An isolated town. A military quarantine. People coming down the sniffles. People turning into flesh-eating zombies that sprint about even faster than the ones in DAWN OF THE DEAD did; Miner speeds up the film footage to such a ridiculous degree that he might as well have begun blasting Yakety Sax on the soundtrack. These zombies must have also been bitten by a radioactive spider somewhere along the way given their inexplicable ability to do acrobatic flips and crawl along ceilings. Call me old fashioned but I just don't believe zombies should ever be portrayed as being more limber and dexterous than a werewolf.

As is usually the case, a small band of characters are forced to fight off the zombies as they flee for their lives. If you're familiar with the original DAY OF THE DEAD you'll be happy to know the action takes place in an underground bunker - but only during the last 15 minutes. As a remake, it's an abomination. As a zombie flick taken on its own merits, it's still total crap. So unimaginative is this film, the final scene boils down to the last survivors riding off into the sunset and then a lone random zombie pops its head up to roar at the camera.

The whole film is just a sloppier version of the same old, same old with characters that give the term "one-dimensional" a bad name - though not as one-dimensional as some of the CGI - reciting some of the most reprehensibly insipid dialogue in recent memory. Even the gore (Zombie heads automatically explode upon coming into contact with fire?) is half-assed. Despite having better production values than your typical low budget zombie movie and Steve Miner (FRIDAY THE 13TH PARTS 2 & 3, HALLOWEEN H2O, LAKE PLACID) being adept enough to keep things moving at a brisk pace, every aspect of this remake gives off the foul odor of a quick and cheap cash-in on the part of producers that never gave a damn about even trying to make even a halfway decent movie. There's a reason why this DAY OF THE DEAD is going to be bypassing theaters and going straight to DVD. It ought to just go straight to the Sci-Fi Channel where it belongs. It was co-produced by Nu Image and filmed on location in Bulgaria, after all.

You may happen to notice Ving Rhames' name in the credits and on the poster. You may remember he starred in the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake. He does not play the same character and there does not appear to be any common link between the two films other than both being remakes of George Romero zombie flicks. Rhames' military commander character here has little screen time or dialogue. It's painfully obvious that the only reason for casting Ving Rhames in this throwaway role was to try and fool potential viewers into believing this DAY OF THE DEAD is a direct sequel to the DAWN remake. Even The Asylum has never been that shameless.

It should tell you how ridiculously young the casting skewers when the eldest major character of the cast is played by AMERICAN BEAUTY's Mena Suvari. Suvari is ridiculously miscast as a tough Army soldier who ends up having to leading a small group of survivors consisting of her irresponsible kid brother (ALL THE BOYS LOVES MANDY LANE's Michael Welch), his hot blonde girlfriend (Nip/Tuck's AnnaLynne McCord), a lovesick soldier named Bud (the wonderfully named Stark Sands) who has the hots for Suvari even after he eventually becomes zombified, and a constantly wisecracking young black soldier so pervasively obnoxious in a racial stereotype sort of way that he bypasses annoying and teeters shamefully close to entering jigaboo territory. He's played by Nick Cannon. I desperately wanted to see him shot out of one.

Despite its title, given the youth of the primary characters, the reliance on painfully bad one-liners, an overall feeblemindedness, this DAY OF THE DEAD remake feels like it should have been the latest lamest installment in the RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD franchise. RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 6: BEATING A LIVING DEAD HORSE, that’s what this should have been titled.

The only thing about this DAY OF THE DEAD remake I can recommend is to recommend you go rent HOUSE OF THE DEAD again instead of this.