When I first saw the news that a “spiritual sequel” to George A. Romero’s classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was about to be released, it immediately jumped to the front of my “to do list”. Romero’s original DEAD trilogy are among my favorite films of all time, and if you would like to delve deeper into my ghastly love of zombies, please check out EPISODE 9 of HORROR TO CULTURE.
FESTIVAL OF THE LIVING DEAD, which is a TUBI Original directed by the Soska Sisters (AMERICAN MARY), dropped on the streaming channel on April 5th. This “sequel” takes place 55 years after the 1968 outbreak and features the grandchildren of the main protagonist, Ben, famously played by Duane Jones in the original. It is set in a world where DAWN and DAY OF THE DEAD never happened.
The film opens with footage from the original NIGHT (which is public domain), and centers around the annual Festival of the Living Dead, commemorating the “incident” which brought shambling corpses back to life some 50 years earlier. When a strange meteorite crashes near the concert, some of the young party goers decide to snort the cosmic dust in order to get high, and that, of course, turns out to be a very bad idea.
NOTE: Never ingest cosmic dust from a glowing space rock!
I’m not really sure what I was expecting from this movie, being a low budget Tubi Original that hardly had any promotion. It is neither a comedy, nor a straight up horror movie, falling somewhere in the category of the RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD films as more of a parody. Despite a rather lackluster premise, the two lovely female leads, Ashley Moore and Camren Bicondova (GOTHAM), carry the film and deliver some great performances which outshine the plot itself.
Yet, even with these noteworthy performances and characterization, FESTIVAL OF THE LIVING DEAD only reminds me why I stopped watching campy zombie movies in the first place. It offers nothing new or original, with forgettable special effects, and seems to be a production that was only made for the sake of putting out a zombie movie in an already over-saturated market.
The idea that these are Ben’s grandchildren requires you to not think too much about the timeline, and we’re likewise told that there is no cure for the zombie plague, which causes one to wonder how it ended after the original events in NIGHT. Never-mind that a freakin’ meteorite crashes at the exact location that the festival is taking place (insert eye roll here).
Once again, I realize that this is meant to be a fun re-imagining, but as stated, this works neither as a comedy nor a horror movie and leaves viewers with a rather depressing finale that is heavy on the water works. There are definitely plenty of zombie movies worse than this one (Romero’s own SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD from 2009 unfortunately comes to mind), but aside from the performances, nothing about FOTLD stands out as a memorable inclusion to this bloated genre.
Perhaps I’m being too harsh. Had this movie been released 25 years ago when there still wasn’t a whole lot of zombie features to choose from, I probably would have eaten it up (no, pun intended). Yet, that’s part of the problem in that this COULD have come out 25 years ago because there is absolutely nothing innovative which hasn’t already been done 100 times at this point. Our old favorite monster, the zombie, is now just devouring itself.
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Michael A. Dyer is the host of the HORROR TO CULTURE podcast and website.
