Review: Day of the Dead (1985)

I have to preface this review with the following statement - George Romero is the all-time king of zombie flicks.  With that said, you will know my prejudice.  I find the slow-moving zombie hordes to be more intriguing as a menace and appreciate that Romero does not just concentrate on the living dead as a generic horror element, but uses them to highlight many of the problems that human beings have, even when faced with an overwhelming enemy.  He is, in my opinion, the reason that the zombie trend has grown to the level of popularity it holds today and the basis of the way the best writers are using these classic baddies.

Day of the Dead is Romero’s third flick in his (still ongoing) “…of the Dead” franchise.  In this installment, the master takes a look at life inside a military bunker in a completely overrun world.  Two factions exist within this miniature society, the soldiers and the scientists.  The scientists work at trying to find a way to cure whatever is turning people into zombies while those with the guns run the place.  Their interaction is less than ideal, as the soldiers see what the scientists are doing as going nowhere.  In addition, those same soldiers must risk their lives to capture live zombies so that the egg-heads can have something to experiment on.  And yet another complication in the mix, one of the scientists is trying to train a zombie to think and obey orders, attempting to restore at least a portion of the creature’s humanity.

As can be expected, the movie plays out and slowly but surely people start to get bitten, whittling the number of survivors down.  Once the soldiers find out that the zombie-training scientist has been feeding his pet project - lovingly named “Bub” - their dead buddies, the real shit hits the fan.  Eventually, the soldiers send the scientists off to die while one angry scientist floods the base with the undead.

Though this is at first glance the typical zombies-eating-survivors-until-only-a-few-remain story, Romero brings to it a message.  The true enemy in the film is hardly the hordes of easily controlled, shambling dead folks.  The enemies of the humans are other humans.  Even in a world where there is a clear and definable obstacle to overcome, people still turn on each other.  And in the meantime, one of those flesh-eating monsters begins to learn, remember and even care for his handler.  The message?  Maybe the undead are here to clear us out and make way for something less self-destructive.

Once again, Romero proves that he can tell a good horror story while still bringing in his poignant observations about humanity and society.  Unfortunately, many of those observations would be lost over time, as he continued to make films in the “…of the Dead” franchise, with each becoming less and less meaningful.  Still, all zombie fans should watch the first four at least, if only to understand where stories such as The Walking Dead originated.

In more news, it looks like a Day of the Dead remake is in the works.  They’ve already tried this once… sort of… back in 2008, with a straight-to-video film.  There has also been a Dawn of the Dead remake (courtesy of Zack Snyder), though that one switched out the slow zombies for the fast ones.  Personally, I don’t see how anyone could remake Day of the Dead and still retain what made the original so good, although I will probably end up going to see it regardless, if only out of curiosity.

Day of the Dead courtesy of mildlypleased.com