The main problem with this movie is that it's very distant from its predecessor.There was a lot of room to expand creatively on the original because of modern technology, but instead the film opts to outdo the original by trying to make everything bigger and more in-your-face. The story moves a lot faster, the characters' personalities are over-the-top, and there's a lot more zombie action. Again, this sounds great on paper, but the end result feel strangely hollow and watered down, despite the bigger budget that put into the film. There are also several from the original film that are reused here, but they never quite work given the new context.
The story definitely moves faster than the original, but unfortunately this kills the suspense. The famous opening sequence and accompanying line "They're coming to get you Barbara" are crammed into the opening title sequence, and from there we're treated to approximately eighty minutes of people nailing boards on doors and yelling at each other. The characters' personalities from the original film have been taken to the extreme, with the exception of Barbara; she becomes the complete antithesis of her character in the original, doing most of the zombie-killing in the movie. For example, Harry Cooper, the jerk from the original, is taken to the extreme. His character is nearly villainous, with almost no explanation for his behavior. At least in the original, they play up the fact that he's worried about his daughter. This plot point is rarely mention in the remake, leaving with a very evil and annoying version of the character.
With Tom Savini in the director's seat, one would think that this movie would at least have some good makeup effects for the zombies. Savini had previously worked on Dawn of the Dead, and one would think that he would produce similar results. Unfortunately Tom was not actually one of the makeup artists, and only worked as the director. So instead of some great gross-out effects and makeup, all we get are a bunch of lame zombies that look like a failed attempt at making an Evil Dead-themed Halloween mask. While one could argue that the zombies in this film are ones that just haven't started to decay, the only reason there needed to be a remake was to amp up the special effects. There's also very little on-screen violence. For a movie about zombies, there's almost no brutality towards them. There's the occasional gunshot to the head, but there's little to no bloodshed. Everything happens off-screen, and not in a "the real horror is what you imagined happened" kind of way. It's quite obvious that despite the increase in budget, it just wasn't enough to cover the special effects. Without good special effects in a zombie movie, you have to counter it with a strong story, like in the original. The remake however, can't combat this.
Another huge problem with this film is the ending. Up until the ending, this was a fairly close retelling of the original film, but the last fifteen minutes or so departs from the original completely. The 1968 version of Night of the Living Dead has one of the most famously pessimistic endings of all time, and none of the main characters make it out alive. But of course the remake tried to amp the ending up by giving us a very unnecessary look at the zombie-hunting group from the original film. In this version of the film, Barbara is the only one who makes it out alive. She somehow manages to hold off several zombies by wielding a gun at them until she is rescued by the zombie-hunting team.
Cut to the next day, and we see a very dumb look at what goes on in the zombie-hunting groups. Several of the zombies are tied up for shooting practice and forced to fight each other in a makeshift boxing ring. This scene drags on for far too long, and I get the feeling we're supposed feel sorry for the zombies, particularly because of a rather stupid line of dialog "They're us. They're us and we're them". I can only assume this was supposed to be a thought provoking line for the audience to think about after the movie. But ultimately the "maybe we're the monsters"-type message loses its impact because it was never touched on until then.
Overall, this is a very lackluster and ultimately unnecessary remake. The only thing that would have made this film worthwhile is if it had better makeup effects, but those too are lacking. This film tries to be bigger and better than the original, but fails to do so, leaving us with really lame special effects and a series of suspenseless jump scares. There are so many ways this film could have helped improve the original, but it tries to do its own thing while simultaneously bringing nothing new to the plate. If there is anything positive to be said, at least Barbara isn't the catatonic and blubbering mess that she was in the original. She's given a tougher, "we couldn't get Sigourney Weaver to sign on, so here's the best we could do"-type personality, but at least she's more interesting than the original Barbara. Other than that, this is a very trite and insipidly boring remake. There's not much substance to this film, and it's really not worth your time. Not recommended.
Enjoyment- 1/5
Quality- 2/5
IMDB Page- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100258/
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