Monday, May 28, 2012

Day of the Dead (2008)

A George Romero remake with B-list actors?  You don't say.  We've definitely never seen that before!  In this iteration of Day of the Dead, we're treated to such talents as Nick Cannon, Mena Suvari, Ving Rhames, and AnnaLynne McCord.  Nick Cannon pretends to be 'hood, AnnaLynne's abs look fantastic, and Mena sports the same pout from American Pie.  

The premise?  A small Colorado town (repeatedly referred to as a "shithole") is overrun by zombies that were part of some failed government experiment.   Basically, people get what appears to be a cold, and then turn into flesh-hungry monsters.  But apparently these zombies retain some part of their former personalities, like a vegetarian zombie who won't eat people.  Sara (Mena Suvari) is an Army corporal who has been assigned to patrol the roadblock on the outside of the city.  However, she becomes worried about her mother, and stops by to check on her.  Finding her sick, she brings her to the overcrowded hospital, which is filled with people about to become zombies.

Sara, fellow officer Salazar (Nick Cannon), Bud (Stark Sands), her brother Trevor (Michael Welch) and his girlfriend Nina (Annalynne McCord) are forced to battle the zombies as they struggle to find a way out of town.  They face interpersonal battles, as well as those against the zombies.  Although the zombie special effects were pretty cool, the acting was meh, and the plot fell pretty flat.

Calling this a "remake" is a bit of a stretch.  Although it used the name of the 1985 Romero film, it actually has very little in common with it.  This skipped the theaters entirely (I wonder why?) and went straight to DVD.  This was thought to be a sequel of the popular 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, especially since Ving Rhames was also cast in this film.  However, that was probably done purposely so that people would think this would be as good as Dawn, since he played an entirely different character in this movie.  I personally love the remake of Dawn but this is definitely one to skip.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Come on, that "remake" of Dawn was completely stupid. With the zombie baby and the part where the zombies wouldn't eat the dog were completely dumb. Hollywood should leave the classics alone and come up with more original ideas instead of trying to capitalize on something that has already been done.