Michael Foster-Sanders
senior producer
George A. Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” might be the most influential horror of all time. In 1968 the film broke boundaries with race by having a Black man as the lead role, and the main hero of the group. Its visceral assault with violence and special effects are also noteworthy. But, it’s a tragic story due to this movie’s success.
The distribution company that initially brought the film to theaters under the original title “Night of the Living Flesh Eaters” forgot to put a copyright on the title of the film, and it became public domain. Meaning anyone could bring out the movie without paying royalties to Romero and costing him millions of dollars until the time of his death in 2017.
It was only a matter of time before someone had the bright idea of creating an animated version of the movie. “Night of the Animated Dead” does just that.
Let me say this off the top.
“Night of the Animated Dead” takes John Romero’s classic film and remakes it. Many elements are kept the same from the classic film, so just watch the original.
The animated version of this classic tale is straight-up dumpster truck juice and not just any dumpster truck juice. Dumpster truck juice that’s at a daycare-for-newborns-on-a-hot-Texas-summer-day-kind-of-nasty.
Let’s start with the art style that was used to animate the movie. For those of you who remember Microsoft Paint ‘95 know exactly what is going on with this production. Flat, unimaginative and cheap looking. They could have paid a ninth grader who makes YouTube intros on Fiverr and gotten better results than this. The motions of the characters are janky and stiff like it’s suffering from rigor mortise.
Next up is the story.
Now, with having the liberty to change the story, why didn’t they hire someone to spice up the tale and throw some surprises in for the viewers who know what to expect out of this tale? The 1990 version of “Night of the Living Dead” did this and arguably became the best version of the story. This waste of celluloid only changes the way some of the deaths happened in the original story, and not for the best either. Viewers will see this and be like, “They died because of what?”
Just poor execution all around.
Last, but not least is the voice acting. Out of respect for the actors, there will not be a listing of the names of this atrocity, but just know they could’ve spent a fraction of the money on a high school drama class and got the same results. The voice work just came off as flat and dull like they recorded their parts on a lunch break on an iPhone voice memo app.
“Night of the Animated Dead” deserves a headshot to the brain to make sure it will never rise again.
