Night of the Living Dead (1990) by Tom Savini

Director: Tom Savini
Year: 1990
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Zombie

Plot:
After an attack in a cemetery, a woman fleeing from a swarm of ravenous zombies hides out in a remote farmhouse with several other survivors and tries to help them find a way of escaping from the deadly creatures as well as each other when they start to slowly kill them off.

Review:

This was quite the fun and effective remake. One of the more enjoyable elements of this one is the fact that there's a lot of good times to be had here from playing off the expectations from the original. Since this one readily follows the exact same plotline as the original, from the family members driving out to the cemetery and coming across the first zombies while they hold-up inside the house causes their deep-seated racial tensions to come come boiling to the surface, there's plenty to like from the way this one turns those situations around in that it uses the knowledge of the original to get you off center enough to not expect the shocks coming. The opening in the cemetery where it replays the first encounter straightforward only for the film to pull two nice surprises out of the scene in who's not a zombie and how they're attacked so it plays nicely here in getting this going while their house walk-through gives them some really new and interesting discoveries which is all due to the more enhanced sensibilities to showing the disturbed bodies of the corpses.

That leads into the other great aspect here in the film's high-end action scenes featured in here which are just as impressive and fun as the original, in some cases even topping it. The brawling in the cemetery works incredibly well, as does the eventual escape in the car to stumble upon the house gives this a series of solid opening scenes. The mission to board up the house before they can fully break through is quite enjoyable as it gives this some suspense with the zombies breaking in just when they seem to believe a section is fortified as well as getting the heart of the racial tensions exposed in great detail which runs rampant throughout the first half. The high-energy finale, with the tensions inside having boiled over into a series of gunfights between the last survivors in the house and the series of zombie swarms coming into the unprotected house, and while none of these are as impactful as the original still manage to work incredibly well generating some fun times.

The cast here is just as much fun and really enjoyable. Starting with the two big names, Tony Todd as Ben manages to be just as good as the original, tackling the physicality of the role with great aplomb and manages to get the proper tones here from caring to confrontational which is exactly what's required here. Patricia Tallman as Barbara is the highlight here with a drastic improvement over the original by taking away her sniveling hysteria in favor of a take-charge, resourceful heroine that's fun to watch as she becomes quite animated and involved the more this goes on. With cult favorites Tom Towles, Bill Moseley and William Butler also among the cast, this has some big names who give their usual quality performances here. The zombies here are certainly far better-looking than in the original. Decayed and rotting just a tad, with the slightest amount of facial scars and wounds that give them a little edge over the zombies in the original. The Cemetery Zombie at the beginning is the best of the redesigned zombies from the original, and a rather hideously realized Autopsy Zombie looks really spectacular and it comes across beautifully in a great gag.

That above being said, there are a few problems with the film. The biggest one is the zombies themselves are just too slow to be threatening at all. Usually, the shuffling kind of zombies are what you should expect to find, but these are taken to the extreme and are just ridiculous. At one point, one remarks that they are slow enough to walk around without getting bit, which is exactly what happens later, and yet at the time it was uttered no one takes it seriously. When it is revealed to be just the way to escape makes it all the more ludicrous why it wasn't tried earlier so that the whole situation could've been avoided. The lack of gore in this one is an issue as well and can be a curse as well as a blessing. This isn't something for the gorehounds out there as we do get a couple neat and inventive gags here and there but this is nowhere near what it could've been. The last big issue is that the gag at the end is pretty confusing. Not only are we never told what the probable cause was that lead to the creatures, nor are we told that it comes from bites which makes that fate a direct contradiction from zombie lore and is what holds this one down.

Overview: ****/5
This isn't exactly as pessimistic or as ground-breaking as the first one was,  but this is still pretty enjoyable in most places. It doesn't damage or tarnish the reputation like the 30th Anniversary release does, and is a pretty nice viewing anyway so give it a chance and don't judge it against the original, it isn't that bad.