'They are us'
Day of the Dead 7.5
I am a big fan of George A. Romero's original, seminal zombie classic Night of the Living Dead from 1968. The concept of which was so visceral, cinematic and relatively achievable on a low budget that I suppose it was always inevitable to spawn a line of sequels/reboots/imitators. Of course the resulting slew are of varying quality and relevance to the original triumph. Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985) have done the best job at recreating some of the original magic in my book - but they so do in very different ways. Dawn works on the (perhaps more artistically respectable) mechanism of tension creation and character interaction, where as day is more of a visual feast (pardon the pun). Day of the Dead was striking to me, as Night was to so many 17 years earlier, mainly in the execution of it's physical effects. More on that shortly.
First the negatives.
The acting is very stereotypically 1980s (as is the music and costumes for that matter) - that is to say, surface heavy and attention geabbing but not attention holding. There is some nice, if slightly over-enthusiastic acting by Miguel, but a particularly uncontrolled, fatuous turn from the major - it reminded me of when I watched certain films of the same era like Running Man, there the performances actually end up detracting from the film overall, thank god we all grew up a bit.
Also, it's a shame there wasn't more depth to some of the characters. We, the audience, are clearly morally aligned with Sarah and her medical team over the military who are all portrayed as entirely one dimensional and immature idiots. It was their arm of the story that I found least compelling. As a continuation of this, there is no denying that the human story does let itself down in places, not to derail the film overall as the effects are that good, but next to two classics from the same year, a Room with a View and The Breakfast Club, this does feel very throw-away.
All of the above should arguably be enough for the film to fail in it's mission. But it's mission is to entertain, shock and sometimes disgust - all three it does. The first minute really works and sets us up for the following. I liked how the shooting style was never overly frantic, because it easily could have been. From what I remember from the others in the franchise, Romero has always used the content to get the point across and not relied on quick takes, jarring music or jump scares.
What the film does better than anything else is the incredible prosthetic special effects. They start when we meet Logan aka Dr frankenstien, who has a makeshift lab of horrors and is perpetually covered in blood. What we see there I will not describe to avoid doing it a considerable disservice, but is disgusting and quite brilliant, equal to any effects in what has since become the benchmark of such work, An American Werewolf in London. The impressive gore continues throughout and gives many WTF moments which elevate the film hugely for me. There is a huge difference is this style of gore which is above all creative and inventive, and that of the more modern 'torture-porn' phenomenon which largely focuses on cheaper feeling shock and awe - this may be a subject to explore another time.
Dr Frankenstien's monster Bub is an interesting plotline. Bub is an infected zombie like any other, but displays more human traits of intelligence and calmness, so is nurtured by Logan. It is no coincidence that the name Frankenstien is used for Logan, not just because he is a mad scientist playing god, but his 'creation' is like that of the monster from James Whale's far superior sequel to his own 1931 original, Bride of Frankenstien, where the monster is shown to have deep feelings. For me it was this element of the plot of Day that forms the driving force of the story and gives the film it's moral rooting.
It is interesting how the zombie genre films share so many specifics in many cases. Often the living people are just as much of a threat as the monsters. There is often a struggle between those with guns and those with brains about how to handle the situation, which can turn deadly, as deadly as the flesh-eating undead.
Day of the Dead fits in well with the rest of the franchise. Although in truth, after this third instalment, things do start to become very cheap and lose most of their gravitas. If it had stopped there, it would have gone down in history as one of cinema's greatest trilogies. Night will always be king, but as mentioned this is almost on par with Dawn for me.. Dawn was good in retrospect, this works as it plays.
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