Today’s quick review: Day of the Dead. As an unknown disease sweeps through a small Colorado town, Captain Rhodes (Ving Rhames) and Corporal Sarah Bowman (Mena Suvari) lead the effort to blockade the town. But when the infected begin turning into flesh-eating zombies, Sarah must find her younger brother Trevor (Michael Welch) and his girlfriend Nina (AnnaLynne McCord) and get them to safety.
Day of the Dead is a budget zombie action movie about a zombie outbreak in a small town. In spite of its name, Day of the Dead has nothing to do with the George A. Romero film. Instead it tells an original story where the zombie virus is airborne, the zombies act strangely, and a handful of survivors must find their way to safety. Weak storytelling and low-budget special effects make Day of the Dead a miss for most viewers.
Day of the Dead suffers from a poor sense of progression. The handful of minutes the movie spends on the unknown disease are not enough to capture the audience’s interest, and the transition to a full-blown zombie scenario is too abrupt to take seriously. Rather than build up its conflict deliberately, Day of the Dead infects a random assortment of characters and turns them loose on the survivors with no real plan in mind.
Even this blunt setup would be adequate with the right style of action, but here Day of the Dead is hampered by its budget. The action is choppy and poorly choreographed, and much of it relies on misplaced CGI. The zombies move quickly and could pose a dangerous threat if given the proper treatment, but the movie never figures out how to use them to full effect. Instead, it tosses them in haphazardly and hopes for the best.
In the end, Day of the Dead has little to recommend it. It is missing the campy charm of other budget horror movies, its character development is almost nonexistent, and the handful of new ideas it explores are lost in the clutter. Day of the Dead suffers from poor storytelling fundamentals, and its zombie action is not handled well enough to pick up the slack. Give it a shot only if you are a zombie fan with flexible standards.
For a monstrous outbreak in a small town, try Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. For a better zombie movie starring Ving Rhames, try Dawn of the Dead. For a thriller about an outbreak of a new disease in a rural town, check out Outbreak.
[4.5 out of 10 on IMDB](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489018/). I give it a 4.0 for a loose plot and weak special effects.