apocalypse that we'd seen in the other movies, so it basically had to be a standalone movie and we could only use the characters and scenes from that movie itself, so it had to be an origin story, basically." Um, so then I have one question: WHY MAKE IT? The word "stand-alone" makes sense because that's exactly what this film does; it stands alone from the zombie tradition and stands alone from the fans.

* Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC * Language: English * Subtitles: English, Spanish * Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1

Extras: One horribly bad alternate ending where the most annoying character in the movie... lives! Now that's scary! There is also a commentary by director Steve Miner, writer Jeffrey Reddick, editor Nate Easterling, and actors Michael Welch, Stark Sands, and Christa Campbell. It's the usual group commentary stuff, though I got tweaked when they called fans of slow zombie movies "traditioalists." The group seems to support most of the film and spend a lot of time talking about the production and differentiating this version from the original. There's also an on-the-set doc, interviews and trailers. Skip all!