Day of the Dead review.
George A. Romero dares to return to his influential zombie series following back-to-back masterpieces. For years the redheaded stepchild of the horror franchise, Day of the Dead reviews have fared more favorably with modern reappraisal. It would have been a tall order for the third time to be a charm in comparison with two absolute classics. But that doesn’t mean that Day of the Dead doesn’t stand up well to the zombie sub-genre as a whole.
Classic movie reviews will contain spoilers.
Day of the Dead
Directed by George A. Romero
Written by George A. Romero
Starring Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander, Joe Pilato, Jarlath Conroy and Richard Liberty
Day of the Dead Review
Day of the Dead is a good movie. It’s even a very good movie. Unfortunately, it sits in the shadow of two giants. Night of the Living Dead invented what Dawn of the Dead perfected. No third movie was going to be able to compete with that. So, we aren’t going to make it compete with that. This Day of the Dead review will focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the movie and allow it to do what history hasn’t let it do. Stand on its own.
Society has completely collapsed by the time get to Day of the Dead. As usual, our story is about another small group of survivors. This time out Romero is interested in discussing military vs. science. We’ve covered this debate before in our Godzilla review. Godzilla sees the human characters struggle with the destruction that science can create and questions if it is worth the cost. Ultimately choosing science over weapons of war. In Day of the Dead, Romero seems to be saying that both science and war will fail us in our hour of need.
The setting this time around is an underground bunker. Scientists work away studying the undead while under military protection. This is where the messaging of Day of the Dead gets a little muddy. Captain Henry Rhodes (Joseph Pilato) is fed up with protecting scientists working on things he doesn’t believe in. He becomes increasingly unhinged and dangerous over the course of the movie. He’s the clear villain of the piece. He’s also…right?
I’m not going to argue that his actions or methods are correct…Rhodes is a monster. But we come to learn, lead scientist Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty) isn’t even working on a cure. He isn’t working on anything that will help what remains of humanity. He’s spending his time, at the risk of human lives, trying to domesticate the undead. We’ll get back to the results of that in a bit.
Our lead character is a scientist named Sarah Bowman (Lori Cardille). She opposes both Rhodes and Logan. This is our first clue that Romero doesn’t care for any institution at this point of his apocalypse. Sarah spends the movie navigating increasingly tense situations. Eventually she decides the few sane people left in the bunker need to get out of dodge. Unfortunately, one of the people that is no longer sane is Sarah’s lover Miguel.
Miguel, to be frank, is a problem. His dereliction of duty gets people killed. He gets himself bit. Sarah amputates the bite which only causes more problems with Rhodes since he can’t be sure he’s not still infected. Another situation Rhodes handles poorly where he isn’t even wrong. Miguel is a loose cannon, but his death at least allows Sarah and her group to escape the bunker. Day of the Dead ends the same way Dawn does…with a smaller group than we started with flying a helicopter into an unknown future.
Let’s backtrack to the most interesting character in Day of the Dead. When I said Dr. Logan was wasting his time and people’s lives on his research…I never said it wasn’t working. The star of the movie is a zombie named Bub. Bub is the product of Dr. Logan’s domestication project. Logan was able to unlock Bub’s memories and as a result Bub can perform some human functions. He even shows an ability to at least mimic speech.
Bub has a personality and feels an affection for Dr. Logan. When Rhodes kills Logan, Bub sets out on a pointed mission of revenge. Eventually shooting Rhodes and allowing him to be eaten by the zombies. Instead of shambling over to join the feast…Bub salutes the fallen soldier. This is all revelatory stuff. The kind of scientific breakthrough that would win awards in a different situation. The reason it’s a waste of time here is that it doesn’t help anyone.
The amount of time and effort Logan puts into just one zombie reaching Bub’s level is unworkable as a plan to sedate the dead. The other problem is that Bub only really trusts Logan. He immediately tries to shoot Rhodes with an empty gun before he knows to hate him. Logan effectively spent time making a well-trained dog instead of trying to solve any actual problem. And he kept doing it even though he had to know there was no method of making every zombie trust every human left. Another issue…Logan trains Bub by feeding him human flesh to reward him and gain his trust. How is that going to work out on a large scale.
There’s also the Stephen problem from Dawn of the Dead. We already saw a zombie in this world have, at least, surface memories. After he dies, Stephen not only heads back to the safehouse he remembers…he leads the zombie horde with him. He remembers where it is, how to get there, and even where the hidden entrance to the path is. Bub is more advanced than zombie Stephen was…but Stephen had also only been a zombie for a minute, and no one trained him to do anything. Logan may be crediting his work for a lot more than it’s accomplishing.
Day of the Dead is an interesting movie that is, at worst, a good one. There’s a level of confusion in the messaging that keeps it from reaching higher than that. Romero still had plenty of interesting things to say by his third installment…but he didn’t seem to have the conviction to say it with the same authority.
Scare Value
If you’re going to play the comparison game with Day of the Dead…well…it really depends on what you’re comparing it to. It finishes in an easy third place in Romero’s original Dead trilogy. That’s not a knock. Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead are stone cold classics. If you’re comparing it to the gluttony of zombie movies that exist, it’s way better than most. For the purposes of this Day of the Dead review we aren’t comparing it to anything. That comes when we do the George A. Romero zombie movie ranking.
3.5/5
