Day of the Dead (2008)
Review by Noel
With SUCH a complex plot, how will I ever find a way to boil remake Day of the Dead into bite-size chunks? I’ll give it a try…
We find ourselves in Leadville, Colorado, a sleepy little town, a “charming shithole” in the words of one of its residents. Why are we here?
Because this town has a cold. There’s coughing, there’s sneezing, there’s a little bit of a nosebleed situation and the military in its vastly finite wisdom decides to quarantine the whole town to in order to get the world’s largest supply of Wet-naps in order to sanitize Leadville in its lemony fresh scent.
I’m lying about that Wet-Nap part.
We follow Corporal Cross (perennial kewpie doll Mena Suvari), Salazar (Nick “Fully Loaded” Cannon, and the ever hardass Captain Rhodes (Ving “Will Act for Food” Rhames, taking “selling out” to new depths) as they endeavor to contain the coughs and the sniffles.
But since this is a horror film we know nothing will work out as planned. And wouldn’t you know it, the sickness turns everyone infected into fast-moving zombies, and all they want to do is eat flesh. It’s nice to have a purpose isn’t it?
How will our heroes and heroine fare? Well, you’re just going to have to see the movie aren’t you? And make sure to take some Echinacea and Vitamin C…just in case YOU begin coughing…
Before we get to the usual what works/what doesn’t work gobbledygook, I’ll just say that Day of the Dead is a BAD movie. But it’s an entertainingly bad one, and for that I’m grateful. I reviewed Land of the Dead (read review) a couple of weeks ago, and I still need atropine to my heart every time I think about that pretentious windbag of a movie, so things could have been worse all things considered.
What works in Day of the Dead:
1.) It’s got Christa Campbell in it. ‘Nuff said. I don’t care how shitty the movie is, if she’s in it, it’s in this section of the review.
2.) I feed the NEED…the NEED…to FEED- it’s got gore by the truckload. Sure it gets a little repetitive, but it’s there for you to feast on…with your eyes of course…
3.) Ving Rhames barking in a ventilator shaft.
4.) Hard Hitting Social Commentary exploring race relations in tense situations- Nick Cannon (who is black if you didn’t know) asks some tough questions that make us think. Like “A black man holding a sharp stick and you immediately think it’s a spear?” or “Why do white people always want to split up?” Tough questions all, but at least they were asked. Cannon also says “By the power of Grayskull!!” which invokes the time honored ritual of…gray…skulls.
I’m not sure about that last sentence.
5.) Bud the Vegetarian zombie checkin’ out Mena’s ass.
6.) Matricide by Humvee.
7.) Initially I thought casting Mena Suvari (who is as white as cocaine if you didn’t know) as a soldier would be akin to Celine Dion covering songs by NWA. But I’ll admit, she grew on me as the film went on.
8.) Actors in this movie have real-life names Stark Sands and Matt Rippy. I just mention this because these names were in the running for my porn star name back in ’05. Those bastards stole my porn star name!!!
What doesn’t work:
1.) The zombie attacks get tre monotonous simply because there’s no variation to them. That gets boring after minute 15 of a 90 minute movie. Yet it keeps going…
2.) Ving Rhames- He’s worked with such directors as Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, Steven Soderbergh, John Woo and Quentin Tarantino. But in director Steve Miner’s Day of the Dead, Ving Rhames makes me squirm because he does nothing but elicit my pity. Seriously, I want to write him a check for $80 because it looks like he’s desperate for work.
3.) A ridiculous climax that saps most of the idiotic fun of the movie.
4.) It’s not all that scary. I was actually more frightened for Ving Rhames career than by watching anything on screen. I DID tell you it was bad before I began all this, didn’t I?
So, if you’re in the mood for BAD, then rent Day of the Dead. You won’t like it, but you’ll feel better afterwards than when you saw the Prom Night remake. I won’t tell anyone you watched this, I promise.
Watch the Day of the Dead Trailer:
Popularity: 20% [?]
[ ‹‹ Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil (1992) REC (2007) ›› ]
