Fans of George A. Romero’s third zombie masterpiece, 1985’s Day of the Dead, are pretty used to this sort of shoddy treatment by now. First, we got the abysmal, 2005 straight-to-video sequel, Day of the Dead: Contagium, then we got the unforgivable 2008 remake, which inexplicably managed to sign up Ving Rhames in a cheap ploy designed to trick audiences into confusing it for a sequel to Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake. Then we got Day of the Dead: Bloodline, which, intent on finding new lows for the franchise, added a zombie rapist into the mix (no, seriously).
That was an entire four years ago, so, apparently, it’s now time to go back to the well and remake the movie as a Syfy original TV series. Beyond some re-used character names and the font used in the opening titles, there is absolutely nothing in this show that bears any resemblance to the original film.
Curiously, the zombies here also don’t really work like Romero’s living corpses, either. Four episodes in, bites don’t appear to be infectious, so once the characters are able to kill the extremely finite number of zombies who crawl out of a graveyard in Episode 1, they’ll presumably be home free. That said, these zombies are EXTREMELY deadly. Not for any real reason that the show ever establishes; it’s just that the characters never seem to realise that they could simply run (or walk) away from the things. The Episode 4 cliffhanger leaves one of our heroes in serious mortal danger purely because he’s apparently unwilling to get his legs wet.
And, yet, this is the best version of Day of the Dead since the original movie. And that is really, really depressing.
(First four episodes reviewed)
Day of the Dead is available on Syfy in the US and starts in the UK soon.
