"It's a bad day to be a zombie!"

I'm writing this fresh after seeing a trailer for Day of the Dead, scheduled for release in April 2007. To be honest, I was expecting a bad movie based on the casting choices, which were known beforehand. All the important parts are filled by young, pretty, "Dawson's Creek" types (and if Nick Cannon doesn't sound like a porn star's name, I'll eat a bucket of scorpions). Most - all - successful zombie movies have starred relatively ordinary-looking people, because that's who audiences relate to. And if you don't want your audience to relate to your characters, then go ahead and hire plastic twentysomethings for all the main roles - but you won't have a zombie movie, you'll have an episode of "Buffy."

Then I watched the trailer. I can now state with confidence that Day 2007 won't be bad at all.

It will be pure shit.

What we're looking at appears to be a prequel to Dawn 2004, judging by the zombies (they look and sound and move exactly like Zack Snyder's undead) and the premise (evil corporation/government/military creates virus which infects entire town). This, in itself, doesn't bother me (although, shouldn't the title be Night instead of Day then?). In fact, I think it'd be an interesting concept - if done well. It doesn't look like we're getting that next April.

First of all, if the quality of the trailer is any indication, then this film is being produced by people who have clearly have no business advertising any kind of fiction. The trailer editors apparently come from the "give away every possible twist" school of film advertising (and the twists weren't all that brilliant to begin with). We find out one of our "Dawson's Creek" survivors is infected, but no one knows whom. Then, we find out which one, as he furtively stares at the bite mark on his arm. Congratulations, trailer guys - you've successfully deflated an already cliched suspense-building technique. We find out that the disease was produced by your standard evil scientific research, like that was going to be some kind of revelation. The basic message of the trailer seems to be, "this movie is so predictable that you'll know what's going to happen fifteen minutes in, so I'm going to save you that fifteen minutes right now."

If that didn't insult my intelligence enough, there's the coitus factor. Toward the beginning of the trailer, before the Bad Stuff starts happening, there's a girl saying, "I want us to be special," or some such typical prelude-to-fucking bullshit. This shifts to a quarter-second of her and her boyfriend doin' the nasty. It's subtle as a hammer, as if the producers themselves were nudging us in the ribs with their elbows and saying, "Hey guuuuuys...BOOBIES!!!" If random gratuitous sex is one of the selling points of your film, you need to go back to zombie school.

At least Ving Rhames is in the film, playing Badass Black Sergeant. I liked him in Dawn 2004 as Badass Black Cop. But even he seems to be bored with his lines.

This isn't "remake bitterness." The original Dawn of the Dead was a zombie masterpiece, but I still enjoyed its 2004 remake (which, incidentally, had a much better trailer--none of this giving-away-everything and what-have-you). The original Day of the Dead is one of my favorite zombie movies of all time, but it doesn't color my opinion of this film. The fact that I could wipe my ass with celluloid and produce a better zombie film, however - that's definitely a factor.