‘Day of the Dead: Bloodline’ (2017)


So I was banging on, the other day, about how I have this natural bias towards anything with ‘Day of the Dead’ in the title; I love the original movie (probably, no, definitely my favourite of the original ‘Dead’ trilogy) so anything that has those four words in the title… I’m in 😉

And then I thought to myself, why don’t I put that to the test with ‘Day of the Dead: Bloodline’…? When I’m having trouble finishing books (and I’m definitely having trouble finishing books at the moment), I will literally run with whatever ‘blog idea’ pops into my head 😉 It had been a while since I last saw ‘Bloodline’ and while it was dreadful the last time I saw it, I was kind of hoping that I’d mellowed a bit, in the meantime, and that I’d find something to enjoy.
So, what happened…? Let me tell you about a film that is still very much dreadful.

Fear goes viral in this terrifying retelling of George A. Romero’s zombie horror classic. Five years after an epidemic nearly wiped out the world’s population, Dr. Zoe Parker lives in an underground bunker among a small group of military personnel and survivalists, working on a cure while fighting armies of the undead. When a dangerous patient from Zoe’s past infiltrates the bunker, he just might hold the key to saving humanity … or ending it.

I watched the extras, just to be sure, and yes, this was very much made as a retelling of Romero’s ‘Day of the Dead’ so I feel like those comparisons can be made here. I also feel safe in saying that I need to go and rewatch the original just so I can feel a little better about things!

‘Bloodline’ is a ‘retelling’ where everything that was good about the original is either watered down or just removed entirely, leaving us with a movie that is a pale shadow of its predecessor. The one thing that always strikes me about the original ‘Day of the Dead’ is just how few humans are left (the calculation was something like three hundred thousand zombies to every human left in the bunker) and how that feeds into the paranoia that eventually brings everything crashing down. There is literally no hope left in that movie and people just have to reach that conclusion for themselves.

That’s not the case with ‘Bloodline’ where the majority of zombies pass unseen and there’s a vibrant community in the bunker. A potential cure is heavily signposted very early on so there’s never really any doubt that this one will end well. I’m by no means against zombie movies having a happy ending but if you’re going to re-tell ‘Day of the Dead’, that’s a hell of a bar to clear and to be frank, this film doesn’t come close to clearing it. Not with the approach that it takes, backed up by actors who come across as wooden and not that bothered; either that or they’re playing ‘traumatised survivor’ really well (no, me neither…)

Zombie hunting in confined quarters is always fun and up to a point, that’s no different here, even when you realise that the zombie is doing the actual hunting. I can usually push my suspension of disbelief pretty far but ‘talking zombie that will kill regular zombies so it can continue to stalk Zoe’ (and not bite her once)? Nope, just nope. You get to that point and you have to ask yourself whether you’re watching an actual zombie movie at all, and dammit, I want to watch a zombie film! 😉

I’m going to call it a day here otherwise I’m just going to rant and end up repeating myself. But yep, don’t bother with ‘Bloodline’ and it’s tepid ‘retelling’ of a classic, stick with the original.

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