Welcome back everyone to Night of the Reviews. I hope so far you have enjoyed my thoughts on Night and Dawn of Romero's Dead saga. Whose ready to talk about Day of the Dead?
By this point in time, Night of the Living Dead was continuing to be heralded as a classic. Dawn of the Dead was released to much success as well. Everyone seemed to be on board of the Romero train. The way he tackled his sequels was a very cool way to approach things. It allowed us to see a wider scale of what was going on with society and the zombie apocalypse. It also gave us a different set of characters. I mean it would have been very difficult to find any way to save any of Night's characters as all of them perished at the end of that film. The interesting thing was that we see Peter and Francine survived the end of Dawn. Unfortunately, Romero was not able to bring those characters back for Day of the Dead due to copyright issues. For me, I don't know if I would have been happy if we would have seen them return. It would have been nice but unneeded. It would have also taken away from the anthology approach that these films were going from Night to Dawn. I also have to applaud that Romero didn't rush things for Day of the Dead. He was able to secure a three picture deal from a studio. But he wanted to find a right story and to take some time with other films.
Day of the Dead tells a smaller personal story than Dawn. It's a very different world than when we last seen. The zombies have overrun the world and outnumber the humans. A group of survivors live in an underground bunker with a military presence. Scientists and Military come to clashing over determining what to do about the zombies: educate, eliminate, or escape. Everyone in this movie deliver amazing performances. Lori Cardille delivers a strong performance as Sarah. This honestly feels like a prototype in a way of what Barbara would become in the Savini version of Night of the Living Dead. Joseph Pilato absolutely kills it as Rhodes. He is our villain and brilliantly makes us hate him as the military leader. Richard Liberty gets to give us his best creepy doctor as the scientist that makes the story come to a head. Honestly without him, the movie wouldn't move forward. He is the catalyst of why the story goes absolutely bonkers. And he does it all in the name of science. And then there's the big standout for the zombies with Sherman Howard's portrayal of Bub. This is such a fantastic performance that many would try to emulate later on.
That's one of the brilliant things of Day of the Dead. It's a story ultimately about three sects of humanity coming to a head. We have our typical survivors with Sarah, Miguel, Bill, and John. These are all characters that feel very much like what we had seen in Night and Dawn. Rhodes is the leader of the military. He doesn't want to accept the role. It was just unfortunately something that had passed down to him. And the responsibility of all it all, it just drives him absolutely mad. There's honestly no way that Rhodes could not have gone any other way. And then we have the scientists represented in Logan, who is trying to find a way of rationalizing everything. But through the way he's handling things, it's just driving him further into madness. Especially as it becomes evident that he's utilizing Rhodes' soldiers to further his experiments with the zombie, Bub. And then in the background of all this, we have our zombies doing what zombies do.
When compared to Dawn, I love Day of the Dead so much more. It is very well paced. The interactions between the three groups is fantastic. The really interesting addition for me was seeing the evolution of the zombie lore with Bub. It's interesting seeing that there is more going on with them. They are not necessarily mindless after all. They just are a bit more simple than humanity. It continues to push the idea that they are us and we are them that Romero is a bit known for. I also love the descent that Miguel and Rhodes both go into. It establishes that there are high stakes in this world and everyone at any moment could have this happen to them.
The effects in this film are also extremely top notch. They definitely have evolved since Dawn. I mean look at the zombies in that film and compare them to this one. It's in a way like night and day. They seem a bit more further along as well in their process. They look more dried out like jerky. It's super brilliant. And yes when the gore is on screen, it's there in spades.
Oh yeah, when I was researching this film I found out something pretty cool. Originally written, George had some elements that seemed a bit overbudget. It was expanding more on how the rest of society would be. And apparently it was elements that would later be reused and fleshed out for Land of the Dead. That's something that is super cool to hear. It took George at least three different rewrites to make Day into what it is known as today. Fun facts and the more you know.
In the end, Day of the Dawn is a great entry in this series. I definitely recommend it.
Rating: 4.25 out of 5.
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