Day of the Dead

Day of the Dead
2008
Dir. Steve Miner




Netflix gave it one and a half stars and I’d heard how bad it actually is, but I figured I’d try it out. This proved to be a poor decision.

“Day of the Dead” was bad, to say the least. This, however, wasn’t that sometimes excusable swing and a miss bad (X-Men 3 anyone?), it was lazy bad. It’s the kind of finished product that comes about when everyone involved seems to lose faith early on.

The script is an exhausted series of horror cliches; the heroine, Sarah (Mena Suvari), has been dispatched to her home town after years of living elsewhere. We are informed, without a hint of irony, that Sarah “swore she’d never come back” years before, when she enlisted in the army. Unfortunately for her, she has been sent home to help quarantine the town, as it has been exposed to a deadly virus.

Along the way, we also meet Nick Cannon, who’s character may be the most obnoxious, least disciplined soldier in film. The only other performance of note is Ian McNeice’s as a hippy DJ who only operates and speaks in stereotype. McNeice is one of those “I know that guy” actors who can generally be relied on to give a performance somewhere between “sufficient and “kinda good”. Here, however, he has been so miscast that I cringed nearly every time he spoke.

The cast is filled out by Michael Welch, AnnaLynne McCord and Ving Rhames, none of whom do anything of note, good, bad or otherwise.

Moving on with the theme of “lazy”, we come to Director Steve Miner. His only projects of note are a few bad horror sequels (Friday the 13th parts 2 and 3, Halloween H20). To discuss the more technical aspects of this movie would imply that they warrant real discussion. The fact is, anyone can shoot a scene, the question is can you make it memorable. As you may have figured out, Steve Miner does not make his movies very memorable.

The only other things worth mentioning are the zombies and the story. First, the zombies sucked. They are stuck between the “slow changers” of Romero lore and the instant changers of “28 Days Later”. Needless to say, its a combination that doesn’t work. In terms of the story, it only worth noting to say that this is really only a remake “in name”. There are a few references to the original “Day of the Dead”, but other than that, the story has been completely changed.
1 out of 5

Apologies if I rambled,
Sam