Day of the Dead (2008)

I have a love of zombie films. Ever since I played the first Resident Evil on the PlayStation I was captivated, and quickly picked up George A. Romero's original Dawn of the Dead soon afterwards. At their best, zombie films can be scary, thrilling, disgusting, disturbing and altogether a terrific experience. With Day of the Dead however, we see the genre at it's worst.

As a remake of one of Romero's films, this was never going to compare favourably, but seeing as this was directed by Steve Miner (who directed one of my favourite B-Movies of the 80's, Warlock) I wasn't expecting something as truly awful as this. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying this is terrible because I'm a purist (I loved Zack Snyder's take on Dawn), this is just a genuinely horrible film. It's like Flight of the Living Dead without the charm of David Chisum and Kevin J. O'Connor to make it bearable.

Miner has never been a terrific director, but I'm just gobsmacked at this. It's as if he tried to do a more modern 'MTV' style film with choppy editing and music video camera movements, yet it falls flat on it's face. The footage in action sequences is sped up, making the undead look hilarious, running and flailing wildly, and it comes off as if the film should be set to Yakety Sax. Honestly, it makes Lake Placid look like a masterpiece, what happened here Steve? This is House of the Dead kind of bad.

The cast are altogether horrible. About as unbelievable Mena Suvari is as a soldier, Nick Cannon managed to make her look like a veteran, his stereotypical 'mouthy black guy' character just made me want to punch him right in the face every time he was onscreen. How this idiot is let anywhere near films is beyond me, it's almost as if he was just goofing around onset and they just filmed scenes around him, such as in one scene Cannon is holding a gun in each hand, one of which is a pump action shotgun. What kind of stupidity is that? The only decent actor in the whole thing was Ving Rhames, but they kill him off fairly early, so we're left with a cast of horrible actors playing annoying characters for most of the film.

I'm not sure words can aptly describe this abomination, it's inexplicably bad, and I've not even mentioned how the zombies on show here are able to climb walls and ceilings for some reason, are inhumanly fast and leap like cats. If that wasn't enough, the visual effects are diabolical, looking like a particularly bad video game at the best of times. Good god, just see something else, anything but this, don't even watch Day of the Dead as a curiosity to see how bad could it really be. It beats watching paint dry, but just barely.