Night of the Living Dead 2007

This pointless rehash of the Romero classic sees the original story retold as a modern-day Z-grade effort, replete with amateur night acting and Halloween masks. Yes, it really is that bad, and the biggest surprise is that cash-in king John Russo – a guy who's made an entire career from the fact that he wrote and produced the 1968 film - is nowhere to be seen.

The story diverges little from the original, except to introduce an extra, extraneous character – played by B-movie stalwart Sid Haig. The zombies are so ineffectual here and the gore so tame that two things happen: first, an extra villain is introduced to little end, and secondly, their origin has to be explained in depth. Both take away from the eerie impact of the Romero original, where the horror came from the fact that the world ended abruptly with the 'what if?' scenario of zombies arriving at your door.

The film's hook is the 3D, but anyone going in looking for guts and entrails flying out of the screen (a la the MY BLOODY VALENTINE remake and the latter FINAL DESTINATION movies) will be disappointed. A 3D spliff and subsequent smoke ring are all you're going to get (way to take advantage of the technology, huh?). Speaking of spliffs, the awful dialogue is loaded with stoner jokes and a far cry from the terse exchanges we all remember from Romero's classic.

The acting is terrible, aside from Haig, an actor who always seems to be enjoying himself (complete with ghoulish chuckle) in his recent B-movie outings. The story is so slim that at one stage we take a softcore detour to the barn, where a sex scene between two unappealing characters plays out in all its nude detail. Incredibly, the end result is a film that feels more dated and less grisly than the film that inspired it, made all those years ago; making me appreciate Romero all the more is the only thing this movie does right.

First off: I like zombie movies, I really do. I like them that much that I rent zombie movies which are almost definitely bad.

That said, I simply had to rent this. Only when I started the movie I noticed that this was NOTLD 3D, as it was just labeled "Night of the living dead" here. Even though the notion of "3D" implicated that this one would be a pretty awful remake, I simply wasn't prepared for this. It's pretty damn courageous to begin and end your film with the the opening scene of the original and also have the original running on TV during the movie when the remake is such a pile of garbage. From terrible acting over just plain awful special effects and missing wounds, everything here. The worst thing though is that the script only bears a slight resemblance of the original's story. True, it begins at a graveyard. True, at some point in the movie some guys are trapped in a house. The names of the main characters are the same. That's it. All the other things that were good about the original (and even about the first remake) are gone and replaced by a completely generic "horror" story, centered around Sid Haig. There is no reason why this movie should be called "Night of the living dead". It has nothing to do with NOTLD... well, about as much as any other zombie movie has.

Problem is: Even most really, really low-budget zombie movies I've seen were far more enjoyable than this one. Simply stay away from this one. And if you're like me and simply can't stay away from it, don't say you hadn't been warned.

This movie is a pale imitation of George Romero's original. Giving characters the same names isn't enough, pitting characters against zombies isn't enough. The 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead was outstanding, while this one fails almost completely on every level. Remember Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho and Roland Emmerich's remake of Godzilla? This turd is somewhere in between, trying to step in the footsteps of greatness, but, like a zombie, exhibiting no life of its own. This zombie movie is simply, well, dead.

I suggest you go rent the original Night of the Living Dead, or either version of Dawn of the Dead, or Return of the Living Dead or 28 Days Later. These are the zombie movies that will stand the test of time.

Barb (Brianna Brown) and her brother Johnny (Ken Ward) travel to the country for the funeral services of their aunt, but they arrive late and drive direct to the cemetery. They see the location empty, but sooner they are attacked by zombies. Johnny escapes in his car leaving Barb alone, but she is rescued by the drug dealer and college student Ben (Joshua DesRoches). He drives his motorcycle to the Cooper farm, and the patriarch Henry Cooper (Greg Travis) does not give credit to Barb. When the farmhouse is under siege of a group of flesh-eaters zombies, the local mortician Gerald Tovar Jr. (Sid Haig) arrives and tells a scary story about the origin of the zombies.

I do not like remakes, but every now and then I see good ones. I bought this "previously-seen" DVD in a rental expecting to watch a good remake of the George Romero's greatest classic. My first deception was in the beginning of the movie, indicating that it would be necessary a pair of glasses to see in 3D that was not delivered with the DVD. After watching this movie, I realized that it is an offense to the original "Night of the Living Dead". The insulting story is absolutely stupid, with terrible dialogs, unnecessary nudity and a ridiculous conclusion; the direction is awful, with an inadequate pace associated to some weak performances. When the group is trapped in the farmhouse, most of the windows have glasses, and the group never protects with wood or wardrobes or whatever. In the end, better off watching the classic again, and I do not know how George Romero could authorize the release of this crap using his name and the original idea. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "A Noite dos Mortos Vivos 3D" ("The Night of the Living Dead 3D")

Some movies suck and others suck the life out of the fabric of the universe -- the latter is true for Night of the Living Dead 3D. High school talent show level acting, oatmeal face makeup, and dialog written in crayola on construction paper, NOTLD 3D has everything except for charm, wit, or that occasional saving grace of 'B' film, unintentional humor. Look! It's bad acting in 3-Dimensions, rather than the plain ole two we mere mortals are stuck with until the holo-projectors show up in the cineplex.

On a scale of one to ten, -200 would seem a fair score, but I feel IMDb needs a more quantitative rating system for films that defy rating - The Gigli Scale. The higher a film rates on the Gigli Scale, the more soul-sucking, time and space fabric ripping it is. While only Gigli currently scores a perfect ten on the Gigli Scale, Night of the Living Dead 3D certainly is a worthy contender to dethroning the current world champion of suck.