Day of the Dead Remake

Introduction

When a flu-like infection hits a small Colorado town, the army steps in to quarantine the area. Overseeing the operation is Captain Rhodes (Ving Rhames) who decrees that no one can leave and if they are ill should go to the town Medical Centre. Heading a checkpoint is local reservist Corporal Sarah Bowman (Mena Suvari) aided by Privates Salazar (Nick Cannon) and 'Bud' Crain (Stark Sands). Having heard nothing from her brother and mother, Sarah heads across town with Bud to make sure they are OK, finding her brother making out with his girlfriend in the living room and completely ignoring their sick mother.

Inexplicably leaving him to take their mother to the Medical Centre, she drives across town to check on his best friend, only to find him missing and two mauled corpses in the house. Ignoring her orders to return to the checkpoint, she heads to the medical Centre to be with her mother, finding the Centre full of townspeople suffering from the same symptoms.

Suddenly, as if a switch were flicked, the patients glaze over, become cold to the touch and then begin attacking people in a bloodthirsty frenzy. Sarah, Bud, Salazar and a Dr. Logan end up trapped in a stockroom trying to figure out what is going on and how to get away. Meanwhile Sarah's brother, Trevor (Michael Welch), and his girlfriend, Nina (AnnaLynne McCord), escape the Centre and seek refuge in a radio station with a couple and the DJ.

Video

The anamorphic 1.85:1 transfer suffers horribly in any low light situations and becomes muddy to the point where you can't quite make out who's on screen. Director Steve Miner tries every editorial trick in the book such as changing the frame rate, using quick cuts and crash zooms sometimes for no discernable reason and to little effect.

Audio

Dolby Digital 5.1 surround and 2.0 stereo are available and I went for the 5.1 which uses the soundscape effectively in a 'crash bang wallop' way - it's very loud and the score goes practically unnoticed, creating no tension or atmosphere as it does so.

There are no subtitles, something which should be compulsory in this day and age.

Extra Features

There are some badly authored fullscreen sound bites from the likes of Mena Suvari, Michael Welch, AnnaLynne McCord and Steve Miner, but tellingly not Ving Rhames. They all seem happy with the film and talk a little about their characters but the pieces are so badly edited that when the questions were cut out there is a sound dropout missing the first couple of words from each segment.

Also shown in fullscreen, the quarter of an hour of B-roll footage is completely forgettable behind the scenes footage, simply showing various scenes being filmed.

There is also a non-anamorphic trailer.

Conclusion

Hunker in your bunkers, it's remake time. Sometimes they work like Heat, The Thing and even Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead but, for the majority, it's mediocrity at best and barrel scraping at worst. This version of Day of the Dead has virtually nothing to do with George A. Romero's 1985 film, sharing only the same title and most of the same character names (although Bub becomes Bud and is a vegetarian, rather than 'conditioned') - the cannibals aren't even dead, simply infected with a virus. As with 28 Days Later and the Dawn remake, they are spritely buggers but these are also incredibly strong, agile, cunning and even able to crawl on the ceiling!

Steve Miner isn't a fresh faced debutant fresh out of film school, he's been in this business for a long time, with such titles as Friday the 13th Parts 2 & 3 and Halloween: H2O to his name. You wouldn't know it from this for which the problems are myriad: plot holes, unlikeable characters, casting problems (pint-sized blonde Mena Suvari as a soldier leading the charge against the flesh eaters?) and some rather unconvincing special make up effects (could they make that severed arm look even more rubbery?).

Day of the Dead is my least favourite of Romero's Dead trilogy but this makes it look like a masterpiece of horror - with every passing minute, my appreciation of Romero's film grew and I wished I was watching that instead. This has none of the subtext or intelligence of the original and may be appreciated by Ritalin-popping teenagers but anyone with an ounce of respect for Romero's work and decent filmmaking will probably hate it - I did.