Review of the Week:
A Bloody Celebration
Considering the fact,
that The Walking Dead will be making
its return to television on October 23rd, I figured it be the
perfect time to review a zombie movie. I thought, if I were to do a review, it
had to be on something from the original creator of the modern zombie:
George A. Romero. This movie represents the third entry in Romero’s Dead series, starting with Night of the Living Dead.
The film takes place in an underground silo, where a
group of scientists and military personnel are trying to both, figure out the
cause of the epidemic and merely survive. Just from the first thirty minutes of
the movie, the viewer can already tell that the situation the characters are
in, is a hopeless one. Both the scientists, and the soldiers assigned to
protect them are starting to doubt their mission and are considering to abandon
the silo. Most of the men are feeling claustrophobic and are slowly losing
their minds. Some of them are more screw loose than others, especially one of the
scientists, that the survivors nicknamed Dr. Frankenstein. It doesn’t take long
before everything goes wrong in ways the audience never expected! Don’t worry,
no spoilers from me.
Most of the cast in this film aren’t well known, but they
do an excellent job of expressing the characters slow decent into madness. For
me the stand-out characters are Colonel Rhodes, played by Joe Pilato and
Sherman Howard who plays a zombie named Bub. Pilato’s performance as Rhodes is
amazing, it’s incredible how unlikable he portrays his character, he’s someone
you just love to hate with all your heart. Howard’s portrayal of Bub is great. He’s
supposed to play a zombie who’s slowly evolving human traits and Howard does it
brilliantly. The performance reminds me of Andy Serkis’ performance as Caesar
from the Planet of Apes reboot series, where a creature slowly learns to do
human tasks, even at one point learns how to use a gun. Coincidently, this film
stars Greg Nicotero, the main zombie makeup artist on The Walking Dead, just thought I should mention it.
Fair warning, for whoever decides to watch this movie,
there is a SHIT ton of gore in this movie (sorry about the language, but it’s
true). If you’re not used to that sort of thing, I recommend at least checking
out the original Night of the Living Dead,
the gore is much tamer than this movie, there’s hardly any at all. If you’re
not that kind of person, then you should check out this film from the OG creator.
Final
Rating:
Day of the Dead is available on Blu-Ray and DVD, my copy was
made by the lovely people at Scream Factory, their collector’s edition is well
worth your time and money (they did not pay me to tell you this, it’s just my
opinion). As for alternate recommendations, I first point you towards Dawn of the Dead, the second entry the Dead series, it’s not as dark as Day, but has a really cool setting with
memorable characters, lastly I recommend checking out 28 Days Later, while it’s not exactly your typical zombie flick, it
does provide an interesting scenario.
Until
next time, remember to aim for the head…
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