DAY OF THE DEAD

Director: Steve Miner

Stars: Mena Suvari, Michael Welch, Nick Cannon, Stark Sands, AnnaLynne McCord, Matt Rippy, Ving Rhames

Year: 2008

Rating: R

GREATLY diverging from the storyline of the original 1985 George Romero sequel, this remake of Day of the Dead carries enough decent acting, action and gore to sustain most fans ... yet somehow still manages to maintain a "made-for-DVD" feel that doesn't elevate it anywhere near the brilliant Dawn of the Dead remake that came before.

Mena Suvari stars as Sarah Bowman, a young officer in the U.S. Army helping her fellow soldiers to maintain order in a small quarantined Colorado town that happens to be Sarah's hometown as well. It seems a pretty rancid outbreak of something resembling the flu is going on, and the military has been called in to cordon off the city, allowing no one in or out. All communication lines have been cut as well, and anyone trying to get their sick loved ones out is simply being rerouted back into the local hospital in town - where, the army assures them, specialists are being flown in by the military to help with the outbreak.

Sarah's own mother is home ill, though Sarah and her younger teenaged brother Trevor (Michael Welch) seem to be immune. Sadly, the same can't be said for Trevor's best friend Kyle (Hugh Skinner) - nor, in fact, the vast majority of the town's citizenship, who all seem to be at the hospital, by the time Sarah gets her there along with Trevor and his hopefully-girlfriend Nina (AnnaLynne McCord). Even a cute, dorky new army recruit who's already crushing on Sarah, Bud (Stark Sands, in a stand-out performance here), is along for the ride. At the hospital, Sarah reunites with her unit commander (Ving Rhames) - but before long all of the patients in the hospital begin, one on one (and including Sarah and Trevor's mom), to go into a few moments' of a trancelike state ... before snapping back to attention as full-fledged, flesh-eating zombies that instantly begin attacking and devouring any living human in the entire building. Sarah and Trevor get separated, with Sarah and Bud getting out with the help of a cocky comrade in arms, Salazar (Nick Cannon) - while Trevor and Nina manage to escape the hospital to hole up in the offices of a local radio station, with the help of a DJ who's survived his own attack.

The rest of the film is about Sarah and her fellow soldiers escaping the city - and trying to get Trevor and Nina out at the same time. The action is fast and bloody, the zombies more limber than ever here (not only can they run, they can also leap through the air and crawl up walls like Spider-Man, now!). It all leads to a governmental secret/cover-up, of course, and in the meantime the zombie deaths and such are all pretty cool ... but in short, this just seems too much like territory already covered, and covered better in previous films both past and remade. Day of the Dead isn't a bad film - it's just sort of the same retread of something already done before - not once, but multiple times. Worth seeing if you're a die-hard Dead or zombie movie fun, okay to skip otherwise. **1/2 - Reel Mediocre-Reel Cool