Recently, another remake of George Romero's classic NLD movie was released in a 3d format. Being the zombie film fan I am, I went to see it last night. I got the glasses from the theater staff, kicked back, and hoped to enjoy. What I thought I'd see was a major gorefest and limbs rteaching out to me. What I got was a major dissapointment.

The movie starts like the other Night of the Living Dead movies (the original from the mid-50s or so and the early 90s remake) with Johnny and Barbara on their way to a relatives funeral. Needless to say, the action gets started very quickly with zombies instantly attacking them and chasing barbara to the mortuary and beyond. After this point, the movie stops being a NLD remake and tries to be its own thing.

There are entirely different characters than usual and it completely changes the dynamics of the film. Ben, normally a black guy in a truck on the run, is a white drug dealer on a motorcycle who knows his supplier, a paranoid weed farmer, as a good friend. The farmer lives with a nice family and three helpers, all of them the typical "you know they're gonna die in the movie" people. Tom and Judy are having sex and Owen is doing weed.
Also, in the original and first remake, there was alot of tension between Ben and another character, the family man with a wounded daughter and a bad relationship with his wife. Gone is this scenario as these two characters get along well and only fight once when Harold (the family man/dope farmer) tries to be irrational and find his daughter outside.
Finally, the zombies themselves are standard zombies except for that for the first few minutes they are zombies, they can still talk. Creepy and original, but sadly the only brownie points the film makers get. The zombie outbreak is not a world wide issue but instead caused by medical experiments infecting embalming tools and corpses that should have been cremated. THe coroner is a man that inherited the mortuary from his father and has a fear of fire, so this is why he simply stored bodies according to the storyline given. Later, however, we find the first zombie was his father, dead for two years, and that he was brought back by his son. This changes the film entirely from unexplainable world-wide outbreak to a mad scientist's experiment with eternal life gone sorta right. It is unknown whether or not the zombies to become a widespread problem but it is doubtful as the number of zombies are not numerous enough, numbering somewhere around a couple hundred and many of them badly deteriorated, enough for local authorities and the national gaurd to handle.

The film is alright, but only when compared with the House of the Dead movie. IT focuses far too much on the people in the house when the characters dynamics fit each other far too well. THe scenes of gore and scariness are limited to only character deaths and killing "important" zombies, and we see little, if any, actual zombie killings. Also, the mad scientist angle completely throws off the movie. As for the 3D aspect of the film, it's actually rather good if you can get hte glasses to stay in the right place. The only thing this film really has going for it is its makeup jobs and costumes, which are f***ing fantastic. Really look like decaying corpses they do.

All in all, I give the film a 2 out of 5. Only see it if you like 3D films.