Day of the Dead

1985 zombie movie

Rating: 10/20

Plot: Third film in Romero's "Dead" trilogy takes place in an underground bunker. Zombies have overtaken the world, outnumbering living humans four billion to one. A group of scientists reside with a group of military men. The scientists want to experiment on the zombies. The soldiers just want to shoot the zombies in the head. The zombies just want to eat.

Tom Savini's special effects are great here, and the actor who plays Bob the domesticated zombie gives what might be the best zombie performance in the history of the genre. But that's about all that's good here. The story is lame, and this installment just lacks the special something that Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead have. The 80's synthesizer music is embarrassingly dated. I'm probably not allowed to complain about the terrible acting or the dialogue with this type of movie, but I am allowed to complain about the pacing. This is far too talky for a zombie movie and the characters, instead of being developed into meaningful entities, really just become like living zombies themselves. That might have been the point, but it didn't help the movie any. Day of the Dead also doesn't have the clever social commentary that Dawn of the Dead did, and the imagery fails to connect in a meaningful way. The overall message of this entry in the series seems to be that when society is faced with an unsolvable problem, the only solution is to run off to a beautiful tropical island. And zombies should never be allowed to use guns. That should have been a rule from the get-go.