Night of the Living Dead 3D (2006)

In the decades since it was released in 1968, George Romero's Night of the Living Dead has become one of the horror genre's most beloved and enduring classics. It was a groundbreaking movie that redefined how people view zombies. But unfortunately, thanks to a mistake made by its original distributor, the movie almost immediately lapsed into the public domain.

Because of that, anybody with the means has been able to release the movie however they see fit. Whether it's a plain DVD release of the movie, an alternate edit, a colorized version, or a parody with new audio dubbed in for comedic effect, it's been done. Romero even wrote and produced his own remake in 1990, with Tom Savini in the director's chair. And thanks to its copyright status, anyone else wanting to do their own remake is free to do so.

And another remake is exactly what we got in 2006, when independent filmmaker Jeff Broadstreet culled together a cast and crew to create his own version of Night of the Living Dead. And to make sure his movie got some attention, he made the movie in 3D. And just like the 3D effects themselves, the movie proved to be completely unnecessary.

If you've seen either of the prior iterations of Night of the Living Dead, you know the setup for this one. But let's do this plot synopsis thing anyway. As the movie begins, we're introduced to quarreling siblings Barb (Brianna Brown) and Johnny (Ken Ward) as they travel through some winding country roads to a cemetery out in the middle of nowhere. They'd planned on attending the funeral of their aunt, but when they arrive, the cemetery is abandoned. I'll give you one guess where this is going. Yep, zombies attack.

Johnny is dispatched and ends up taking the car with him, leaving Barb to run aimlessly through the woods for help as day turns into night. Help does arrive in the form of Ben (Joshua DesRoces), who rescues her from some zombies and takes her to the presumed safety of a remote farmhouse owned by the marijuana-farming Cooper family. Both Ben and Cooper family patriarch Henry (Greg Travis) think her story about flesh-eating corpses is a little wild, but they'll soon find out how right she is when zombies surround the house.

The original Night of the Living Dead is widely hailed as one of the best horror movies ever made. The 1990 remake is actually pretty good, too. But this movie is crap. If you watched a video of people peeing of a DVD of the original movie for an hour and twenty minutes, then you'll have more or less seen this movie. Even the director has said that it was pretty much an attempt to make a quick buck by remaking a public domain horror movie. Though even if you forget that it's a remake and judge it on its own merits, it's still lousy. The 3D is never really put to any creative use, the acting is lame, and the special effects are awful.

At the helm of this sinking ship is Jeff Broadstreet. His prior directorial credits include such titles as Sexbomb, Area 51: The Alien Interview, and Dr. Rage, so you should be able to guess what kind of movie this is going to be based on those titles alone. I haven't seen any of his other movies, but judging by this one, Broadstreet seems to have no idea how to make a horror movie. There is no tension, no suspense, nothing scary to be found at all. Instead of the frightening atmosphere that Romero and Savini gave us in their versions of the movie, Broadstreet chooses to make a dull, uninspired movie that is a real chore to get through.

Broadstreet's direction probably could have been saved if the gore effects were decent. But they're practically nonexistent. Everything gory happens off-screen or in the shadows, rendering it completely ineffective. Though considering the movie looks like it was made for peanuts, decent gore effects probably weren't in the budget.

The only reason to even watch the film at all is that 3D gimmick the movie saddled itself with to sucker in some paying customers. But wouldn't you know it, Broadstreet screws that up too. You'd think that a 3D zombie movie would have blood and guts flying at the screen, but since there's no blood or guts to be found, we're stuck with characters pointing things at the audience. Broadstreet doesn't even bother to get creative with it, with the height of the 3D gags being a character waving a joint around like he's offering the viewer a hit. It's unimaginative, and the fact that the movie's big selling point is not exploited to its fullest potential is disappointing.

The writing doesn't do the movie any favors, either. I say that because first-time writer Robert Valding has contributed a script so banal that I think it could cause cancer in lab rats. I can forgive all the stupid weed humor, since it was apparently thrust upon him when he got the job. But couldn't he have at least, you know, tried? Did his characters have to be so damn stupid? The characters do nothing but sit around and talk. Do they board up the windows and doors to try and defend themselves? No. Do they go on the offensive against the zombies? No. Do they even try to hide from the zombies? No. The zombies are secondary.

It wouldn't be so bad if the characters actually showed some smarts. The Cooper family actually watches Romero's original Night of the Living Dead on television at one point, yet seem completely oblivious to the fact that the army of flesh-eating corpses outside the house could quite possibly be zombies. They all just sit around and have lengthy discussions about nothing. It's like an episode of Seinfeld, only with zombies, bad actors, and no funny jokes. It's pathetic. Throw in a climax that comes completely out of left field, especially in its attempt to actually explain how the zombie plague began, and you've got a script that would make good toilet paper.

And it's all topped off by the embarrassing acting, which is made up of a bunch of people you've never heard of and will probably never hear from again. The cast feels like they were a bunch of understudies from a local dinner theater that were rounded up and thrust in front of the camera at the last minute with no preparation at all. It's as if they hadn't even read their lines until just before Broadstreet called "action." Probably the worst offender is Brianna Brown, who delivers her lines with as little emotion as possible and perpetually looks like someone farted in her face prior to each take.

What really surprises me about the cast, though, is that they somehow managed to rope Sid Haig into this mess. Yeah, the same Sid Haig that memorably played Captain Spaulding in House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects. Surely the paycheck couldn't have been good enough to justify being in this awful thing. Did he lose a bet or something? He pops up in the movie's third act as a mortician whose only requirements are to be creepy and deliver some lame exposition before taking a trip to Crazy Town. And though the role is thankless and the character is unwanted, Haig still puts forth as good a performance as he can. He's too good for this movie, and I hope he knew that when he agreed to be in it.

There's a type of movie out there called "the mockbuster." Primarily made by Hollywood film studio The Asylum, mockbusters are low-budget knockoffs of mainstream blockbusters meant to trick rubes into thinking the movies are related to one another. Even though The Asylum had nothing whatsoever to do with Night of the Living Dead 3D, it really feels like the kind of movie they'd make. Everything about the movie is lousy and uninspired, like they weren't even bothering to really try making a good movie. The truth is that it's so bad, it's is an embarrassment to anyone who calls themselves a fan of horror movies. I'm going to give it one and a half stars, and ask that you ignore it like I should have. If you have to watch the movie, make sure you just go with the 2D version. Those cheap red and blue glasses will give you a headache, and they just make everything look purple anyway.

Final Rating: *½