Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Day of the Dead (2008)

It might be one of the must hated "remakes" (it's hardly a remake at all by the way) that ever been produced, but still it's hard to deny that Day of the Dead is one fun and entertaining stupid zombie-movie. There's an outbreak at a small town in the US (Bulgaria of course) and we follow a couple of civilians and militarys as they fight zombies for eighty minutes. It begins like flu, but after a while the sick people are being transformed to hideously mutated zombie-monsters that loves to eat their friends and everyone around.

Steve Miner, genre-veteran, is handling the movie well - except for a few bad editing choices that feels more like they're trying to hide the fact that they don't have enough footage or that it's just not interesting enought. It's obviously just a job for Steve, and there's no heart or soul in his work, but he's one of the more competent gun for hire's out there and fills the movie with stuff that the want: gore and zombies. It's actually quite juicy, with tons of crushed and cut-off heads, some nice body-chewing and squibs. It's often filled with shaky-cam, but you see what happens at least. The best zombie-scene is at the hospital and when the zombies jump out thru the windows and starting to chase our heroes in the parking lot. 

Actors? Yes, there are, and their doing their job and nothing more. The worst part the casting is Ving Rhames, in a totally worthless, underwritten and pointless part as Captain Rhodes. They could have casted a bulgarian whore instead of him, and you wouldn't have noticed the difference. Ian McNeice shows up as a fat (of course) DJ, and is a fun character actor with the worlds biggest double chin. It's so big that Romero probably was hiding in there complaining about that the zombies is running, jumping and crawling like spiders on the walls. I love Romero. I could marry him, but I don't give a fuck how the zombies move. As long as they're eating people and getting shoot and hacked to pieces. 

I think Day of the Dead deserves more cred for being such a rollercoaster-dtv-ride. They are far to few nowdays, especially the really over-the-top gory ones that has a budget over one dollar. 

This is just one of those movies that you'll have turn off your brain before you watch it. 

3 comments:

Den Lekande Människan said...

He He - cool blog. Found you through Rubbermonsterfetishism =)

Ninja Dixon said...

Thanks - and welcome :)

forestofthedead said...

Great review.

I think it's terribly underrated and wish people could just see as a fun, violent good time.

Oh well, they are just missing out.