{"id":16756,"date":"2015-10-06T19:37:04","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T23:37:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=16756"},"modified":"2015-10-06T19:37:04","modified_gmt":"2015-10-06T23:37:04","slug":"night-of-the-living-dead-darkest-dawn-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/06\/night-of-the-living-dead-darkest-dawn-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Night of the Living Dead: Darkest Dawn (2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NOTLD-Darkest-Dawn\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I honestly don\u2019t want to dislike anything with an association with George Romero, but when sub-par independent filmmakers unleash a sub-par remake of Romero\u2019s 1968 \u201cNight of the Living Dead,\u201d you just have to call a spade a spade. It\u2019s irritating that there are still filmmakers that think they can perfect the formula better than Romero did. The rush of \u201cNight\u201d remakes doesn\u2019t seem to be stopping any time soon, either. Which is unfortunate, because time can be better spent on films that aren\u2019t glorified fan fiction. \u201cDarkest Dawn\u201d is essentially \u201cNight of the Living Dead\u201d all over again. Except this time, \u201cNight\u201d is set in modern times, and in a city.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It painfully resembles Playstation 2 cut scenes from an unreleased game that were stitched together to create a movie for horror fans. The animation is likely the worst aspect of \u201cDarker Dawn\u201d as much of it looks incredibly unfinished. What\u2019s on screen looks terrible at best. Characters mouths have a smile perpetually plastered on their face, Tony Todd\u2019s mug looks like he\u2019s wearing a plastic bag over it, and worst of all scenes inject unnecessary fog for the sake of compensating for lack of detail. I\u2019m not too sure why an apartment in the middle of the city would be draped in fog, but I\u2019m also confused why there\u2019d be a cemetery in the back of an apartment complex. Danielle Harris voices Barbara, a young girl who heads to the city to place flowers at the grave of her mother.<\/p>\n

Just then a zombie outbreak is unleashed in the city forcing her to look for safety in an abandoned apartment house. As she settles in to her safe haven, she\u2019s interrupted by local stranger Ben who seeks shelter of his own and bonds with Barbara while trying to survive. Todd reprises his role from 1990\u2019s \u201cNight\u201d and does a spirited job of reclaiming the character. He\u2019s the most life like performance in the entire fiasco, and its fun to hear him take on the character again. \u201cDarkest Dawn\u201d is switched up a bit but it\u2019s still the same old \u201cNight\u201d running at a merciful hour. Much of \u201cDarkest Dawn\u201d is comprised of polygons bickering with one another, polygons arguing over how to survive, and polygonal zombies sprinting through the darkness looking for fresh meat.<\/p>\n

And yes, director De Soto and Majdik go for sprinting zombies this time, using the sprinters to compensate for the movie\u2019s inherent lack of tension and dread. While the cast is fantastic, the performances are abysmal from the jumping point. Bill Moseley has a glorified voice cameo as Johnny, while Joseph Pilato is unbearable as antagonist Harry Cooper. Every element of \u201cDarkest Dawn\u201d is wholly unnecessary, from the sprinting zombies, the dull flashbacks, forced exposition, and painfully distracting film reel effect that the directors pepper in to their movie every minute, as if they\u2019re attempting some sort of meta-joke of some kind. I don\u2019t understand the punch line. \u201cDarkest Dawn\u201d is about as dull, dismal, and dumb as its predecessors and will not win over new horror fans any time soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I honestly don\u2019t want to dislike anything with an association with George Romero, but when sub-par independent filmmakers unleash a sub-par remake of Romero\u2019s 1968 \u201cNight of the Living Dead,\u201d you just have to call a spade a spade. It\u2019s irritating that there are still filmmakers that think they can perfect the formula better than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,12],"tags":[99,404,477,501,706,835,906,1012,1087,1219,1221],"class_list":["post-16756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-halloween-horror-month","category-movie-reviews","tag-animation","tag-george-romero","tag-horror","tag-indie-film","tag-n","tag-remake","tag-science-fiction","tag-survival","tag-thriller","tag-zombie-apocalypse","tag-zombies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16758,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16756\/revisions\/16758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}