Night of the Living Dead: Darkest Dawn

After i read a couple of the reviews on this movie i decided to give it a try. Worst decision ever. Convinced those reviews were left by people that had a part of this horrible movie.

Had every horrible cliché of the zombie genre crammed into this short animated movie. Not joking, it literally had every cliché imaginable somehow jammed in.

You'd have more fun watching a "Let's Play" on YouTube of Left 4 Dead instead of this movie. The graphics would be 300x better if you did. If this was a class project of some college kids i'd give it a solid 8/10 but this had a budget of 800k?!?! Where was the money used!!? Avoid at all costs.

The dead have come back to life and a group of survivors take shelter in a city apartment building.

I must admit was was really looking forward to the retelling of a classic, Night of the Living Dead: Darkest Dawn, (formally Night of the Living Dead: Origins) especially given the horror talent involved. Directed by Krisztian Majdik, Zebediah De Soto their animated CGI effort echoes the likes of the Resident Evil Damnation and Resident Evil: Degeneration but visually doesn't meet their standard.

What it lacks with the video game like presentation it makes up for with its great voice characterisations. There's the talent and eerie animated likeness of horror favourites Tony Todd, Bill Moseley (both reprising their characters from the 1990 remake) , Danielle Harris (Halloween IV & V), Joseph Pilato (Day of the Dead) and character actor Tom Sizemore (Saving Private Ryan).

Following the 1968's narrative there's a few interesting story tweaks that are welcomed on the refreshing contemporary city set backdrop. With countless rip offs and cash-ins already made, fans who like original may be pleased, as this is arguably one of the better adaptations since Savini's 1990 remake.

While the visual graphic aesthetics aren't too hot, quite frankly a little disappointing (and another remake is debatably unnecessary) the voice work and story changes make it worth a viewing. For zombie completist fans.

This animation movie is very good, with good action and suspense; Tony Todd is the best and lead star role, the others roles are small whilst Tom Sizemore role is a cameo; in the cast also the Bollywood star Madhavan and Bill Moseley; Bill Moseley and Tony Todd reprises their roles as Johnny and Ben from the remake; nice to watch, the animation in very good and the action and also the suspense with action is good; if you like the films of this type it is a nice film; Running time is 60 minutes and the producer is the director of action movies high budget Simon West; Decent zombie movie, my vote for this animation flick is 8!

Night of the Living Dead: Darkest Dawn (2015)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

This here is an animated remake of the George A. Romero classic. This time the setting has been moved from a farmhouse in Pennsylvania to an apartment in New York City where Barbara (Danielle Harris), Ben (Tony Todd) and others lock themselves in and try to survive the night.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD: DARKEST DAWN isn't the worst remake that has happened but at the same time there are some major issues with it that keep it from being more entertaining. I will at least say that I give the filmmakers credit for at least trying to change a few things up including the location. I thought having the action in New York City was a major plus and especially some of the scenes on Time Square. There were a few more changes to the familiar story, which was nice to have.

With that said, there are certainly a lot more flaws than good moments here. One major issue is that the CGI animation just looks really bad. This looks like a low-budget video game and some of the images are just downright ugly including the look of Ben who seems like a cross between a mummy and a zombie. The vocal performances are decent for the most part but Joseph Pilato (DAY OF THE DEAD) is horrid as Harry as he does nothing but scream the entire time (sound familiar?).

I guess if you're a horror nut like me who wants to watch every new "version" of the Romero film then you'll want to check this out. Most people, however, should just go back and watch the original film and leave this one alone.

Honestly, if you're here reading reviews, your chances of actually liking this movie are probably going to drop... all I see is people bashing this movie left and right, and what's most frustrating is that it's all the same one or two superficial complaints so they give it a 3 star review...

Okay, yes the graphics look like a cut scene from a PlayStation 2 game. But so what? People played those games and didn't complain and turn them off because of it. For the last 20 years, video games have begun resembling long, interactive movies anyway, so just accept it and move on.. if you sit and dwell and focus on that the whole time, you're just going to make yourself hate it.

Chances are, those people complaining are fans of the Marvel movies or are going to see the new Mortal Kombat, and THOSE are the movies I just can't enjoy because of the CGI. Most of the movie, the heroes and villains on screen aren't the actor, it's some digital rendering of the character. And to me, that's literally one small step above having actual cartoons superimposed over real-life backgrounds. Like I just couldn't take the movie seriously anymore when I see Kano kicking and punching the air, trying to make it look realistic that he's fighting a computer generated 6 foot tall lizard creature that just doesn't look the least bit real.

The voice acting is way better than most of the serious animated movies/shows or video games I've seen bc these are actual actors rather than just voices actors. They just never sound natural to me... And the atmosphere was better than I expected. Even tho it's CG, it is still a film so the fact that they did well with tension, mood, scenery, "camera-angles", etc really added to it... it actually had me feeling tense and uneasy thru most of it.

And most importantly, what people tend to miss focusing on the superficial, is story. If all these scenes were translated exactly into a real life film, this would be an excellent "remake". I guess after getting accustomed to the movies released today, paying attention to story has kind of fallen into the background in favor of "action for the sake of action", mindless slapstick comedy, or simplistic jump scares... tropes without any actual thought behind them. Studios figure the best way to cater to everyone is to go as simple and shallow as possible so as not to "exclude" anyone... so we get our Wedding Crashers', John Wick's, and endless horror remakes without the original feeling and emotion behind them. George Romero had depth and meaning behind the story he told with the original NOTLD in 68, and thankfully, a lot of that is retained here.

Go into this focusing solely on the story being told, and use your imagination a bit like people had to do before the advent of computer special effects, I promise you will enjoy this.