Day of the dead: When there is no more room in Hell, the crappy remakes will walk the Earth

Before I begin with this, let me start off with a couple confessions.  The first will come as no surprise to my regular reader (all one of him):  I love George Romero.  I consider myself a fan of zombies in general, and Romero’s work in particular.  Having said that, I come to Confession 2: I was not at all enamoured by the third in his trilogy, Day of the Dead.  After two solid works of horror (Night and Dawn), both of which did a fair job moonlighting as social satire, Day was like the red-headed stepchild.  Rather than equal parts fear, humor and satire, with Day, Romero seemed to rely only and completely on a decent premise and lots of gore to carry the feature.  The idea was sound and interesting, but the story seemed to lack the elements that made the first two films great.

Perhaps because of my overall disappointment with Romero’s Day of the Dead, I didn’t approach the 2008 remake with my usual trepidation about such things — especially when I recalled that the Dawn remake of 2004 was actually pretty damned good, all things considered.  I can’t tell you what I expected when I decided to give this movie a chance.  I’ve seen too many remakes to have actually expected an improvement on Romero’s pic.  I do know that I approached this movie with a wide-eyed optimism.  I expected it to not be great. 

But this was a travesty.

First, I’ll discuss the good.  This shouldn’t take long.  The movie starred Mena Suvari, who, in spite of her roles in the American Pie movies (if film has a retarded kid brother, it is the “teen sex comedy”), is actually very talented (see American Beauty).  She and Ving Rhames, who had a bit role, actually did very well in this movie, and sold the plot as well as they possibly could.  Veteren actor Ian McNeice (Sci-Fi’s Dune) plays a pot-smoking, anti-government DJ who is actually a pretty likeable character.  Though the other actors aren’t as well-known, they actually do very well.  Indeed, if anything could have saved this film, it would have been the acting by the principals. 

Aside from the acting, there were some fairly cool effects, but they served mostly to highlight the weaknesses in the movie.  And what are those weaknesses?  Well, actually, the zombies are.  Not the makeup, or the gore effects, which were all very well-done — but as characters. 

I don’t usually consider myself one to get caught up in mythology, but there are certain things you have to account for if you’re going to go off the reservation in an established genre.  Like the fact that these dead, diseased corpses seem to rot immediately after death (not just start to rot — but the second they revive and become the living dead, they develop open sores).  Or the fact that the zombies “retain part of who they were,” but are still, for the most part, flesh-eating monsters — but who are able to think and reason (in our second encounter with a zombie, we discover he has hidden the bodies of his parents after dining on them — and then later pretends to be dead in order to get the jump on his next meal).  Finally, though the creatures are dead, and brain function is supposed to be at a minimum, they appear to have gained superhuman abilities, like jumping at abnormal heights and distances, wall-climbing, etc. 

The zombie problem only compounds the various plot holes, which become more apparent at the end of the movie. 

Caution:  What follows contains spoilers.  Do not read, if you intend to watch this movie.

I think, even more than the hyper-animated corpses, what really got to me about this movie were the wide open plot holes.  For example, before our hero survivors head for the old army bunker, they go to the military roadblock.  The one that’s supposed to quarantine the town.  Nobody is alive — and what soldiers there are have been turned to zombies.  Yet, at the end of the movie, we learn that, in a very short period of time, the plague has been contained.  How?  There was no effective barracade.  Nobody was dealing with it once the heroes left town.  Sure, they blew up a bunch of zombies (did you know that propellants could completely incinerate the human body in mere seconds?  Me neither.), but there were a lot more. 

Then you have the fact that the hero, Sarah (Suvari) is very concerned about Bud, who she refuses to kill even before being certain that he won’t eat her (he’s a vegetarian and has a crush), has no such qualms about running down her mother like a dog in the street.  “It’s not her,” she tells her brother.  Even though Bud, evidently, is still very much Bud.

What’s really annoying here is that this movie had the tools to be great.  They had a good idea from Romero, a pretty decent starting point, the opportunity to improve on the original, a decent cast and good effects.  But the writer botched the hell out of the script, and the director was just not able to overcome its deficiencies.

Establishing my Browncoat Cred: Firefly Companions and then some

Last week, I finally picked up the “Firefly” Official Companion — both volumes.  Point of interest: you can get both for a pretty decent price over at Amazon.  Had a bit of money left over, so I also got the comic, “Serenity: Those Left Behind,” which, for fans who haven’t read it, goes a bit further into what happened between the final episode of “Firefly,” and the beginning of “Serenity” — including why Shepard Book left the ship.

The Companions (a word which, as a Browncoat, I have some trouble saying in reference to a book) are mostly comprised of some concept art, photos and scripts (if you have both books, you get scripts for every single episode, which is great).  Also included is some production trivia and commentary which, though it doesn’t further your journey into the “Firefly” universe, is a great way for fans to get better acquanted with the thought processes of Joss Whedon, the producers, writers, actors and staff.

Fans may have hoped for a little more concept art, and perhaps a bit more commentary, but what you get is still great.  For one, it’s nice to be able to read the translations of the Chinese spoken throughout the shows and finally be able to know just what it is the characters are saying.  That itself is both enlightening and, often, hilarious.

Personally, I’d have liked a bit more insight into the “Firefly” universe, though the books do a pretty good job with it.  One thing I’d have liked to see is the official rules for “Tall Card.”  In the DVD commentary, Adam Baldwin mentions that there were official rules, though according to the Firefly Wiki (linked above), that may have been an error on his part.  But still.

In short, the Companions are great for any Browncoat.  Personally, now that both volumes are available, I wouldn’t bother getting one without the other.  For one, Volume II completes an interview with Joss Whedon started in Volume I.  For another, you can get both for about 30 bucks, and a fan who reads the first volume will miss the completion of the second.

The comic, “Serenity: Those Left Behind” is a great addition to the Firefly story, as I mentioned above.  The most eye-opening thing about it is the furtherance of Book’s character, and the near-dissolution of his relationship to Mal.  The book, much like anything produced after the show, was created for fans — and like everything else, the care with which it was crafted shows the depth of Whedon’s appreciation for them.

Though there are many other items that any Browncoat would love to have, such as books of essays on the philosophy and universe of “Firefly,” documentaries, etc., these three volumes are a heck of a good way to start your collection.  Well, these, and an “I aim to misbehave” t-shirt.