Day of the Dead

Zombies aren’t exactly the most interesting movie monsters to watch. Though there is clearly an avid fan-base for the flesh-devouring creatures through their large coverage in media showcased in things like books, movies, games, etc, it doesn’t escape the fact that they are very simple and boring creations. The restrictions around what does or doesn’t constitute a zombie makes them pretty limiting in creativity and its not a threat that seems like it would be difficult to get rid of in a tough situation. Films about zombies have also fallen prey to repetitive formulas, with the story, characters and writing/themes often needing to be written around a one-track idea in order to get something strong out of it. In the sub-genre’s infancy, the grandfather of the genre, director George A. Romero, created a trilogy of films that not only opened the world up to this ever-popular phenomenon, but made sure to add spice and creative flair to each film as even he was aware that it could become stale without it. 1968’s Night of the Living Dead was the intro to the concept and laid the groundwork for how the premise would play out, 1978’s Dawn of the Dead showed that walking corpses could be used for more than scares and gore by acting as a metaphorical look into society’s dependence on material goods, and his third movie, 1985’s Day of the Dead, tackled the element that would make zombies a bit more interesting in future versions, the reactions and decline of the human being. Trapped in an underground army bunker during a zombie outbreak that has overtaken the world, fellow soldiers, regular civilians and scientist are holed up in this secured location in order to try and find a solution to the pandemic. With no responses from other survivors and with limited resources, the soldiers start to lose themselves to madness, especially the leading general, Captain Rhodes (played by Joe Pilato) who attempts a coup and plans to execute anyone who objects to his rule. The one woman in the compound, Dr Sarah Bowman (played by Lori Cardille) has issues with the team’s sexist behavior and is put in a bad situation when the lead scientist, Logan (played by Richard Liberty) plans to domestic the zombies and has even managed to keep one docile, which he named Bub (played by Sherman Howard). After another zombie extraction goes awry and some soldiers get infected, the hostilities get too extreme and the place becomes a battle between the soldiers and Sarah and her group which includes helicopter pilot, John (played by Terry Alexander), and radio operator Bill McDermott (played by Jarlath Conroy) made even worse by the fact that a herd of zombies is now in the facility and is ready to chow done on what little is left of humanity. For a third entry in a creator who seems well-versed in this genre, Day of the Dead doesn’t reach the same level of impact as it predecessors, but still resulted in a functional movie that paved well for future projects to explore dark psychological issues within the realms of a zombie framework.

The story, written by Romero, is simultaneously one of the film’s strongest and weakest elements. On the one hand, the set up for this film is quite ingenious and very ahead of its time. At the time, zombies were still a relatively new concept (this only being the fourth zombie film ever made in total) and people would’ve expected to see a similar vibe continue from the previous films, but this movie has very little zombie action until the climax, instead focusing more on the mental well-being on the human characters, and how they have heavily devolved due to the isolation that came from this pandemic. Later zombie projects, particularly the very popular AMC show, The Walking Dead, or the 2013 video game, The Last of Us, showed that zombies aren’t the interesting element in a zombie product, but rather the people’s reactions to the new world order and how civilization is built again (or even if it can be). The complexities and emotions that can be explored are great juicy drama, and the isolated location would only help to build that intense uncomfortable atmosphere. The problem is moreso the fact that the movie strangely decides to skip over a good chunk of the descent into madness. The movie instead opts to focus on the aftermath of that descent and highlight more of the paranoia and distrust caused between people with conflicting ideals being stuck in a stressful situation where those with power aren’t held back by morals anymore. Skipping over this devolution of the cast of characters makes it hard to empathise with most of them, especially those that are on the bad side, as you get no idea of who they were before, and therefore can’t feel sorry when they eventually get devoured later on. Romero’s films often have commentary overruling the characters and story, but since this commentary is so focused on the individuals involved, it needed to be made stronger in order for this to fully work. The other new element is the idea of domesticating the zombies and making them pets, providing a new spin on the formula and while something that wouldn’t be like nowadays with everyone’s perspective of zombies, at least offered a change of pace from the previous examples. This film may not handle some of these ideas in the best way, but did lay the blueprints out for others to try and improve upon them later down the line.

The characters are what hold together an apocalypse story.  Like previously mentioned, this confined area mixed with the military background and savage world around them allows for characters to go from good to bad very easily and the descent could be interesting, but since that was skipped, it takes what could be complex and makes it incredibly simple. The characters are completely one note and, most importantly of all, lack any sense of sympathy or charisma. Almost every character in this movie is horribly unlikeable, so there’s no sense of tragic fall or despair when anyone dies. The only one who manages to be likeable is the main lead, who though a pretty standard ”tough chick” stereotype, is presented in a realistic understandable way that allows people to root for her, even if its just because everyone else is either incredibly bland or detestable. Her acting is pretty solid too, although she has some over-the-top reactions from time to time that feel out of place and clash with the mood being presented, but she isn’t the only one who suffers from this. Her boyfriend is seriously one of the worst characters in any zombie movie; a purely detestable unimaginably, whiny, bland, awfully acted character. Everyone else’s acting is incredibly pronounced and unrealistic, unfitting for a zombie survival movie. The good guys are overly cheery and too carefree and one note for the situation at hand, and the bad guys are complete tropes and are only there to be zombie food during the climax, nothing else of interest. The friendly zombie, which they call Bub, does have a very Frankenstein’s monster like quality to him from his demeanor, appearance, and even attitude towards violence and loss, and even though its a little too similar to that character without any of the great complexity, it still results in an otherwise harmless role . Romero does deserve a lot of credit for his insistence on casting a woman and a person of color as the leads in each of his films, but the downside can be that they aren’t the most engaging of characters. It results in an interesting comparison as the black leads in the past two films are pretty cool whereas this one is quite flat and unmemorable, whereas the female leads in the previous films are quite forgettable and don’t contribute much and this one here is perfectly serviceable.

The star of this movie is the effects and how insanely graphic and realistic Romero makes them out to be. Everyone who was involved with creating and delivering these gore effects and making them look as fleshy and gruesome as possible clearly put a lot of effort into their craft and it resulted in something very memorable, with a lot of credit deserving to go to the head of the leader of the special effects, Tom Savini. Even in comparison to the other zombie films prior to this, you can feel a real gritty, gory side to this film that feels a lot more painful. This movie is a hard R and therefore allowed to go full force with its gore and that leads to some excessively brutal and gory death scenes. The trade-off of having no good or sympathetic characters killed off is that it allows them to go overboard and graphic with the bad guys being killed, and it results in some truly memorable and even disturbing kills. While the gore is hard to stomach at moments, the extremes it goes to and how little they care in what they show is commendable (even when it goes so far as to rip off someone’s head). The effects are also surprisingly good for the time, looking pretty real on the bodies before and after they’ve turned, it actually looks like most of the ripping and tearing is actually happening. The movie actually has a few choice scares that work because of the quiet build-up and genuine surprise reveal, especially the opening scene. The music by John Harrison is like most horror pieces at the time with its stylisation, musical flair and clear 80s synth; featuring some very interesting musical instruments and dramatic turns in the music, but still keeping a dark undertone with a great melody to back it up.

Day of the Dead may not be one of the best zombie movies, but as one of the grandfathers of the genre as well as being the first to introduce one of the genre’s key components in elevating itself above mindless human massacre, it deserves some praise for that. It’s an interesting movie to pick apart and see where the cracks would later be mended, but it requires sitting through a lot of boring talks and a lot of detestable bland characters, then the ending will come along and everyone will get into the classic zombie ‘’charm’’. Out of the original three, this one probably has the best concept and the best main character, but the others had far more identifiable people, and made their stories more interesting and not as one note as this one did. For the nostalgia-hungry fans who love the classic gore fests, this one’s perfectly good to watch, but for a real dive into a zombie world, maybe check out the others. In an ironic twist, this zombie movie has no meat to chew on.