Thanks to a blunder by the Walter Reade Organization, George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead has been in the public domain since 1968. As such, not only does it hold a Guinness World Record by appearing in 129 movies (as of January 2024), but it also spawned a slew of remakes.
Most of them are live action: 1990’s superior remake, 2006’s Night Of The Living Dead 3D, or a new 2026 remake co-starring wrestler Rob Van Dam. Filmmakers can’t help but try to exploit Romero’s legacy for their own gain, challenging the Godfather of Zombies like fools.
But in 2021, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment tried something different: an animated remake. Night of the Animated Dead, how clever. A shot-for-shot, made-to-look hand-drawn version of Romero’s undeniably influential film. What you’ve seen before in a whole new (visual) package. They brought in Jason Axinn to direct, hot off his animated action-horror feature, To Your Last Death. If there was any way to milk a few bucks from Night of the Living Dead in the 2020s, Warner Bros. hoped a switch in media helmed by an experienced animation director would do the trick.
They were wrong. They were so f@$king wrong.
The Approach
Axinn directs using the original Night of the Living Dead script, so credit Romero and co-writer John A. Russo again. Or, maybe out of respect to their reputations, don’t. Night of the Animated Dead hackily plods through Romero and Russo’s story beat by beat, making bare-minimum tweaks without adding an iota of freshness. Yet the running time clocks in at an insignificant 71 minutes, compared to Romero’s gripping 96 minutes.
The draw, I guess, is a voice cast including Josh Duhamel, Katharine Isabelle, Dulé Hill, and other notable actors. Isabelle voices Barbara, who’s introduced on her Pennsylvania cemetery visit with brother Johnny (Jimmi Simpson). From here it’s to the isolated farmhouse, complete with a gas pump. Enter Ben (Hill), another hopeful survivor, and ornery Harry Cooper (Duhamel), who’s protecting his family in the basement. Tom (James Roday Rodriguez) and Judy (Katee Sackhoff) round out the group, as we all remember—no surprises, no twist, just a lazy reanimation of iconic source material.
It takes more than the rambling of genre icons and the Psych boys to justify watching a new Night of the Living Dead instead of the million-times better original. Even worse, the animation comes off as Archer with no effort meets early-internet Flash videos (Newgrounds would never). Worse still, the vocal performances are emotionless and flat, giving the impression that the actors recorded separately while on handfuls of Valium. It’s the fan film equivalent of a pre-teen’s passion project, except backed by a major studio and with B-List names, which makes the whole package impossibly embarrassing.
Does It Work?
Night of the Animated Dead has the same problem as Cabin Fever (2016): why do you exist? The “Animated” angle, yes. But then why half-ass said animation? Or, frankly, quarter-ass? Two-tenths-ass? Even Cabin Fever throws in a gender swap of the deputy for a different flavor. Axinn does nothing of the sort, shaving down an efficient and meaty storytelling blueprint. There’s no added value, no dare to update decades-old details. No creative integrity; literal copy-and-paste slop.
When I ask what “justifies” a remake, Night of the Animated Dead is the reason why. Michael Haneke remade Funny Games nearly one-for-one in America because of those evil subtitles. That makes sense (by studio thinking)! Cabin Fever? A lady deputy ain’t enough; you’re just poorly regurgitating what already exists. Night of the Animated Dead is even worse because there’s nothing to point at and say, “Hey, at least the remake tried [x] or gave us [y].” Nada. Zilch. In fact, what’s removed is detrimental, since Axinn’s iteration feels more cumbersome and meaningless … yet magically twenty hours longer.
So no, Night of the Animated Dead does not justify why Warner Bros. Home Entertainment commissioned such a phoned-in, scribble-doodled, absolute waste of company vault space. There are, like, thirty other Night of the Living Dead remakes one should gamble on first, including two that aren’t live action. Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated is a collaborative art project—an anthology of sorts—featuring segments that use claymation, puppetry, and even tattoo ink. Night of the Living Dead: Darkest Dawn is a computer-animated feature that reimagines Romero’s flick inside a New York City apartment. How novel—remakes that sing their own tune! Axinn should take notes.
The Result
I know this sounds hyperbolic, but I mean it: Night of the Animated Dead is currently, and will probably forever stand as, the worst title I watch for these remake articles I write for Bloody Disgusting. I’m still at a loss, hours separated from my viewing. Every time I try to scrape off a crumb of compassion, I’m reminded of Sackhoff’s whisper-drowsy line reads, or backgrounds that feature still-drawn “ghouls” that can’t even blink, let alone lunge at Ben as he choppily scampers from the one moving zombie they can animate on screen. Sure, there’s a bit more gore added, but why get excited when the visual quality is lifeless, one-dimensional, and resembles a rough draft?
Demente Animation Studio, what happened? A brisk scroll through their demos for collaborations with Cartoon Network, Bento Box, and DreamWorks Studios spotlights impressive results … that are nowhere to be found in Night of the Animated Dead. Don’t be fooled by the film’s promotional poster, hyper-characteristically designed like a comic book cover. The artistic merit of Demente’s 2D frame-by-frame animation barely notches higher than rushed storyboard drawings. Landscapes are inorganically static, details are glossed over (a wall’s color spills over a door, barely seen), character faces sport zero distinguishable depth … the list goes on. It’s wild because Warner Bros. Home Entertainment recently put out a few Mortal Kombat animated features that rip and tear with illustrated beauty, with more attention to detail in a single sequence than the absolute garbage Axinn oversees, which an intro to graphic design professor might barely pass.
What’s added is moronic. Ben’s flashback to Beekman’s Diner where he finds a truck is really that important? Did we need to see Ben’s corpse be dragged by meat hooks to the body pile and then be lit ablaze, bringing the photography under Romero’s credits to life? Tom and Judy get a more gruesome death—head trauma and exposed brains when the car explodes—but it’s all junk additives. Perhaps with better animation, the graphic violence would be a highlight, but that’s not the case. These glimpses bring further attention to the bafflingly abysmal technical flaws. It’s no wonder that on Demente’s website, when you look up Night of the Animated Dead, they put “Low Budget” in parentheses when describing their animation style for the project.
The Lesson
I don’t know. Stop writing these entries? I’ve said a few times now, “It can’t get worse.” Reader, it did. Night of the Animated Dead is a putrid animated remake that does everything wrong. It’s barely over an hour, and yet the experience plays like a Guantanamo-level torture method. Excuse the hyperbole, but at this point, the venom of every keystroke is cathartic, cleansing my soul so I can tackle the next remake/original pairing with naivety and vigor.
So what did we learn?
- Warner Bros. apparently has no quality standards for animated remake cash grabs (how shocking).
- Using an original script for your remake is basically a death sentence, especially so when you have no artistic value to boast.
- People who think Bob’s Burgers is “bad” artwork might have their lives changed if they watched Night of the Animated Dead.
- Even a film critic who’s seen what he considers the worst of the worst has his breaking points, and this is one of them.
You know the adage, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all?” I disagree, at least for my profession. Champion the good; be a cheerleader for what deserves an audience. But the basis for thoughtful criticism is putting both positives and negatives under an analytical microscope. My glowing reviews and effusive praise mean nothing if I’m not willing to suffer through titles like Night of the Animated Dead and warn the masses. You have my promise that I’ll always give you my authentic feelings on any movie: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Today’s just one of those uglies—the ugliest of the ugly, in fact.
