Day of the Remade Dead

Day of the Dead (2008)

Director- Steve Miner

Starring- Mina Suvari, Nick Cannon, Ving Rhames

This movie is very loosely remade from George Romero's original Day of the Dead. It keeps the conflict between military and science alive like the original, but in this one the zombification process is quick, and the zombies act like rabid dogs who can jump and climb ceilings. It's up to a couple soldiers and a couple civilians to work their way to the lab where it all began, where they confront the doctor who had initiated the top secret project that led to the zombie outbreak.

The doctor, being one of the first to become a zombie, was apparently smarter than the others, and had the slight upper hand by being able to direct the other zombies. He would succeed, except that one of the zombies, previously one of the ragtag group trying to fight the zombies, remained loyal to his living team.

There were a couple good things about this movie. First, the jerky motion of the camera, while at times nauseating, attempts to pull the viewer into the movie, making him/her one of the group.

Second, I like the thought put into the viral idea. An infected person starts out with flu-like symptoms, then gets terrible nosebleeds. Soon the victim completely siezes up, staring catatonically into space for a few moments before "awakening" and turning completely rabid.

I also have to admit that I like when there isn't a lot of screwing around with back-stories here. Everyone is stuck in the situation, everyone is trying to figure out how to deal with it. It stays in the present and doesn't dwell on origins, like an episode of Lost.

I don't like the overly convenient variation in the time it takes to go from nosebleed to zombie-it seems like the director wasn't really expecting viewers to pay attention to that.

Ving Rhames play somewhat of a bit part, Mina Suvari is okay in her role. Nick Cannon plays up the "oh, it's because I'm a black man" to an annoying degree.

The zombies are oddly combustible. The way they go up like a matchbook makes me wonder how the outbreak got so out of hand in the first place?

Rating: 2/5 Bonedaddies.