Day Of The Dead (2008) Review

Written by: LivingDeadDoll   

I'm pretty ok with the remakes of the first two movies, and was feeling pretty optimistic about the remake of Day Of The Dead.  The original is one of my favorites in the series, for many reasons, but that's another review altogether.

I was so utterly disappointed in this movie.  I heard remake, I thought, well, remake.  Well, boys and girls, this is no remake.  Sure, there's a character who's named Sarah.  In the original, she's a doctor trying to find a reason behind the outbreak, and possible chances for a cure.  In the remake, she's a pouty soldier girl (Mena Suvari) who carries an unloaded gun for some nonsensical backstory that has nothing to do with the plot.  Yes, there's a soldier named Rhodes.  In the original, he's an uber-asshole soldier with serious control issues, and even more serious anger management problems.   In the remake, he's an almost non-existent soldier (Ving Rhames, in a role that he could have been so much better in had they kept to the original story) who gets turned soon into the flick and spends 4 or 5 minutes dragging his corpse around after the good guys.  The "Dr. Frankenstein" character of Dr. Logan, a rather unstable grandpa type has been reduced to some pretty boy yuppie type.  The wonderfully charming character of Bub has been reduced to a shy pimply faced soldier with a crush on the girl.  Blech.

All complaints of the total throwing out of the original story aside, here's what they try to put forth.  Small town Colorado, nothing special, good place for shit to hit the fan.  We start with the kids partying, one of whom starts feeling a little strange, we find that people all over town are starting to get sick, and soon the town's ER is filled with people with bloody noses and strange coloration.  Then, BAM! Everyone breaks out into instantaneous bloody sores, and are transformed into running (Zombies. Don't. Run.), leaping snarling crazies.  The soldier girl's little bro and his 90210 girlfriend try to find a safe place, and run to the local radio station, where all hell breaks loose.  Soldier girl is in the hospital, where all hell breaks loose.  All over town, there's running, screaming, jumping, and general mayhem.  Cue the trip into the underground military facility, where there's more running, screaming and general mayhem.  And on and on.

What I loved about the original is that it had a lot of morality plays.  There was the question of Logan experimenting on the zombies, and his questionable tactics.  There were the psychotic soldiers, with almost no conscience of sense of right or wrong, from the commanding officer own down.  There was the shell-shocked Pvt, Salazar who had enough zombies to drive him batshit.  Sarah, the voice of reason, and her two friends, the helicopter pilots.  There was no character development in this remake, there was a paper thin plot.  I might have enjoyed this movie a little bit more if it was given a different title, and found the similar naming of the characters something of a tribute.  Unfortunately, it was put forth as a remake.  Not the case.  If you forget the title, it's a halfway passable zombie movie.  But being as it's supposed to be Day Of The Dead, it's crap.