Day of The Dead 1985 Thoughts

[pigtailed_goddess]

Been extremely depressed, and I worry it's warping me even in fan things I like. So I sit down and watch movies or TV on death. LOL. On my rec-list, so first watch was Day of the Dead 1985.

The trifecta of the original Romero. Night, Dawn, Day. Then he remade and revised and it only took the remake of Night to say no, that's not for me. I love Night of the Living Dead. I love Dawn. These movies are special to me.

Day...Day is interesting...I'll give it that. 

Maybe it's the Z Nation story still in my noggin, and maybe it's the depression, but I want more. As a stand alone film, it's kinda muddled. The problem I had was not over-acting but untold character building. There is story missing in this movie. I don't mean plot, I mean build-up to the movie's having all it's characters just being so crazy-train. In an unending zombie world, one you are only living in to try to fix but you knew it was impossible with every next day marked X on the calendar, of course you'd be insane. The problem is that crazy moment at the end with all the zombies over-running the complex and our heroes escaping to an island of hope? It's not a real climax. The real meat of the story. Not the end, but a dream/nightmare like the protagonist Sarah often shutters through. The gore induced finale is an action set-piece, but it undersells the true story. What is Bub? And where is life now?

If you look at the trilogy of films you have an interesting continuation.

Night is the breakdown of personal relations in the face of death, and the dead not staying that way. Old tensions return. Not so old racism and sexism and divisions are the downfall, of even our survivor Ben.

Dawn branches from the personal to the societal. The news and the cops are a window into how a society runs, or doesn't when the undead walk. The group can't cope with the breakdown, and by hiding away, in a mall of stuff ode to a society that's crumbling around them, they pretend a return to commercial trappings will be a return to functioning. They soon find out to value societal trappings above life is no different than the undead who return to Mall because it once held meaning, to the bandits who scavenge for fun. You can't find living in commercialism. Society as you knew it, exists no more.

Which leads to Day. Day is the final break of the old system. Structural breakdown. The two strongest powers to deal with zombies are both failures. Military might. Scientific mind. In an underground ode to governance structure collapse, these two clash wills about the best way humanity should die. Fighting the enemy or knowing the enemy. That's fantastic! I love it! And in the middle you once again have the sage reasoning of the black man, who lays it out plainly. It's doesn't matter, because there is no life left to witness your last stand choices, only you to build with what little time and resource you've got left.

This finale of the movie needed then to hit the note much harder than it did that once again, that humanity's survival instinct is not united enough, it's desire to live not as great as the undead. Instead it copped to an action end. It sacrificed character moments, like stating Miguel and Sarah's relationship trust breakdown, mental break-downs were inevitable, to a mad scientist riff. It didn't hint why Bub could suddenly care, learn or re-learn human instinct, and the fear it would inspire in soldiers living on only to destroy the enemy, it spent time on the cave sequences.

Structural breakdown occurs, as it should as the movie's theme, the characters do show it, but not internally or externally get reflection on it like they deserve.

And then there is another point, hidden behind a helicopter and clown zombies. Sarah and co go to an island. Bub wanders off with Dr Frankenstein's gift of knowledge. What now Romero? Neither completes the death or re-birth of our zombies or humanity. This franchise is a circle incomplete. And unlike the prior two films, you've not seeded either a blind hope for more or a dark ironic twist of nihilism like shooting Ben or saving Peter and Fran, so you needed more conclusion here as well.

Maybe what this movie needed most was another sequel? Which brings me to final thoughts and Z Nation related thoughts. Romero's gone now, a shame. I wonder if the final piece of the Dead canon could be a study, of which society rebuilds and is then better? It's my wish-list of where to take the films. I'd be thrilled to see a sequel start from this film, take on an all zombie movie or world, learning like Bub to thrive on their united kill instinct and still reclaiming person hood through remembrances. What would they be? Or a group of humans living in shadows of rebuilt life. When do the two meet? Do they? What's more recognizable to us the viewer, as human and life we'd want? The films were of their time. Tensions of the 60s.70s. 80s. What does our time say about worth of life and death and the effort? I'm hungry to chew on that.