Day of the Dead

As a small town begins to be overrun with zombies a group of people must face the horror head-on.

One of the directors of the excellent The Void (2016) Steven Kostanski, delivers a reimagining of modern horror classic Day of the Dead (1985) with lacklustre results. Based on the opening episode, as a fresh-faced cast come face to face with the dead in a flashback, it glaringly is on a budget, which wouldn't be a problem, or fall short of expectations if it wasn't being sold as Day of the Dead.

The make-up effects and music are surprisingly effective. The cast do a fine job and appear to be having fun, Keenan Tracey, Daniel Doheny, and Natalie Malaika are notable.

It appears to utilise George A. Romero's character names, akin to Day of the Dead (2008) but the tone is reminiscent of Night of the Living Dead 3D (2006) and Night of the Living Dead 3D: Re-Animation (2012), particularly the mortuary setups, with a touch of Return of the Living Dead Part II and Zombie Night (2013).

Greddy town officials and workers are straight out of Forest Of The Dead (2007). Shoehorning in every trope in the genre, writers Jed Elinoff and Scott Thomas offer a new slant with the dead body chained in a cavern but the production appears to be SYFY cynical attempt to cash in on a classic. Plodding, familiar and falling short as both a homage and a gimmick. There are debatably better or certainly enough TV zombie series of varying degrees of quality already out there. Kostanski can and has delivered imaginative and resourceful work; but this sadly and surprisingly isn't one of them.

As a low budget zombie TV series, it is adequate, but as a series connected to Romero's work, it's extraordinarily empty.

.. We waited 10+ yrs for a decent DOD remake and surprise got another flop..The zombies are terrible, bodies that have been dead and buried for 50 yrs don't have all that blood when the mower ran it over..What happend to kill the brain kill the zombie like most of Romeros films..We have a decapitated zombie with just a jaw still walking and another one that's got flattened with a fire extinguisher still coming at them.... Almost as bad as the dawn remake where the zombies run faster than live people..Obviously someone attaching Romero's name to make a buck...

The producers of the show did not know if they want to make a zombie comedy or something with a "serious" tone - in the end we get a bad mix of both that does not work at all, on both levels. The dialogues are also all cliche in and too many times cringe worthy, same goes for the "humor". The only, a little redeeming feature of Day of the Dead are the masks and some little gore here and there. But that's simply not enough to spend my time on this show. Also, "Day of the Dead" has nothing to do with the story of Romero's Day of the Dead.

A bunch of young beautiful guys get saved by a some young beautiful women. From some zombies who look like the make up came from a dollar store. All the old people get killed by the zombies, so it just young peole for days. Yada yada yada.

When I started watching the opening scene, I thought to myself, 'this is so badly put together it must have been made in Toronto!' I was wrong though, it was made in Vancouver. Same difference.

Bad acting, bad direction, bad script writing, bad editing. Bad production values. This ones got it all folks. So if this follows the usual pattern it will run for four or five seasons of what at best can be called mediocrity.

Meanwhile, good shows which are engaging and well crafted get cancelled after a season or two.

Gosh, and I didn't even know that they were turning George A. Romero's masterpiece into a spin-off series. I happened to stumble upon this 2021 SyFy Channel series "Day of the Dead" by random luck. And being a huge zombie fan, of course I needed no persuasion to sit down and watch it.

But everything is not swell and dandy here, and it certainly is not up to par with the 1985 classic masterpiece from Romero himself. Sure, this 2021 series "Day of the Dead" is watchable, but don't go expecting too much from creators Jed Elinoff and Scott Thomas.

Now, the problem with the "Day of the Dead" series is the construction of the episodes. The creators try to weave together multiple storylines into one combined narrative, but it is not always with great success. Most of the time, the narrative and the flow of the series feels irratic and chaotic, with not much coherency to it. One moment you are here and when something interesting is about to happen you are moved to another story arch. So there is a lot of build up situations that leads to frustration rather than excitement and fulfillment.

The series also suffers from being 'just another generic zombie series'. We have had the likes of "The Walking Dead", "Fear the Walking Dead", "The Walking Dead: World Beyond", "Z Nation", "S. O. Z. Soldados o Zombies" and "The Bite", and probably others that I can't remember as well. So as "Day of the Dead" fails to make itself stand out from any of these series, it just becomes another one in the heap.

Visually then "Day of the Dead" is a mixed bag of nuts. Some of the special effects and zombie make-up is good, while others is just obviously rubber and latex masks. And those makes makes it cringeworthy to watch.

Now, they have an interesting and diverse ensemble of casted actors and actresses in the series, which definitely helps lift up the series with its other shortcomings.

Sure, I will keep watching it, as I am a huge zombie fan, but this just wasn't as great as I had hoped it would be.

"Day of the Dead" is not something I would recommend you rush out to get a chance to watch, because it certainly is nowhere near the levels of entertainment as seen in the original 1985 movie, nor does it really match or rival most of the other zombie series out there.

My rating of "Day of the Dead", sadly, lands on a bland five out of ten stars. I will keep watching this of course, and hope the series will lift itself up and become better with time.