'Night of the Living Dead: Darkest Dawn' (2015)


Remember when I said I'd watch anything with zombies in it? Yep, it's another one of those posts...

Yesterday saw me feeling like one of the living dead (after a couple of celebratory G&T's the night before) and trying to get work done all at the same time. If that wasn't enough, I was also trying to homeschool the youngest one again and that never goes well. I'm not going to lie to you, I got precisely no reading done yesterday and that's what eventually lead me to Prime Video, to see what random zombie movies I could find...
I've actually had half an eye on 'Darkest Dawn' for a while, I just haven't found it on DVD (for some reason, all my zombie movies have to be on DVD). I haven't really seen many animated zombie movies (although 'Seoul Station' wasn't bad) so that piqued my interest, even if it looked to be a re-telling of 'Night of the Living Dead' (which it totally is but more on that in a bit...) £3.49 later and I was away on my first ever 'zombie cartoon'. And it was, well, erm...

This is the bit where I'd normally throw in some copy and pasted blurb, to get things moving, but there's no point here. If you've seen 'Night of the Living Dead', or have any kind of passing familiarity with the plot, then 'Darkest Dawn' is basically a rehash of that except it's set in Manhattan (I think). Same characters and, without giving too much away, the same deaths for most of them. 'Darkest Dawn' does a few things slightly differently and it's kind of cool to see bits from the original film appear in a slightly different way here. I'm thinking about the bit where they refuel the truck...
At other times though, 'Darkest Dawn' follows 'Night' a little too closely if you know what I mean. It's at those times that you can't help but wonder why they didn't just do an animation of the original movie, farmhouse and all. Not a great way to be when you're trying to get into the spirit of a zombie movie. I mean, it does wonders for the story (riffing off a masterpiece) but it holds the story back from doing it's own thing and there are so many other things you can do with a zombie movie.

Which leads me to the animation. There's a lot to be said for the atmosphere of the piece, everything is appropriately dark and brooding with blood splashed about fairly artistically, and liberally. When it gets close up though... The zombies aren't too bad but the whole thing has the feel of the intro to a PS3 game, even a PS2 game when things get really bad. The animation just feels a lot older than it should do for 2015; fair play for getting Tony Todd, Joseph Pilato and Tom Sizemore in on it (they are all as good as you would expect) but if you've got them doing the voice work, at least try and make their mouths move in time. Great atmosphere then but the detail lets it down.

I'm glad I gave 'Darkest Dawn' a go but part of me does feel a little let down by the low budget approach to the animation and the over reliance on the source material. Not a bad way to spend an hour (it was only an hour...) but not one I'll revisit unless it turns up in a bargain bin somewhere...




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