Director: Steve Miner
Cast: Mena Suvari, Nick Cannon, Ving Rhames, Michael Welch, AnnaLynne McCord, Stark Sands, Matt Rippy, Pat Kilbane, Taylor Hoover, Christa Campbell
Screenplay: Jeffrey Reddick
86 mins. Rated R for strong pervasive horror violence and gore, and language.

Perhaps controversially, George A. Romero’s Day of the Dead is my favorite zombie movie of all time, and probably my second favorite horror movie ever. I can still remember seeing the film (in preparation for Romero’s incoming release of Land of the Dead), and it had this effect on the rest of my week. At that young age, I remember feeling devastated by Romero’s bleak view of the apocalypse. I mention all this because I’m equally devastated by Steve Miner’s 2008 remake, for entirely different reasons. Miner (Friday the 13th Part 2) has a damn respectable resume in the realm of horror, contributing to a number of big franchises, so I was actually really excited to check this one out. How foolish of me.

A small town in Colorado being overrun by zombies, and when the military arrives, led by Captain Rhodes (Ving Rhames, Pulp Fiction), quarantine measures are put into place. Sarah Bowman (Mena Suvari, American Beauty) is a Corporal and former resident of the town who has been tasked with keeping the peace but protecting her family and stopping the undead prove to be more than the military planned for.

As a rule, I try to avoid comparisons between a remake and its original, but a movie like Day of the Dead is inviting it, almost pleading for comparison. Most of the characters are named after their “counterparts” in the original, and yet they share no connection or similarity other than perhaps title. Yeah, there’s a Captain Rhodes, but he’s just a generic Captain in the military. Yeah, there’s a Sarah Bowman, but she’s no doctor attempting to cure and stop the pandemic. There’s a Bub and a Dr. Logan (Matt Rippy, The Dark Knight) but why even do that because it just reminded me that I could be watching a better film.

Sadly, Day of the Dead 2008 is nothing more than a generic “zombies-overrun-a-small-town” plot that would’ve been better off without any connection to an IP, but even then, it would get lost in the pile of similarly generic films. Worse than that, it’s a cheap and ugly looking movie with a disgusting color filter placed over the entire movie. This neon-green looking cinematography just looks awful. It has a few notable performers with nothing to do (looking at you, Ian McNeice and Mena Suvari), and it just barely tangentially tries to tackle anything of value, but it’s nothing but a pale imitation of a pale imitation of Day of the Dead.

You know how people say, “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed” to really drive home their frustration? Well, I’m mad and disappointed in equal measure. How is it possible that there have been two cheap movie remakes of Day of the Dead and an “in-name-only” TV adaptation and nothing comes close to anything interesting and notable? I mean, Romero had an expensive big-budget screenplay for his film that he never got to make, so why doesn’t someone try that now instead of flopping around another remake? Day of the Dead 2008 is uninteresting and wholly skippable, even for die-hard Romero fans. Folks, I kind of hated this one.

1/5
-Kyle A. Goethe

• For my review of Steve Miner’s Friday the 13th Part 2, click here.
• For my review of Steve Miner’s Friday the 13th Part III, click here.
• For my review of Steve Miner’s House, click here.
• For my review of Steve Miner’s Warlock, click here.
• For my review of Steve Miner’s Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, click here.
• For my review of Steve Miner’s Lake Placid, click here.