The last time “Night of the Living Dead” was animated was in 2009’s “Re-Animated” where director Mike Schneider enlisted a slew of animators to offer their own interpretations of various scenes from George A. Romero’s masterpiece. That wasn’t so much a remake, as it felt more like an art installation, or a cinematic experiment that allowed us to view the classic film through various lenses and scopes, giving us unique peek in to the terrifying narrative. “Night of the Animated Dead” has a chance to feel like a unique re-imagining. Instead it picks off the corpse of George A. Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead.”
Johhny (Jimmi Simpson) and his sister Barbara (Katharine Isabelle) travel to a cemetery in Pittsburgh to put a memorial reef on their uncle’s grave. While there, the pair are attacked by an undead ghoul, prompting Barbara to flee and seek shelter at a local farm house. There she’s saved by a local man named Ben (Dule Hill), and they’re joined by a small group of previous survivors (Josh Duhamel, James Roday Rodriguez, Katee Sackoff, Nancy Travis) hiding in the basement. With tensions running high, the group tries to make sense of the chaos while fending off hordes of flesh eating monsters lurking outside their doors.
You’ve seen “Night of the Living Dead,” I’ve seen “Night of the Living Dead” more than I could count, and with Jason Axinn’s animated treatment, I’ve seen it once again. Truly, there’s nothing remotely new or unique about his treatment of Romero’s horror film. It still runs well within seventy minutes, it’s still very much set in the sixties, and it ends on the same note that the film did. The only arguable differences are that Axinn opts for color animation, and injects a lot of gore in moments that didn’t exactly have them. Sometimes it’s clever, and other times it effectively destroys all sense of subtly from the original. Axinn opts to show Johnny not only busting his head on the tombstone but gurgling as the blood oozes from his gaping wound.
Another scene shows Tom and Judy being mangled by exploding glass just before exploding in their truck. There’s also the goofy re-invention of the final twist as Ben isn’t just shot in the head, but his brains tinkle piano keys behind him before he drops to the floor. It’s goofy little flourishes like that that only help to emphasize the inherent pointlessness of this endeavor. Jason Axinn is a solid filmmaker; I very much enjoyed “To Your Last Death.” Here he’s restricted to giving us the exact same film all over again, except with a little more grue and nothing else. The animation is rigid, the color design is pale and anemic, and the performances leave so much to be desired.
Considering the nifty ensemble here, the only person that seems to be mentally invested in their role is Dule Hill as Ben. Beyond that, everyone else gives exactly the performance we’d expect for these characters. How do you get Katharine Isabelle and not implement her epic screams? There’s no new insight provided, no bold twists, or even bigger emphases on the back stories. It’s yet another retread of “Night of the Living Dead” but with a glossy new wrapper.
And now we wait for the next remake.
Included in the physical release is a Digital Code for consumers. The only feature is Making of the Animated Dead with director Jason Axinn & Producer Michael Luisi as they discuss with fans the careful process of honoring the iconic classic with their vision for an animated remake, including scene breakdowns and booth recordings with the entire cast.