One star.
Originally published on Wednesday, October 8, 2014.
A lot of people really hate this movie. Many of these people are fans of George A. Romero's original Dead trilogy. I'm one of these people. The original 1985 film is a masterpiece of foreboding and bleakness that only offers a slight glimmer of hope at the end. The 2008 remake is just bleak, in that, it throws out anything that made the old movie great and builds a horribly constructed zombie flick on its skeleton.
And maybe that's not the worst part. This film is directed by none other than director Steve Miner. That's Friday the 13th parts 2 and 3 Steve Miner. That's Warlock with Julian Sands Steve Miner. That's House with William Katt Steve Miner. To sum it up, Miner used to be one of the best horror directors around.
But by 1998, he started to go downhill. Why that year? Because that's the year he directed the Kevin Williamson-backed Halloween: Twenty Years Later. However, Miner has to pay the bills. So he had been dabbling in Network TV for income, working on whiny teen fare suck as Dawson's Creek and Felicity. As some of you know or have based your opinion, that movie was basically Scream with Michael Myers doing a cameo. Since Miner sold out, he sort of bounced back with the original Lake Placid, but has since lingered with sub-standard productions such as Texas Rangers with James Van Der Beek, plus lame network TV that he has directed for a paycheck through most of his career.
That is until he was offered this movie. I think it's no coincidence that Miner has not returned to horror in the eight-plus years since Day '08 was released. And it's because it's a fucking capital offense. The 1985 classic took years to earn respect in it's place with George Romero's original dead trilogy. This is unfortunate, because I've always thought it far outpaces Dawn of the Dead. Audiences at that time didn't agree, so it lingered on dusty partitions of old video stores for years until Dead fans finally started to accept the "paint the walls red" glory that was that movie. Even for awhile, Romero stated that it had become his favorite.
To some other people, this necessitated a remake. Nevermind the fact that Dead '85 had to suffer the indignity of a unofficial sequel that ripped off the old poster art. Fuck no, lets do a remake with none of the original's plot, but instead reboot it as a stand-alone film set in some town in Colorado. Lets forget that spooky and claustrophobic 14-mile-bunker in the Everglades that housed soldiers, scientists and zombies captured for exploratory surgery. Instead, we have some stock piece script story about the military quarantining a town.
Now here's where things get interesting. Mena Survari, aka the blonde teenage Kevin Spacey wants to bang in American Beauty, shows up as the lead actress in this movie. Mind you, it was weird to see this actress after so many years had passed. And she's supposed to be playing a badass too, in the form of the Sarah character. Mores specifically, she's Corporal Sarah Cross. We do get our Captain Rhodes in this thing too. He's played by . . . Ving Rhames? So that's too name actors in this low-budget travesty? Sort of?
Now I had seen the press release for this movie when they announced Rhameswas in this film, just not reprising his character from Dawn '04. This makes sense, considering he dies at the end of that movie (sorry, SPOILERS). But his portrayal of Rhodes goes completely in reverse. He just plays a background character that eventually gets killed. And I know damn good and well that he was cast to trick people into thinking this movie was in direct continuity.
We get some more "in name only" characters in this film, including Nick Cannon as Salazaar, a play-off of mentally disturbed Miguel Salazaar from the original. Only here, he doesn't have an emotional breakdown and release thousands of zombies into the compound. Nope, we get to here him berate people and say things like, "Now that's gansta!" We also get a soldier named Bud. As you've guessed, he becomes a zombie like Bub from original. Only here, he doesn't anyone because he was a vegetarian when he was alive. I won't bother to point out the fallacy of that reasoning.
Back to the main story with Sarah. The town being quarantined is her home town. To make matters worse, her mother is infected with the plague turning people into zombies. While trying to get her mother to the local hospital, she has to interact her douchebag brother and his girlfriend. A few more plot points aside and our heroes discover that some geek scientist is creating a supervirus in his underground laboratory out in the sticks. To the end of the flicks, we're deal with SyFy channel grade CGI special effects and people making dumb mistakes.
What pisses me off the most is that this was probably Miner's last chance to redeem himself as a director. Instead, he just sells out to making another buck and tarnish the reputation of a much better film. What's worse is we have another reboot coming soon.
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