What the world needed, a remake of George A. Romero's 1973 twist on the zombie flick. I could listen to an argument for a remake of Return of the Living Dead or even Dawn of the Dead. Remaking this 1980's video store standby is like covering Beatles tunes but only focusing on Yellow Submarine. This wasn't his best work and was far from being worthy of further attention.

Timothy Olyphant (A Perfect Getaway) and Radha Mitchell (Rouge) star as David and Judy Dutten , an Iowan couple. He is the local sheriff. She is the local sheriff's pregnant wife who is there purely as a means of putting the sheriff in continual and needless peril. A strange series of horrific murders hit their small town in the course of a couple of days. Soon the whole town is frenzied with violent psychopaths. A toxin has entered the water supply turning everyone insane. The whole community quickly descends into being a Darwinian carnival.

The townsfolk slaughter one another and eventually the State shows up and does what the State does best - it screws the whole thing to a point of complete collapse. Given how our Government works, this film gets the State's response completely wrong. In the movie the soldiers show up inside of a few days. In reality this would have gone on for another month before a commission would be set up to talk about the possibility of a response to a dangerous neurotoxin infecting a population. The zombies would have time to become domesticated and vote one of themselves mayor before our Government would step foot in the Midwest.*

The film is a paint-by-numbers affair with no surprises and nothing original. It is pap. There isn't anything wrong with the performances or even the execution (other than a reliance on gore - but you have to excuse that since that's the reason for making the movie). The problem with the film is that it is so painfully unoriginal. Even the DVD cover isn't new. The dragging of the pitchfork is a direct homage to the Coen Brother's Blood Simple where the implement was a shovel being dragging along asphalt.

You do not need to see this movie, so don't. It is a time waster and you have more to do with yourself than waste your time.


* - Unless it was Primary Season - this is Iowa after all.





Related Reviews:
Zombie movies
28 Days Later (2002)
Dead Snow (2009)


Other Critic's Reviews:
Beyond Hollywood
Film Freak Central



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Labels: film, George A Romero, movie review, Radha Mitchell, remake, Timothy Olyphant, zombie