Day of the Dead

There's some nice symmetry in my watch history having this and The Godfather Part II back to back. I came into GF2 with this legacy of "as good as, if not better than, The Godfather", and I was somewhat let down by the end product. Day Of The Dead is the exact opposite; it is usually viewed as the weakest of the original Romero Dead trilogy, and yet, I came out liking it more than I expected. If you come into it having viewed any of the zombie movies or shows made since The Walking Dead, it might not seem much different. Humans are the monsters, zombies are mostly background noise, how do we survive in this world, resources low, and so on. What makes this feel a little different is in presentation. More than Night Of The Living Dead (which is just a small-scale siege movie) or Dawn Of (which is an action movie in disguise), Day Of The Dead is all about the characters, and they're the deepest characters Romero has ever drawn in his zombie series, in the sense that nobody comes off as a cartoon or a simplistic template. The lead, Sarah, is a strong, bold woman who is also foolishly defensive of the lead scientist at the underground base everybody is stuck in, and she is also on a quixotic quest to find a way to cure the zombie plague. The lead scientist, Logan, is dedicated to finding a way to domesticate and even communicate with zombies, but is using some monstrous means to do so, and doesn't seem to have an idea as to a way how to apply his theory practically. Rhodes, the highest ranking military officer in the camp, is tired of losing men pursuing scientific endeavors that have shown no results, but also so stubborn and broken by being cloistered underground, he can't conceive of a strategy for survival beyond getting out. Everybody's position is understandable, even justifiable to an extent, but everyone is also biased and can't see past their own POV. It is this powder keg waiting to blow that forms the backbone of the movie: different people with different ideas on survival, who are growing increasingly incapable of reconciling these ideas, and I quite enjoyed it. The movie is dripping with the tension that has been building in this base and is now reaching a boiling point. Even the politest conversations have a tension in them. Everybody's on edge, and it all builds to the cathartic climax. The arguing can get a bit tiresome, and some of the secondary characters are somewhat irritating (the two bozos who cackle at everything like mynah birds are just the worst), but that ending makes it all worth it. And what a climax it is. Rather than non-stop action, Day back-loads it. All of the carnage is at the end, and it is GLORIOUS. SFX maestro Tom Savini really out-does himself here, as the gore effects are ugly and visceral and terrifying. It's not a movie for the squeamish, but after the hour or so of in-fighting and scheming, the orgy of violence at the end is nasty and fun. I avoided this movie for the longest time, convinced the middling reputation was true. I'm glad I finally relented. It isn't revolutionary or anything you haven't seen done before, but it's things you've seen done really, really well.