Horror Fest Day Three: Night of the Living Dead 3-D

Night of the Living Dead 3-D is a skid mark in the underwear of cinema, the kind of crap you instantly regret turning on and yet can't seem to turn off (I had a good excuse though; my universal remote went kaput ten minutes in).

You know that you're in for trouble when there's a disclaimer on the back insisting that "this is a re-imagining of the 1968 Public Domain movie and has nothing to do with George A. Romero", but that only scratches the craptasity.

Let's look at a couple of changes: first off, Barbara insists on being called "Barb". Ben is now some white teenager that sells weed and everyone in the farmhouse is stoned out of their gourd. No, really. And you won't believe how it is that the zombies come to be in this version (plus, I'm not going to tell you. you're going to have to watch it yourself. ha ha!). Gone is any of the dread, replaced by some stupid "dark" character moments and really bad dialogue.

Behold, some choice lines:

"Maybe we're being Punk'd."

"There's some fucking crazy fucking stuff going on here."

"Shit, that's heavy."

"No man, I don't allow cell phones, man. That's how they track you!"

COMING 4 U BARB (that's the text message Barb receives from Johnny after fleeing the graveyard. seriously.)

Note to the makers of Night of the Living Dead 3-D: It's a really bad idea to feature the original Night of the Living Dead in your film as prominently as you do in the first half. It just reminds us how shitty your movie is.

Two nice things about NOTLD3D:

1. It's really short. Like, 75 minutes short with long credits on either side.

2. The 3-D does look really good, and not just in the gimmicky scenes. I'll give credit that for a 3-D film, it's shot very well using the format.

Otherwise, this little turd sandwich can fester away with the bastardized "special edition" that came out nine years ago (the one that introduced two new subplots with characters that never existed before and a cheezy synth score) in the bargain bin for all of eternity.

So endeth the official Horror Fest of 2007