Rented the horror/zombie film Day of the Dead: Bloodlines, an alleged remake of the third “Of the Dead” films by George Romero from 1985. There’s something going on with the rights to Day of the Dead since this is the fourth film in the Day franchise and all three follow-ups have been terrible. One was a prequel, the other a remake with a laughable budget… this is another remake and isn’t as bad in the same way hitting your toe with a hammer and only losing your toenail is better than knocking the whole digit off. Yeah, this is that kind of review.
The original Day of the Dead followed a military outpost with civilian scientists trying to figure out a cure to the Night of the Living Dead/Dawn of the Dead plague. The big twist was that one of the zombies, Bub, seemed smarter than the rest. Didn’t stop them all from getting eaten (or chased off). It was a gory but effective movie with a little philosophizing to boot.
This remake gives us some prequel scenes to explain how the eventual “smart” zombie got bitten… since we know we need to know these background details in horror film remakes. It seems the new version of the zombie was the lead scientist ladie’s attempted rapist… he got bit shortly after he tried to rape her so I guess… ummm… attempting sexual assault when you get turned into a zombie makes you a smart zombie? And that smart zombie can chase around his victim for the course of the movie? Is this saying something about gender roles and sexual violence or is it just cheap exploitation?
Pro-tip: it’s cheap exploitation.
Anyhow, the new smart zombie is REALLY smart and has ninja skills. He infiltrates the military base by hanging on under the car…. and he crawls through air vents, etc. At some point you gotta ask if this is a zombie movie or a slasher film… and then you realize you just put too much thought into utter crap.
The film is clearly low budget and ugly looking with gore effects that are ok, maybe if The Walking Dead didn’t easily surpass them every week. The acting is bad with some characters clearly being dubbed by another actor. The lead actress is ok in the minute-to-minute scenes but is dreadful at other times (and seems to have a problem walking naturally down corridors). The original film had some…. shall we say overacting? This film barely reaches “acting”.
Skip this film if you see it on streaming services (I saw it on iTunes) and you were fan of the original, George Romero films, or zombies/horror films in general. It’s amateurish, ill-considered, not a little ugly, and exploitative in crass not even fun ways. I may have found the worst film of 2018 already.
Score: 52