Why Did I Watch…? is about movies I know I’ll hate but watch anyway. Usually this happens late at night when nothing on my Netflix Instant Queue fits my mood. For this installment, I’m talking about Day of the Dead. The one made in 2008, I mean. Not the reasonably good one.

I spent the first 15-20 minutes of Day of the Dead trying to figure out if it was a remake of George Romero’s film from 1985, or a sequel to Zack Snyder’s better-than-it-had-any-right-to-be (ignoring the increasingly stupid third act) 2004 remake of George Romero’s film from 1978. To save you the trouble, it’s a remake of a sequel, not a sequel to a remake of a sequel. Don’t let Ving Rhames being in both fool you.

I actually wish it had been a sequel, because I’m tired of seeing the beginnings of zombie outbreaks. It’s always, “rumors of” this and “my cat disappeared” that. Hey Hollywood: Night of the Living Dead came out forty-three years ago. We know how these things begin.

Romero’s Day of the Dead picks up at a time at which zombies outnumber humans. Everyone knows what zombies are, and we’d already seen how it all started. 2008′s Day of the Dead starts at the very beginning, so we have to wait for characters to learn all over again that they gotta shoot ‘em in the head. So while Romero’s movie is free to just say up front, “Boom, there’s a shitload of zombies,” and then move on to who the characters are and what they want, the remake has to go through all these tedious steps:

1. Something weird is going on.
2. Nobody’s quite sure what it is.
3. Oh, look. Somebody just got killed.
4. Who (or what) could have done such a thing?
5. Ten minutes of zombie-free character unpleasantness.
6. Hey, guess what?
7. Just kidding; we’re not actually ready to show you yet.
8. Hey, guess what now?
9. No, seriously. Guess what?
10. We’re totally for realsies this time. Come on, guess.
11. That’s right, mofos. Zombies.
12. How do we stop them?

By the time the movie does all that work, it’s half over. This will probably come as a huge shock, but the people who watch zombie movies know what zombies are, and they know what’s going on, like, immediately. It’s frustrating to wait for the characters to catch up.

To be fair, Day of the Dead is not awful. It actually has some pretty cool moments (and some pretty stupid moments, like when zombies crawl on the ceiling like Dog Aliens). If it had just started with “There are zombies aaaaaaand…GO,” it could have been good.

Having said that, Nick Cannon is in it.

Also, there’s something about modern zombie movies that I have a huge problem with: Making zombies faster does not make them scarier.

Romero zombies are scary for a few reasons. They’re human, but not really. They’re also slow, but they’re going to catch you anyway. Why? Because there are a lot of them. The second point is key; Romero zombies shouldn’t be able to catch anyone, but often do. If they can catch one person, they can catch you. It’s only a matter of time, really, because you tire yourself out running away from them and have to slow down, and they just keep going because fuck it, they’re dead.

If a zombie catches a person because it can run faster than them, that just makes a lot of sense. If a zombie catches a person because it slowly pursued them for hours — never giving up, never tiring, and somehow overcoming every obstacle its prey placed in front of it despite its lesser mobility and cognitive functions — that’s goddamn terrifying.

Making zombies fast just turns them into a bunch of crazy people who want to kill you. If you think fast zombies are scary, you’re saying that Assault on Precinct 13, The Warriors, and Zulu are horror movies.

Tags: day of the dead, evan killham, horror films, romero, why did i watch, zombies