Night of the Living Dead 3D

This film is not what I expected. The plot begins similarly to the classic Night of the Living Dead. Barbara (Brianna Brown; Hollywood Homicide, The Lost Tribe) and her brother are heading to a funeral. Zombies appear and Barbara runs to safety. This is where the film decides to change things up and move away from a straight remake to a reimagining. Barbara heads into the local town for help and ends up at a mortuary where she is warned off by the mortician and chased by more zombies. Wandering through the woods, she is assisted by a man on a motorcycle and taken to a farmhouse. Here we meet the rest of the cast and wait for the zombie horde to show up and devour everyone.

I have seen Night of the Living Dead more times than I can count and have seen the 1990 remake nearly as many times. When I picked up this movie for my review, I was instantly repelled by the gimmicky 3D, but attracted to the fact that Sid Haig was on the cover. I assumed he would be playing either the hero character or the cantankerous father character from the original film. So I popped the movie in and settled back for another version of one of my favorite films. When Barbara walked into the local town, it caught my interest. Then when she met the mortician and I saw it was Sid Haig I realized this was going to be a different film than the straight remake I was expecting. 

Night of the Living Dead 3D shares only two things with the original – zombies and a farmhouse. Everything else is different and modernized. For example, Barbara does not spend any point in the film in a catatonic state. She is lucid and reacting to the situation as any other character would. She wants to call the police, she wants to board up the doors, she even tries to talk down the more stressed people of the group at moments. As the film progresses, she is the heroine of the story.

The story of the Night of the Living Dead 3D changes a lot from its namesake. While there is a large chunk of time spent trapped in the farmhouse, there are also 3 other places that are visited, reminding us that there is a larger world out there. We also get alterations to the fates of some of the characters and an entire new origination story for the zombies. A very different ending to the film pulls it further away from the classic than any other version.

The other characters include the aforementioned mortician, Gerald Tovar, Jr. (Sid Haig; House of 1000 Corpses, Spider Baby), The farmhouse owner Henry Cooper (Greg Travis; Humanoids from the Deep, Toolbox Murders), his daughter and wife, a local named Ben, and a few other characters who are mostly zombie fodder. 

With a couple of exceptions, the performances in the film are wooden and disjointed. It feels like none of the actors were in the same room together when saying their lines. Even when they are both on camera! Some of the better performances go to Sid Haig and Brianna Brown. Greg Travis’ character seemed interesting at least. Whether that is due to his performance or the writing I couldn’t tell. 

The performances are also hurt by bad direction when it comes to camera placement and cuts in the film. When the going from tight shot to tight shot following the dialogue, there are plenty of times where the camera holds seconds too long on a person after they have talked and it unnaturally exaggerates the separation of lines. 

The effects of the film (sans the 3D) are low budget and practical. Some of them look pretty good including a decapitation with a shovel. The only holdback is that a lot of them rely on camera cutaways and blocking to hide the initial hits or guns fired. So you may see a good end result, but the jarring way they conceal the action that causes the damage pulls you out of the moment.

Speaking of the 3D effect, I don’t think it was needed in the movie at all. There are very few scenes that were designed for the 3D effect and it did nothing for ninety percent of the film. I think there are quite a few scenes where the effect is reduced to pretty much null. I don’t believe the 3D was an afterthought, so I don’t know why it wasn’t used more or better. 

The zombies look pretty good. Different levels of decay, some of the fresher ones with a more classic make-up layout the hit a nostalgic note with me, but didn’t look fake enough be laughable. Besides the quality makeup that has been applied to them, they follow the classic slow-shuffling Romero zombie design. When I began seeing them on screen, it made me think that maybe this movie would have a good chance of being entertaining. 

When I grabbed a copy of Night of the Living Dead 3D, I knew it was going to be the two colored glasses style 3D and was happy they supplied the (branded) glasses. However, a lot of 3D films also have a 2D version so you can forego the glasses if you need to. I wear prescription glasses and it makes 3D difficult for me. This DVD didn’t include a 2D option on the disc. You have to go buy the 2D version as a separate DVD. I only recently found this out while researching the movie. I think this is a little silly. Maybe they released it as 3D only and then released the 2D at a later time when people asked about it. I don’t know, but I felt a bit cheated not being able to switch between the viewing experiences.

Besides that one point on the DVD, there are quite a few special features on the disc. Besides the film, you get the director’s commentary, a behind the scenes featurette, a Q&A with Sid Haig, bloopers, trailers, and more. A pretty solid showing for this film. The picture quality of the film is hard to talk about with the 3D effect implemented. I feel like the image looked muddied when you combine a warm lighted, drab color palette with the 3D camera. 

Night of the Living Dead 3D doesn’t come anywhere near living up to its namesake. There is no hard-hitting social commentary, the poor acting is emphasized by bad editing and direction, and the 3D effect was not necessary or used properly. The changes in the story were interesting, but I think it was crossing the line where they should have just named the movie something else and not tied it to the classic film.

Rating:

Jack Savage:

I think this movie had potential, but it falls short in too many areas to make any kind of impact. By the end, I didn’t care if anyone survived. If you like Sid Haig or just collect zombie films, you may find something enjoyable about it. If you need a bad 3D film for a Friday night movie with your friends, this is also good. But, for regular viewing, nuh-uh.

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