I am finally getting around to doing Day of the Dead 2008. Sorry it took me slow long, it is just with the keyboard breaking, the holidays, and the fact that this movie is worse than Dawn of the Dead 2004 (that is right, I have decided which is worse), that I have been putting it off.
I will run through the movie quickly so that I can get to the critiquing and let me tell you there are so many problems I have with this movie. I have seen zombie movies that are worse but with fewer problems than this.
The movie, like the Dawn of the Dead remake is a standalone non-sequel unlike the original. It also starts pre-zombie apocalypse unlike the original. The film takes place in a small town in Colorado and has little related to the original other than a few things. One of the main characters is named Sarah she in the military except in this one she looks like she is my age and is not a scientist. The movie stars out with her brother, his girlfriend, and another couple making out in the upper level of an abandoned Nike factory where it appears that is the usual place the teens go to make out. Towards the end of the movie, it turns out that underneath that is a secret military lab not much unlike the Hive from the first Resident Evil film except this time it is the government and not an evil corporation behind it. The military is in town to quarantine after a strange flu epidemic sweeps the place causing over half the population to get sick including Sarah’s mom. Sarah, along with her brother and his girlfriend, head to the hospital with mom. Also along for the ride is a private in transportation who goes by the name “Bud”, not Bub, but Bud, who divulges that he is a vegetarian.
They head to the hospital, which quickly becomes a slaughterhouse. There, Sarah’s Captain, Rhodes, is killed. This is also, where Sarah meets Dr. Logan. They end up getting split up because the brother and girlfriend realize they should leave way before this idea dawns on anyone else. They end up at the radio studio where one of the few good actors the movie has, plays the DJ. Sarah and the rest make it to the radio studio but only after Bud gets bit and turns into a zombie.
They all try to get out of town by heading down the old fire road that goes by the area that the old factory is located which they end up having to make a run for once a zombie causes them to crash. They find the secret lab where they also find Dr. Logan who explains that the military was trying to create a virus that could paralyze enemy soldiers for a few hours so that rather than kill them, they could be easily detained. Logan dies and they kill all the zombies with old missile ignition tanks.
What does this version have in common with the good version?
There is an underground facility that has a lab and has a missile silo at the back, the hero is called Sarah, there is a friendly zombie named “Bud”, there is a Captain Rhodes, there is a Dr. Logan, and there are zombies.
However, Rhodes is not an asshole in this, he is instead kick-ass, and instead of Rhodes as the antagonist, Dr. Logan is the jerk. It is as if their roles were reversed. The zombie that does not try to eat people’s name is wrong and the reason the film gives for him not eating people is that while he was alive he was a vegetarian.
I hate these zombies for several reasons: they are fast but that is not my biggest problem. They are also smart and retain something of what they were. This seems like it should make them more scary but it does not. It ruins the concept of zombies and gives credence to those people who want to keep them alive and locked up because there is still part of them there—if you have seen many zombie movies, you know the people I am talking about. These zombies run, leap, plan, drive cars, shoot guns, etc, but they do not act intelligent like the zombies in the Return of the Living Dead series, at least that made sense in context. These zombies seem more like the aliens from the Predator series without the gear and technology. The makeup and affects for the zombies are also stupid and bad. As soon as a person dies they turn into a zombie—that I am ok with—however, also when this happens, they immediately begin to necrotize (rot) meaning the recently deceased look as if they have been dead for months. This does not make any sense but what makes even less sense is that they cannot only still run, but are more intelligent than typical Romero zombies are. If they rot so quickly then logically this includes their muscles and their brains, which means no thinking and no running.
I mentioned the movie copying stuff from Resident Evil and another example of this is the film’s background music—it sounds like a cheap knock off of the HIM music done in RE.
The sound affects in this are shoddy as well, the guns sound like toys and when someone gets a nosebleed, the affect sound like the typical blood sounds of someone whose throat has been sliced. It does not sound realistic.
Speaking of realistic, the acting in this movie is not the worst I have ever seen and in truth, some of the actors are good. However, mostly the acting is subpar and some of the things they say and how they react to certain things are just very unrealistic.
Also, half the people that get eaten appear not to come back to life but the movie actually says that anyone bit, even immune people, will become infected. Um…..continuity seems to be on vacation.
The camera and editing are shitty also. Sometimes I felt sick; the camera was more unorthodox than found footage films!
There are also some “day for night” shots, which take even more points away from the movie.
Ok, so the movie does have some suspense going for it—I mean there were times where I felt emotionally invested in whether someone died or not. However, in general the film sucks. The affects suck, the acting is not great for the most part, the cinematography sucks, the sounds suck, the zombies suck and I feel like the creators of this movie did not even watch the original nut just looked at its imdb page and read the summary and the list of characters but nothing else. This all\could possibly be explained by the director, Steve Miner, who is notorious for pumping out bad horror and making, what are seen by most, as the worst movies in a horror movie series like Halloween and Friday the 13th. However, this film can still be entertaining even though it is bad which is exactly how I feel about it. Therefore, in general I give this film a 1.75 out of 5 purely because it can be fun to watch.
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