Le Jour des morts

Like many of you, I got really excited when I heard about this film. After the incredibly good effort that was the Dawn of the Dead 2004 remake, this film is an extremely cheap attempt to cash in on the name. It's extremely important to keep in mind that this film it's not a remake as much as it's a by-the-numbers zombie/infected flick with a fancy name on it.

The film stars Mena Suvari and has a short cameo by Ving Rhames. While I'll watch anything with Mena Suvari in it - even "Loser" - this is a stretch. While Suvari does a decent job with a flat, lifeless (no pun intended) script, the other actors are incredibly stiff, awkward and unconvincing. Rhames plays basically the same character he played in the Dawn of the Dead remake, although he only appears for the first 15 minutes or so.

The film itself is extremely boring and the action and special effects are haphazard. I can honestly say that I've never felt so bored during an action sequence before. The "climax", if you can call it that, runs on for about 5 minutes more than it should. Even worse, the film doesn't even attempt to redeem itself by being a tad funny.. it tries, but fails with flying colors. The script is absolutely ridiculous, not even making relative sense in the world of the film.

If you've ever wondered what "vegetarian" zombies eat, feel free to watch this movie. If you want to see a new spin on Romero, wait for Diary of the Dead to come out in wide release by the man himself. I'm giving this one a three for Mena Suvari alone.

What's with the running? And now with the jumping and wall crawling? Okay so everyone says it's bad, but it's not that bad. It's just a zombie movie. I laughed a couple of times, and rolled my eyes a couple of times. Wasn't really scared though. There's no real looming claustrophobic terror there. It's more like the shock violence of 28 days later and 28 weeks later, that mixed some Aliens knock off, and strangely enough Scary Movie. The zombie effects are OK, bit like an episode of Buffy, and then there's the film effects like the beginning of Dawn of the Dead. It's no way as good as the new Dawn of the Dead, and is a bit of a let down, but it's just a zombie movie. It's strait to DVD, but I'd wait for the sales.

A Film by Steve Miner. Now let's begin there. I honestly like Steve Miner. He's directed Soul Man, Friday the 13th parts 2 and 3, as well as producing the original and The Last House on the Left. That's not a bad resume. That aside, he hasn't done anything worth noting in about 20 years+.

Screenplay is by Jeffrey Reddick who wrote all the Final Destination screenplays, so that can't be too bad right?

Let's talk casting.

Mena Suvari (American Beauty, Spun) Nick Cannon (Drumline) Michael Welch (Joan of Arcadia) AnnaLynne McCord (Made quite a splash on Nip/Tuck last year) Ian McNeice (HBO's Rome) Ving Rhames (Mission Impossible)

Altogether not a bad looking cast.

So that in mind, we start the film...

We begin our journey on a lighter note typical of the '80s slasher flicks, in an abandoned barn in Leadville, Colorado. Full of candles and horny teenagers, and there's nothing wrong with that. One couple decides to explore the rather creepy barn.

The movie actually starts out alright. Decent directing, acting, dialog if it keeps up like this, it might not be such a bad movie after all... but lets keep watching... where angels fear to tread...

First lets discuss spider monkey zombies. Now we have become so accustomed to Romero's slow moving zombies that the atmosphere has been set in stone for the standard, but I see nothing wrong with trying new things in horror, in fact I long for it. Now this isn't the first time fast moving zombies have been done, but it was probably the best explained of the type out of the ones I've seen.

The first few kills are fantastic, and holy the zombies were pretty scary, and in all honesty I haven't been scared of a zombie in a long time.

But the show must go on, even if it goes on like spider monkey zombies on crack.

If you want this to be just like the original, go watch the original. I have yet to read one decent complaint about the movie.

The faces decaying rapidly through the change was really unique, I don't think I've ever seen that used before so I thought that was pretty cool.

I actually enjoyed the movie for what it was. It had good pacing, took liberties, and took zombies into a new direction which is pretty hard to do these days. I've seen a lot worse. A whole lot worse.

I love how the people who can't let go of the idea of walking zombies thinks walking zombies is more realistic, like any kind of zombie can be realistic.

If this movie had not been called Day of the Dead I guarantee it would have been better received, because die hard fans expected it to stay true to Romero's zombie mythology which it did not do.

And though this was not adhering to Romero's preconceptions, it had a few things going for it. It brought it's own ideas to the table which worked. Such as the people going blank just before turning. As the last particle in the blood stream switched them on. I thought that was rather realistic, and a nice little piece of detail. The action was fairly non stop with good pacing. And in all honesty it was far more enjoyable than Diary of the Dead. A movie that turned out to be a huge disappointment, as was Argento's latest installment, "Mother of Tears". The two horror masters have taught a new generation well it seems.

Now not to downplay Romero, the original Night of the Living Dead is a classic that will likely never be topped. And the mood of the original Dawn of the Dead is intensely scary, but for a direct to video movie it was pretty good.

Now the idea of "When there's no room in hell, the dead will walk the earth", was never intended to be true. It is the religious reasoning to unreasonable things. But we also must conclude that there is a scientific explanation as well, and zombie movies these days attempt to take the genre in a direction of the more realistic explanation.

And it isn't specific to the horror genre either. We see how it worked for Ang Lee's Hulk and Nolan's Batman, we must be able to appreciate it here as well.

For all the differences between this and Romero, the one that stands out the most in my mind is the lack of political and philosophical importance which Romero is famous for including in his films. And while I respect that in a film, though this remake lacked that angle entirely, it was at least enjoyable.

Day of the Dead (2008)

1/2 (out of 4)

Remake of George Romero's film has a small town in Colorado being shut down for what they're told is some sort of flu virus. Of course, the government is lying and they're actually turning into zombies. It's no secret that I'm not a fan of the original film but it's a masterpiece compared to this thing, which is just another cheap rip off that ranks as one of the worst remakes out there but, to be honest, this isn't nearly as bad as the name-only sequel to Romero's film. I'm not one against remakes so that's not my problem with this film. My problem is that it's so incredibly cheap and poorly written that you can't help but be bored throughout the entire film. Once again we get horrid CGI effects, which are among the worst I've ever seen. The effects are so fake looking that you can never take them serious and why producer's opt for this poor effects is beyond me. Another problem is the direction, which makes for one incredibly ugly movie that never has any sense of direction. The movie also uses CGI effects to speed up the action and this again just makes the film look incredibly poor. The cinematography will certainly give you a headache as it moves around with no sense of what it's trying to show (or not show). The performances are all pretty standard and that includes Ving Rhames in his small role. As bad as the movie is there are a couple good moments including one where Rhames, turning into a zombie, eats his own eyeball. As for the zombies, they are all incredibly bad and lame. When the humans turn into the zombies, we get more CGI effects that transforms them in the matter of seconds but none of them have anything going for them. The gore effects are equally bad as well. This is more of a reimagined version of the Romero film but there are a few hold overs from that film including the character Bub, although he's called Bud here.

Zombie movies are more popular than ever since the beginning of the new Millennium, and we particularly notice an undeniable revival of George A. Romero's legendary trilogy of the dead. The Man himself released two more genuine sequels to his own franchise ("Land of the Dead" and "Diary of the Dead", which can't live up to the older movies but are still very much worth checking out) and no less than two of the three original classics already received modern makeovers. Actually, they aren't prototypic remakes to be honest. Zack Snyder added a lot of personalized style and ideas to his interpretation of "Dawn of the Dead" in 2004 and, well, to link this straight-to-video reworking of "Day of the Dead" to Romero's legacy would be blasphemous and a complete disgrace. This isn't a remake of the brilliant 80's milestone, but a mundane and inconspicuous splatter B-movie that simply needed an eye-catching gimmick in order not to dive into oblivion straight away. So what they did here was steal the title and borrow a couple of story elements from Romero's film (like the obedient zombie and the underground laboratory), but otherwise this is just a lame and uninspired zombie movie like there are thirteen in a dozen nowadays. Nearly the entire population of a small Colorado town overnight becomes infected with a hideous virus that causes their bodies to rapidly decompose and inflicts an insatiable hunger for human flesh. The army is called in and young soldier Sarah Bowman, who's from around the area, discovers a link with scientific experiments that took place in an abandoned factory nearby. There's absolutely nothing original about "Day of the Dead", unless you consider a vegetarian zombie to be innovative. To me, that was simply the most ridiculous and embarrassing moment of the entire movie. The CGI-effects look horrible and this is yet another film that doesn't comprehend that zombies need to move slowly in order to look menacing! The rotting cadavers here run faster than African athletes and, for some reason, they can even walk upside down on the ceiling! I mean, were they actually trying to make the movie look stupid? Just trying to imagine Mena Suvari as a hard-boiled and stern army girl is already impossible and, even though his name parades on the DVD-cover in thick bold letters, Ving Rhames' role as Captain Rhodes is hardly more than a cameo. That was perhaps the biggest disappointment of all, since the Captain Rhodes character of the original movie is one of the notorious "bad guys" in the history of horror. This is by far the worst thing Steve Miner ever got associated with. Otherwise he's the respectable director of several modest competent horror movies, like "Friday the Thirteenth Parts 2 and 3", "Warlock", "House" and "Lake Placid".