Day of the Dead 2: Contagium (2005)

It’s hard to take a film like this seriously; as a matter of fact calling this a film is very funny in its assumption, but regardless, taking this seriously is a real stretch and requires somewhat of a straight face. My suggestion is to completely shut off any expectations, logic, and common sense and try to make it through the ninety minute crap fest, now there’s an endurance challenge. Be warned though, this is not a sequel in spite of its title; it seeks only to shamelessly market off of the name of Romero’s masterpiece, and it bears no connection other than the title alludes to. While Romero’s film was a brilliant dissection of military corruption and paranoia, this crap fest is just an endurance test of sheer taste and torment.

With incredibly bad editing that has no sense of the word narrative, and insanely obvious padding, we’re tussled back and forth to incredible confusion. I literally had no idea what was happening after the opening sequences, and I was attempting to make some sense of it, but the director, who has no idea how to weave a story together, uses constantĀ cutbacks that are incredibly inconsistent. Do they know that “Ago” means prior? I don’t think they do because they feature constant cuts that say “Four Days Ago”, “Two Days Ago” and we’re actually going forward in to the story. If that isn’t bad enough, the movie is hilariously self-important. It attempts heavily to mimic the storytelling prowess of George Romero by featuring a story desperately attempting to emphasize on its players, but nothing is ever fascinating about either character. And the story goes on and on and on with explanation after explanation to let us know what’s going on and remind us “This is a zombie movie”. Characters literally sit around explaining to each other (read: the audience) what’s happening during the story while the “actors” pretend to turn by convulsing, and shivering et al.

The film is incredibly dumb and hilariously awful as the concept, which would be a good movie, ends up just becoming a piece of shit hack job with no visible talent in sight. There isn’t a single redeemable aspect in this crap, there are no good performances, no good characters, no scary scenes, and zero fright factor. There’s just nothing worth watching in this piece of shit, and I couldn’t believe how something so awful could have the gall attach itself to the Romero moniker. The editing is really bad, so bad the director has to point out where we are with the cutbacks, and often times I was completely lost attempting to find some shred of common sense within the narrative. In the first scenes there are a group of men in the woods. What are they doing there? We discover they’re mental patients, but why were they there?

We discover in the climax they were on an expedition, but why did they wear nurse uniforms? Nothing here makes a lick of sense and I just didn’t care enough to try and form something from it. As with the special effects, they’re so bargain basement it surpasses laughable in to cringe inducing, and we’re even exposed to some ridiculously disgusting unfunny sequences involving one scene where two patients, now turning in to zombies, vomit all over their plates of food, and begin to eat it, and then proceed to do it again. It’s unnecessarily gratuitous and really ridiculous to watch. There’s also a sequence in which a security guard is shooting zombies in the head and is jerking his arm forward as the out of sync gunshots knock down the zombies. It’s hilarious. What is ultimately the tops is the hacking of the zombie lore here that is so utterly inconsistent I stopped caring halfway through and just went on.

Sometimes the zombies can walk, sometimes they can run, sometimes they’re strong enough to bust through a door, sometimes a whole group of them can’t break through a chain link fence with a small lock, sometimes they talk and can communicate, and sometimes they just stand around wandering. Either way, none of it ever tries to be significant nor is ever faithful to continuity, so you just give up as I did. Suffice it to say, this is surely a piece of shit, and I’m ashamed Taurus “Entertainment” would be so vain to lump this in with the original film. What can I say about this that hasn’t already been said? This is a gigantic piece of shit. It’s not scary, too bad to be funny, there is horrible acting, atrocious editing, a non-existent pace, and a self-congratulatory story. Skip this giant piece of fly infested excrement and watch the original masterpiece.

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