Day of the Dead is supposedly a remake of the Romero classic of the same name. I’m not sure why they went this route. This movie has NOTHING to do with the original except the fact that the movie does have zombies and towards the end of it they are in fact in an army base. The Horrorist notified me that the character names were the same as well, but I didn’t notice (or give a shit). And surely George Romero wouldn’t have zombies scaling ceilings upside down either.
The story is about a small town plagued by a zombie outbreak. The army comes in to quarantine the town but all shit breaks loose in the process. There are some survivors, but they are not all in the same place. They try to get together and get the hell out of dodge before they become zombie fodder. This is Day of the Dead.

This is logically probably the worst remake ever (yes, I’m including Wicker Man in this). It has little to do with the original and the title was merely a cheap marketing ploy to get you to watch what is supposedly a Romero remake. The sad thing is that this trick would really only apply to the die-hard zombie fans that knew the Romero original, but this legion of fans would have checked this movie out anyways, since it’s a zombie movie and all. Ergo, the people involved in the naming of this movie are disrespectful fucking dolts.

HOWEVER, if you ignore the title of this movie and judge the movie on its own merits, it does all right. Running, acrobatic, ceiling crawling zombies aside, it’s pretty standard fare, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Lots of action, poor effects, questionable logic, iffy acting, probably too long, terrible use of Ving Rhames. Still, you could do worse.

To summarize, get this movie if you need to fill your zombie quota for the week, and nothing more. Avoid any Romeroesque expectations. I give this movie 4.75 out of 10 vegetarian zombies. I gave it a -.25 modifier for Enron-like subterfuge on the title.

This review was fueled by Opeth’s "Ghost Reveries" and good old H20.

This was a stand alone feature masquerading as a remake of a sequel. That's just stupid, if they'd called it "Zombie Attack" or "Town of the Dead" I'd have liked it considerably more. As it is, they just took their mediocre but entertaining movie, and fucked with my expectations just enough to annoy and frustrate me. And as Paynecraft said, Day of the Dead isn't a household name and using it didn't seem to accomplish much, a zombi-phile like myself would have watched it either way. Just stupid marketing, the bane of the film industry!

Anyways, it was pretty entertaining. There were some insane coincidences, the dead seemed to decompose magically, and there was some cheesiness, but I felt I got my ten bucks worth. I was a little annoyed by the ending, there didn't really seem to be one. The movie just went off. It was an ok flick and had an impressive cast for a straight-to-video release. Anyway, feel free to check it out if you get a good price or a rental, just don't expect a Dawn of the Dead remake.

5 out of 10