George Romero’s Day of the Dead hit theaters in 1985. Following up the masterpiece that was Dawn of the Dead in 1978, it wasn’t a huge success at the time. Over the years, however, it became a horror classic, featuring great makeup effects, memorable characters, and, without question, the best zombie in the entire Dead series.
The story ended, the survivors escaped, and that should have been that.
Then Romero went full George Lucas and couldn’t leave well enough alone.
What I really wanted to look at were the years following the zombie resurgence of the early 2000s. As much as I don’t want to spend much time discussing Romero’s later films, it’s impossible to ignore the release of Land of the Dead in 2005. Romero was back, zombies were popular again, and horror fans were paying attention.
Of course, that wasn’t the only thing happening. The Dawn of the Dead remake had been a major hit the year before, proving there was still plenty of life left in the zombie genre. And whenever something becomes popular in Hollywood, somebody inevitably starts looking for a familiar name to slap on a poster.
Day of the Dead 2: Contagium (2005)
I can distinctly remember walking down the horror aisle at Blockbuster Video, seeing this on the shelf, and thinking, “What the hell is this?” A sequel to Day of the Dead? It even used the same logo as Romero’s film. To make things even stranger, it was released by Anchor Bay Entertainment, one of the major DVD distributors at the time. Everything about the box was trying to convince me this was somehow a legitimate continuation of Day of the Dead. Well, aside from the dodgy Photoshopped zombie, but okay, given the time, it’s whatever.
I had to rent it. I had to see what this was about.
Now, while I can clearly remember seeing this in the store, I can’t for the life of me remember how far I made it into the movie before shutting it off. I was duped. They got me. Not only was this not connected to Romero’s film, it was one of the worst things I had ever seen. No hyperbole.
So of course, 20 years later, I went back to rewatch it, or watch it in full for the first time. Was it really as bad as I remembered?
Well, yes.
If you’re asking why I would do such a thing, the simple answer is because I’m an idiot. Which may very well be true. But after Scream Factory’s recent 4K release of the original Day of the Dead, I had this urge to revisit the non-Romero films. You know it’s a bad idea. You know nothing good can come from it. Yet for some reason, you still feel compelled to see what happens.
The film follows a virus outbreak inside a psychiatric hospital. Zombies appear, people die, and characters spend an alarming amount of time explaining things that don’t matter.
With a run time of 1 hr 43 minutes, that’s actually two minutes longer than the original.
Fuck off.
Oh, here’s the fun fact in all this. This was never intended to be a Day of the Dead sequel. It was filmed under the title Contagium. But as we established, zombies were popular again, and to cash in on the latest Romero film, the DOTD title was slapped on at the last minute.
Which explains a lot, because there is absolutely nothing about this movie that feels like its supposed predecessor. No tension. No atmosphere. No sense of dread. Just endless scenes of people standing around discussing viruses while the movie slowly drains the life out of the room.
It took me 20 years to finally finish this thing. And I can say without any doubt that I will never watch it again. Some movies deserve a second chance. This wasn’t one of them.
Oh, and the zombies talk in this one.
Again, fuck off.
Day of the Dead (2008)
If Contagium existed to cash in on Romero’s return, then the 2008 remake existed because Hollywood had apparently decided every horror movie made before 1990 needed a remake.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Halloween. The Omen. Black Christmas. Studios were digging through old horror titles like they had discovered a cheat code.
Eventually they got to Day of the Dead.
Unlike Contagium, this one at least had the advantage of feeling like an actual movie. I’m not saying that it’s good, but it was clearly made by people who knew what they were doing. For better or worse.
Director Steve Miner was no stranger to the genre. He had already directed Friday the 13th Parts 2 and 3, along with Halloween H20. The writer, Jeffrey Reddick, worked on the original Final Destination. You had recognizable actors like Mena Suvari, Ving Rhames (who ironically had already survived one zombie apocalypse in the Dawn remake), and let me check my notes… Nick Cannon.
Okay… maybe this isn’t sounding as impressive as I thought it would.
The story follows a group of soldiers and civilians in a small Colorado town as a mysterious virus begins turning people into zombies. There’s a military quarantine, a mad scientist, fast-moving infected, and enough gunfire to make you wonder if you’re accidentally watching a Resident Evil movie.
That’s the problem here. This isn’t a remake of Day of the Dead. It’s a generic, run-of-the-mill zombie film. Tons of bad CGI, cliché characters, forced one-liners, and action scenes that quickly become repetitive. The movie never develops an identity of its own.
It feels like a made-for-Sci-Fi Channel movie of the week. I’m honestly surprised that it wasn’t. Bland, uninspired, nothing to see here.
But it sucks less than Contagium.
Day of the Dead: Bloodline (2017)
Somehow this completely went under my radar, and while I may have heard about it in passing, this was going to be a first-time watch for me. Grand opening, grand closing.
Bloodline takes the basic premises of Romero’s film. Zombie outbreak? Check. Safe compound? Check. Then it tosses most of it out the window and introduces the worst villain in this not-so-official franchise. A character who is portrayed as a stalker and sexual predator before the outbreak even begins. That’s certainly… a choice.
The film follows Zoe, a medical student living in a survivor camp years after civilization collapsed. When she begins studying a zombie named Max in hopes of finding a cure, she discovers that he isn’t your average flesh-eating corpse.
Spoiler: he’s the creep. He also looks like a Great-Value Bub.
It feels less like a Dead movie and more like a completely different script that somebody threw zombies into at the last minute. Again, this has nothing to do with Romero. The main character makes decisions that are questionable even by horror movie standards. The rest of the cast is made up of characters you instantly forget as the movie goes along.
What I can’t get over is the decision to make your main antagonist an undead restraining order. He’s treated as more of a threat than the actual virus.
Honestly, there are several points where Capt. Rhodes would have solved this entire movie in about thirty seconds. Joe Pilato was the man.
When the project was first announced in 2013, the producers stated that they wanted this remake to stay close to Romero’s original.
Well, you can choke on that.
This was one of the more miserable experiences I’ve had watching a group of movies back-to-back-to-back. And I did it entirely of my own accord.
Romero’s last two entries, Diary and Survival of the Dead, get a bad rap among horror fans. Rightfully so. They’re rotten. Land of the Dead? Eh, it gets a pass. It’s fine.
It’s just such a shame to look at how strong that original trilogy was. And not just what became of it, but what spawned from it.
One more for the fire.
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