Day Of The Dead (2008)

DAY OF THE DEAD (2008)

DIRECTED BY STEVE MINER

Review By Graham Rae

Well, there are some ‘remakes’ (or ‘re-imaginings,’ as Hollywood likes to euphemistically put it these days, when recycling worthless old 80's splatter and slasher flicks; a prevalent trend there in recent years) that should simply never see the light of, well, day, and this waste of digital video is one of them. This one (the original ‘Day’ is one of my favorite films) instantly joins the ranks of the world’s worst zombie movies like ‘Hell of The Living Dead’ and ‘Zombi 3’ and ‘Oasis of The Zombies’ and ‘Zombies Lake’ and ‘Violent Shit’. And that is no mean feat.

We should have known. In 2004, Hollywood ‘remade’ the 1978 satiric zombie classic ‘Dawn of The Dead,’ the movie credited with single handedly inventing the splatter subgenre, and big bucks rolled in. The reason they could do this is because original director George A Romero’s business partner Richard Rubinstein owns the rights to the ‘Dead’ films and wants to rake in as much cash for them as possible, against Romero’s wishes.

ROOBENSTIEN BUB NO LIKE, CHEAP FUCKK! 

How much he must have got for this worthless garbage is debatable, because it’s low-budget, low-rent shite from Steve Miner, the hack who brought us quality fare like a couple of the ‘Friday The 13th’ movies. The plot here? There isn’t one. Good acting? There is none whatsoever. Mena Suvari and Ving Rhames are in it (the latter only in a few small crap scenes before being bumped off), but they must have needed rent money and I can hardly believe they’re in this. Good makeup FX? None whatsoever; the zombie makeup is terrible. Gore? Very little, and the head-shot CGI-generated zombies look like they come straight out of a videogame. The social and philosophical subtexts of the original? Are you fucking kidding me?

being ball gagged and gang raped in a basement by gimps was less humiliating!

Discussing this film any further is a total waste of time and effort and energy, and to think more about it would be to put more thought than the clowns who made it put into it. I sat watching this nothing-like-the-original movie in utter disbelief, wondering about things like why the zombies could suddenly stick to ceilings and scuttle along them like Spider-Man, why…ah, tearing this to shreds is like shooting fish in a barrel. The only reason I am writing this brief review is to direct you back towards the nihilistic, humanity-escape-velocity-fantasy of the amazing original, available in a great edition from Anchor Bay DVD. Apart from that, well, forget it. I genuinely can hardly remember a thing about this straight-to-DVD lobotomy already, and I only watched it last night.

Thank fuck for having a short memory.

WATCH THE ORIGINAL DAY OF THE DEAD INSTEAD AVAILABLE FROM SHOUT FACTORY