spudthedestroyer wrote:I just watched it, i guess i was beaten to the mini-review, but here's what i thought:
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Hey, I just watched this and its not all that bad.
Firstly, I'll clear up the title misinformation... this has
nothing to do with Day of the Dead. The film makers claim its a prequel to Day of the Dead. No its not, its not at all. Okay it might setup that the dead are coming back to life, but it in no way links to Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead or Day of the Dead. Infact, as far as unofficial sequels go, Return of the Living Dead is actually more to do with the franchise than anything (he mentions the Zombie they have in the tank is one from the outbreak that night of the living dead was based on in the movie).... speaking of which, this movie is a hell of a lot more like Return of the Living Dead or Resident Evil than it is any Romero movie. They've clearly chosen the name to get attention since it really wouldn't have got it under its own merits.
The Day of the Dead link:
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There is no relation, infact, this is more like Return of the Living Dead (army neurotoxin) or the Resident Evil T-Virus than anything. Romero purposely left the undead unexplained to great effect. This has no relation and infact, its rather insulting that it shares the same name
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Plot:
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The basic plot premise is there is a soviet virus that kills a person and they continue living (not zombie like, but they are still fully conscious and talk and all that, like in Versus). They then get a taste for human flesh. Once they bite someone they then turn into zombies. Basically they pull a jurassic park in the beginning, what happens is identical. A guy puts a virus in a flask (its dna in JP) whilst a military facility is in chaos (zombie outbreak everyone gets shot by the army), and then looses the flask. Then some douchebags from a mental home who are cleaning the grounds outside the home find the flash, open it... there's an outbreak in the mental home. Only this isn't controlled and the zombies get out in the end (and this is why its a so called prequel to day of the dead, which is utter bullshit, its a cashin)
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Script:
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Well the plot is stupid, it can't help but have a script that 'isn't all that'. Some of the characters are likeable and are played well, some of the others spurt stupid lines. The central 'lover boy' character you just want to hate with this stupid death obsession and crappy voiceover, that annoyed the hell out of me. The, well i'll call them 'uber zombies' because contagnium sounds retarded, are dreadful, really dreadful. Its not a good idea to have talking 'uber zombies' like that, its stupid. You can only pull off the dead talking crap in a comic horror like Braindead, Versus, Re-animator.. or other demonic possession movies (evil dead, etc.). Here it doesn't work, and its stupid... it pulls it off worse than Resident Evil (the games!) do, infact RE pulls it off well because when they become the tyrant they don't talk. Leeching Day of the Deads title has only made this movie look far worse and far more retarded.
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Budget:
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This is a more expensive low budget movie, and it avoids some of the pitfalls but lands in the same old tired flaws. Firstly, lets say the negatives. The cameras make the movie look cheap, don't expect something that looks hollywood. Visually its below a tv movie in terms of 'cheapness'. The acting is really hammy in places, so too is a lot of the script, its a bit of a grit your teeth movie in parts. Now it does manage to pull some more likeable characters out of the hat, and it does manage to cover some scenes that are quite fun to watch, mostly the self-indulgent zombie scenes. The editing is solid, barring a few rushed scene changes i don't think worked (one of the day introduction scenes pops up without a proper scene transistion/end point imo). The gore is great in parts, not as good in other places
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Acting:
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Some of the bigger characters do well, the bit parts and a couple of the central characters are extremely hammy. You can't for a second believe any of the people dressed in army gear are in the army, especially not the generals or the worst Russian I've ever seen. Its a bit above b-movie horror in the most part, this is probably due to the bigger budget than most b-movies
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Zombies:
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In this film the zombies are all over the place, some run round, others only stumble and walk. Some seem to have intelligence, and there's lots of plot holes and flaws. They are not anything like Romero's, at all.
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Gore:
There's some good and bad bits of gore, most of it is relatively well done and look good. For people who don't like gore, there's some Cabin Fever style blistering [which magically dissappears later] and the like, as well as zombies eating corpses. Nothing as good as the gore in Day of the Dead
Summary... cheap cash in on Romero's work and completely unrelated. With that out of the way, there's a nice low budget zombie movie. Its really dumb, and has some hammy acting but to make up for this, some actors know what to do, the gore effects a nice and some of the shots are rather well implemented on the budget.
Its okay,
the uber zombies are hella-crap, i won't want to watch most of the middle, but the army bit at the begining and the zombie outbreak
at the end is good. It doesn't deserve its name though.
