Day of the Dead: Bloodline is supposed to be a remake of the similarly named George Romero original, but it really isn’t. Instead of Bub, we get rapey, stalker Max who lives his undead life the way that he lived, creepily! Instead of jocks versus nerds, we get one psycho general versus a med student who can make cures hella quickly, but is dreadful at strategy (let’s get the blood samples at night, guys). Everyone else is angry until they’re not and then they are, but can’t really be bothered because sustaining character motivation is hard.
Day of the Dead: Bloodline is 90 minutes long, but you have to wait 80 minutes to get one cool moment so it is not worth your time even if you enjoy watching bad zombie films. It has the professional feel of a movie that was originally shot in a different language then was dubbed over by English speakers without any acting experience even as children in elementary school, but instead of making the original available with subtitles, the filmmakers thought no one would notice and just released the dub version.
Day of the Dead: Bloodline clearly had lofty goals and was aiming for societal horror by using the skills acquired to survive the zombie apocalypse to confront the PTSD fallout of being a survivor of sexual violence. Unfortunately the movie is just so dreadful, and the filmmakers are unaware that for me to care about your metaphor, the actual story has to be good, which it isn’t. The movie has an overwhelming amount of flaws from jump.
Day of the Dead: Bloodline has fast zombies. Only Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead was able to pull this off with terrifying effect, and at least his movie occurs in the early part of the apocalypse. Rotting bodies should not continue to move like Flo Jo after years of decay. Just no. Then it uses my least favorite narrative technique, the how we got here trope, where it begins at a later point, then starts at the beginning and moves forward. Hate! If you start with the most exciting confrontation, how are you supposed to keep your audience’s attention for the rest of the movie. Please note that the beginning was not the most exciting confrontation, but in comparison to a majority of what transpires in this train wreck, it was.
The Bushwick style opening where chaos breaks out on an ordinary street was absurd. If you are riding your bike slowly on a sidewalk during a zombie apocalypse, why are you ringing the bell? My dude, you still open your car by inserting your car key in the driver’s side door? It is the twenty-first century! I know nothing about cars, but when I got my used 2008 Ford Focus in 2011, after getting it inspected, the next thing that I did was get a remote-entry key fob. It is not that expensive. Y’all deserve to die. Have you noticed that even in good movies and TV shows with zombies, the writers are really reluctant to just call them zombies? Here, they are called rotters.
As if all these flaws were not death by a thousand cuts, I’m supposed to believe that these survivors are dumb enough to think that a name carved into some rotter’s arm is the equivalent of a guy getting his girlfriend’s name tattooed on his arm. Yes, we live in a world where we blame the victim, but carving someone’s name into your arm generally connotes psycho to the general public so my ability to suspend disbelief that people would actually mistakenly believe that med student had a romantic, consensual relationship with smart zombie that clouded her judgment was just dumb and implausible. Also maybe don’t go in spitting distance of a smart zombie, especially if you have the key to his lock hooked on your belt. How did y’all survive this long?
Smart zombie was way too smart. When he became a zombie, he must have gotten an internship in guerrilla warfare and slasher killing as he stalks his prey and waits until they are alone before grabbing a bite to eat. He also passes up eating kids for a soldier when everyone knows that smart zombies should prefer tender meat over tough, rubbery muscle.
Day of the Dead: Bloodline is complete trash, and isn’t even worth a hate watch. Do not watch this crap, but if you do, just fast-forward to 1 hour 20 minutes for a Rambo meets Schwartzenegger moment then stop watching it.