As I believe I mentioned on one of the last Straight-to-DVD Corner posts, the straight-to-video sequels of theatrical releases (such as The Butterfly Effect 2, Urban Legends: Bloody Mary, and I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer) are never as much fun as the franchises from which they were born (and I realize that the originals of the sequels I just listed were not particularly fantastic, but all were fun for what they were. So leave me alone about it. Seriously. Get off my back.) But I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if I didn’t find an exception to my little rule (not that I’m saying anything bad about monkeys, I would consider myself lucky to be the uncle of any sort of primate, except maybe the baboon because those guys seem particularly dangerous.)
The movie of which I speak is Steve Miner’s (Friday the 13th 2 and 3, Lake Placid, House, Halloween H2O) remake of George Romero’s Day of the Dead. Granted, the remake really has nothing to do with Romero’s original, and is really just using the name for marketing purposes. Generally, this kind of thing pisses me off. But this movie is a lot of good, gory fun. It’s got a lot of detractors out there, purists who consider this kind of thing to be shitting all over Romero’s great name, but I will not be one of them. If you go in expecting something as thematically rich as the original, you’re guaranteed disappointment. I went in only wanting a zombie fix, not expecting it to even be good enough to satisfy that, but it was more than enough fun. (And provides a bit of an antidote for the unbelievable disappointment that was George Romero’s Diary of the Dead–don’t get me started on that one.) A lot of it is played for laughs, and it feels like the Return of the Living Dead sequels should have been, rather than those lazy Sci-Fi Channel premieres from a couple years back. No, it isn’t a great movie, but if you are a zombie freak, it is a helluva lot better than all those DIY zombie pics they distribute with cool box art to make you think they are just as good as the stuff they put in the theaters.
And you know what? I think Miner is a fun horror director, he’s been overly dumped on by genre critics. He seems to be having fun with them. And remember House with William Katt? He seems to be having just as much fun with this one.
If you don’t like it, well…that’s your problem.
Stop bothering me.
Forever yours, T.
I sorta liked Diary :/
Baboons can be dangerous, especially if you run into one named Shakma.
The original Day of the Dead isn’t Romero’s best anyway (except for the guy who played Bub), so it’s not a bad film to remake. Steve Miner is like the American Bob Clark (R.I.P.), alternating between decent horror films and crappy comedies (Soul Man, My Father the Hero).