Day of the Dead TV Review

Plot: The intense story of six strangers trying to survive the first 24 hours of an undead invasion. This ode to George A. Romero’s famous flesh-eaters reminds us that sometimes all it takes to bring people together is a horde of hungry zombies trying to rip them apart.

Review: Back in the early 2000s, zombies were pretty scarce on the big screen. With Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead, and Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, the undead brain-munchers made a comeback. AMC’s The Walking Dead cemented the zombie as the modern monster of choice. Now, in 2021, zombies seem quaint and are bordering on played out. With three Walking Dead series on the air and countless copycat shows and movies cashing in, SYFY brings another look at the reanimated deceased in Day of the Dead. Billed as an homage to George A. Romero’s 1985 trilogy capper of the same name, this new iteration of Day of the Dead is better than the prequel and two remakes that came before it. But, it still fails to do anything remotely original in the genre while being hampered by heavy-handed dialogue that fails in its attempt to be politically relevant.

Set in the modern-day, this new Day of the Dead puts us right at the start of the zombie apocalypse in the small town of Mawinhaken. Flashing back to Election Day, we meet far-right-wing Mayor Paula Bowman (Miranda Frigon) who is running for re-election. Local Detective McDermott (Mike Dopud), on the heels of a fight with his son Cam (Keenan Tracey), is called to the site of a fracking operation that has stumbled upon a cave with dead bodies in it. As the cast of characters is all introduced, it is immediately noticeable that many of them share names with the characters in Romero’s 1985 movie. There is a Rhodes as well as a Dr. Logan, echoing the key players in the original Day of the Dead. But, that is really where the similarities end.

This series does not feel very much like Romero’s zombie movies. Where Night of the Living Dead and its multiple sequels told a horror story while also including a satire of modern society, this series falls flat. Night of the Living Dead showed a story of racism with one of the most poignant endings in movie history while Dawn of the Dead showed the control that consumerism had on modern life. Day of the Dead showed the dark side of scientific experimentation as well as the pitfalls of military control, but the film remains the least of Romero’s original trilogy. This new series tries to take a broader approach, similar to Fear The Walking Dead, but with a slightly more humorous slant.

Series creator Jed Elinoff has experience in the genre with R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour amongst other kid-centric offerings. That approach often makes Day of the Dead feel like a show about zombies that was written by teenagers about adults. The dialogue is horrendous and characters reference zombie movies, which gives this series a weird meta-approach that they never take true advantage of. When the teens are on screen, they don’t sound like teenagers. When the adults are on screen, they sound like poorly written teenagers. All in all, it is hard to find very many likable or believable characters in this entire series.

The saving grace of this new series is the zombies themselves. The makeup effects are solid and reminded me the most of George A. Romero’s trilogy of films. These undead run the gamut from recently deceased to decrepit and all of them have the look of an old-school zombie plague. The actors under the make-up lurch slowly and evoke the classic living dead, but from time to time they move like the living. The problem is that in the early episodes, the zombies don’t get nearly enough screentime. As the living characters go about their daily lives, we get very little undead action for the first handful of episodes which makes caring about the subplots for these people all the less relevant to our viewing experience.

Day of the Dead feels like it wants to be a comedy but doesn’t know how to do it. The tongue-in-cheek tone comes in and out so much that I was taken out of the story entirely. It is hard to tell if this series was meant to be funny or satirical but it fails on both fronts. Nowhere near the production quality of other zombie shows on television, Day of the Dead doesn’t provide any characters worth investing in. As I watched the series, I just waited to see who would die next and even that failed to keep me entertained. There is not nearly enough in this show to warrant watching the premiere let alone another nine episodes after that.

Day of the Dead premieres on October 15th on SyFy.

Day of the Dead

TERRIBLE

3

-

Viewer Ratings (0 reviews)

Add your rating

1 star 2 stars 3 stars 4 stars 5 stars 6 stars 7 stars 8 stars 9 stars 10 stars