Night of the Animated Dead - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Night of the Animated Dead



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras: :
Final Score:


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Movie
I think I’ve finally found a film more useless and not needed than The Forever Purge. Not to mention one of the most pointless remakes of all times. I mean, we all derided the 1990 version of Night of the Living Dead for years, but even it surpasses this cheaply animated word for word remake of George Romero’s classic zombie thriller with relative ease. And this comes from someone who saw Gus Van Sant’s remake of Psycho.

It really almost doesn’t need to be said that George Romero’s Night of the Living dead is one of the most seminal zombie films of all times. The 1967 flick has influences hundreds of other films and spawned a remake by makeup artist Tom Savini back in 1990. A guy who had worked as the makeup artist on several of Romero’s films and thought he could direct a remake with enough homage to win over fans. Well, he kind of failed spectacularly, but has redeemed himself in cult history as time has been kinder to the remake than it could have been. Especially when you consider that Romero actually signed off on Savini’s work (even working on the script at one point if I remember correctly). But there’s nothing of value in this soulless animated film by a man whose only claim to fame was another animated horror movie.

Night of the Animated Dead rips through the plot at a breakneck pace, shortening the runtime to a scant 71 minutes (thank heavens!), but ripping huge chunks from the previous two movies in almost word for word sections. Honestly, I was shocked that they were able to take so much of the original and just spout out the dialog around animated characters without shame. Portions of the movie are naturally shortened to meet the 71 minute runtime, but there are a few extra scenes that are original (such as the 2 minute diner shot). However, the blood and gore is amped up to hilarious proportions, losing any of the seriousness and nuance of the original, or at least terror of the remake. Instead it’s a laughably hilarious (unintentionally I might add) film that reminds me of Archer meeting Night of the Living Dead, sans Archers’ crudity and humor.

All of this aside, the really painful element to the movie is the stiff and shoddy animation done for the production. The animation really DOES remind me of Archer, but even cheaper looking and with less details all the way around. Motion is horribly stilted, and lip sync is near nonexistant. I actually chuckled and compared it to a 1960s Kung Fu movie in terms of lip synching, and it’s not very far off from the truth. The frame rate is nearly in single digits by the look and overall it’s just a painful experience to watch. An animated take on a classic, but with the panache of a drunken Frenchman trying to ramble on about art.




Rating:

Rated R for Bloody, Gruesome, zombie violence




Video:

The cheap animation is one thing, but a weak transfer is another. Personally I think it’s a little bit of both here, as the VERY low budget animation just doesn’t have a lot of revealing moments to display on screen. The backgrounds are low detailed water colors styles, but also there’s banding, some pixelation, and generally noisy low light levels for the murky looking night time shots. There’s a modest amount of clarity going on in the daylight sequences, but as I said, the animation style doesn’t lend itself towards anything but cartoony colors and some generic looking characters. It is what it is







Audio:

Now the audio isn’t half bad. It’s a simple 5.1 DTS-HD MA track, but it isn’t needed to be much else. The atmospheric track is scored by Nima Fakhrara and changes things up from the orchestral style score to a more drum and percussion laden on to fit with modern times. Dialog is generally crisp and cleanly replicated in the front of the room, and there’s even some mild surround activity with the zombies moaning, or the creaking of a footstep on the stairs. It’s a fairly pedestrian track, but does enough things right to make it a solid effort in dialing up the tension.









Extras:

• Making-of Featurette: Animating the Dead

Final Score: ​

Lets be honest here. I’ve seen paint drying that was more interesting, and more worthwhile, than this animated remake of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. The movie is done with such haphazard care that it honestly makes you wonder WHY the product was ever designed. This sort of low budget animation is usually reserved for children’s movies where the film and the animation isn’t exactly necessary to entertain sub 12 year olds. But this type of film with it’s hyper gore is marketed directly at adults, so the horrible story telling and ABYSMAL animation style is even more out of place when you think about it. The Blu-ray itself isn’t much better, with good audio, mediocre video, and nearly nonexistent extras. Yeah, this turkey is done, throw it in the trash and get some Chinese takeout


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Josh Duhamel, Dule Hill, Katharine Isabelle, Stefan Marks, James Rodriguez, Katee Sackhoff, Will Sasso, Jimmi Simpson, Nancy Travis
Directed by: Jason Axinn
Written by: John A. Russo
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, French, German, Spanish DD 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, French, German, Spanish, Dutch
Studio: Warner
Rated: R
Runtime: 71 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: October 5th 2021

Recommendation: Skip It