Reviews
[Review] SYFY’s “Day of the Dead” Is One Zombie Series That’s Especially Rotten and Lifeless
SYFY’s revamp of Romero’s zombie classic adds little to the overcrowded corner of horror and loses itself in generic melodrama and scares.
Do we need another zombie television show?
That’s the question that’s inherently on everyone’s minds when they even hear about a new zombie television series that pulls from George A. Romero’s Day of the Dead. What can it possibly do or say that hasn’t already been exhausted in Black Summer, Z Nation, iZombie, Santa Clarita Diet, last year’s COVID-inspired The Bite, or the hundreds of episodes of content that exist within the still-growing Walking Dead connected universe?
The amount of horror that’s taken a bite out of this undead archetype has become as plentiful as a horde of zombies. This doesn’t mean that this material should be off the table, but it just makes it increasingly important to have a unique perspective and do something different with zombies. To be clear, it’s absolutely fine to just be an entertaining zombie series that’s high in the body count, heavy in the gore, and not interested in being anything deeper, but it still needs to work and have a point of view. Romero’s original films had a natural social commentary subtext built into them. Not everything needs to be multi-layered high art, but in a genre that’s over-bloated in both television and film it’s imperative for Day of the Dead to not just become yet another zombie show. Day of the Dead is busy and bloody, but it struggles to find a distinct voice among the sea of undead groans.
Day of the Dead’s depiction of the start of a zombie outbreak in small-town Mawinhaken focuses on six strangers who are united through this disaster and right from the in media res introduction the series telegraphs that it’s not interested in breaking fresh ground with its zombies. Both the Bowmans and McDermotts are classically frayed families whose stresses get accelerated through this terrible apocalyptic tragedy, yet it manages to unite them and leave them off stronger than ever before. Day of the Dead often gets a little too invested in the teen melodrama and angst, which reduces this material to more disposable content that feels juvenile and driven by adolescent impulses. Episodes get lost in unnecessary, ancillary plotting like shotgun weddings and disapproving parents, stealing a keg for a party, local elections, and pressure to lose virginity. It doesn’t feel like any of this will satisfy adults, and while it might please some of the teen demographic, there’s also more thoughtful, better looking versions of the same ideas that are available in Daybreak or The Walking Dead: World Beyond.
DAY OF THE DEAD — Episode 101 — Pictured: (l-r) Daniel Doheny as Luke Bowman, Keenan Tracey as Cam McDermott — (Photo by: DOTD S1 Productions/SYFY)
SYFY’s Day of the Dead is frequently at its strongest when it allows the community to band together and function as a team, but it still has difficulty with creating interesting characters. Sincere moments will occur, but every scenario is just so inherently artificial. The storylines that Day of the Dead decides to devote its attention towards are so confusing and tonally inconsistent. Episodes will verge into slapstick-esque comedy at a moment’s notice and some characters function entirely as black holes of awkward humor. There’s also a heavy-handed shadow organization, Cleargenix Energy, that functions as a constant reminder that corporations can be even more evil than zombies.
The whole small community versus “The Man” angle isn’t out of place, but a condemnation of fracking doesn’t strengthen the message in Day of the Dead, either. At one point it incorporates Indigenous People into the zombie narrative as it digs into the reclamation of land, which scratches at the surface of something compelling, but it quickly recedes into the background in favor of bloodier fare. The rote mayoral candidate angle feels equally extraneous and is more effectively handled in something like The Purge. In fact, the level of social and environmental awareness in Day of the Dead reads more like The Toxic Avenger rather than the biting indictment of society that was naturally achieved in Romero’s original films.
There’s a lot to gripe over in Day of the Dead, but it’s at least a series that contains some decent gore. Each episode contains plenty of action and deaths of both the human and zombie persuasion. There’s a sequence at a morgue with trembling meat locker drawers that’s well conceived and a siege at a retirement home that attempts something different for the genre. There are also some probing questions about the nature of how zombies are able to stay “alive” for hundreds of years and the science behind them, but also how to weaponize this knowledge to create zombie warriors. However, none of these ideas take enough risks in the end. Maintaining the blue zombie aesthetic from the original movie, while silly-looking, would at least give Day of the Dead a different look from every other zombie show that’s been on TV for the past decade. These undead threats look like they’re straight out of The Walking Dead and just because this style worked for them doesn’t mean that it’s the best design here.
The second half of the season inexplicably becomes more of a Dawn of the Dead remake as the cast takes refuge in a shopping center-like fortress. As other zombie series have frequently indicated, holing up in one place for an extended period of time usually doesn’t help the show’s narrative and typically slows things down. It’s these types of decisions that make it feel like Day of the Dead would have benefitted as a six-episode miniseries or SYFY Original movie. Ten episodes is too much time to spend on this repetitive material.
This first season does look towards the future and teases a second season with more evolved zombies, as well as grander problems and conspiracies, but not enough viewers may make it to the season’s conclusion to anticipate what’s on the horizon. There’s the potential to do something more ambitious here based on the questions that the series begins to explore in the season’s concluding installments. Hopefully Day of the Dead can defy expectations and use this freshman season to learn from its mistakes and create something more challenging, Otherwise, Day of the Dead is doomed to remain serviceable zombie fodder that blends in with the horde of undead programming that’s shambled onto television throughout the past decade.
Season one of ‘Day of the Dead’ premieres October 15th at 10pm on SYFY.
Movies
‘Recluse’ Review – Harrowing Haunted House Horror With Lots Of Skeletons In Its Closet [Tribeca 2026]
A haunted house story is tense, terrifying storytelling when it’s properly executed. There’s been a growing tendency in horror to blend together harrowing haunted house stories with traumatic homecomings. A family member’s illness or death triggers a return to something dark that was intentionally left behind. Recluse hits all the tropes that one expects to find in this type of horror film, yet it manages to push this story in a daring, disturbing new direction that uses sound as a superpower.
It’s a unique lens to experience a familiar story about family secrets, generational trauma, unresolved grief, and the importance of not just legacy, but preservation. It’s a hell of a directorial debut from Henry Chaisson that’s guaranteed to get under the audience’s skin as they’re dragged through this painful, toxic tale.
Recluse is a gothic haunted house story where an isolated audio engineer, Joan (Sasha Frolova), returns to her family’s estate to check in on her father after he suffers a terrible accident. Joan suddenly discovers something much more sinister that paints her family’s tragedies in a very different light. Chaisson’s debut functions as a fascinating companion piece to this year’s undertone, which does a lot of the same things.
These two films make for a fascinating case of parallel thinking that tackles comparable subject matter through a similar lens, albeit in a bigger, less claustrophobic story in Recluse’s case. In fact, it’s the perfect horror film for anyone who was let down by undertone and didn’t feel like it brought enough to the table. It’s a considerably more conventional horror film, but this isn’t meant to denigrate its high quality. Recluse may hit some familiar notes, but it’s a scary, well-crafted haunted house horror story that goes for the jugular.
A gripping mystery that involves the tragic, unresolved circumstances that surround Joan’s mother teases a chilling connection to the recent horrors that have afflicted her father. Joan desperately tries to put these pieces together and give her family some sense of grander peace before she’s pulled under and becomes another victim of this festering curse that’s systematically worked its way through the Wyatt family. By doing so, Recluse digs into some deeper commentary on collective trauma, a very literal look at the “sins of the father” adage, and how one selfish decision can ripple through generations and fracture off into different dilemmas. By the end, Recluse has brilliantly flipped the powerful concept of legacy on its head by illustrating the horrors and sense of entitlement that can be born out of this idea.
A legacy is just another name for a curse under the right context.
”Listen” is a simple but powerful command from Joan’s father that she briefly obsesses over. In a way, it becomes Recluse’s grander mission statement, whether it’s in response to Joan listening to the people in her life, the signals that her body and mind are telling her, or the world’s greater whims. It’s important to reconnect with these grounding pillars, especially when it feels like control is slipping away.
Recluse excels with how audio and soundscapes can create entire universes that are full of rich details that transport individuals to these environments. There’s also a level of objectivity when it comes to audio recordings and the evergreen permanence that they’re able to provide. Joan’s career as an audio engineer makes sense for someone who wants to cling to hard evidence and proof of existence. It provides great insight into Joan without ever getting lost in contrived exposition.
Joan’s entire life is built around audio engineering, and so it makes sense that Recluse features excellent sound design that really goes above and beyond with its production elements. All of the sound design is expertly handled and turns the film into something special. These auditory elements intuitively keep the audience on edge so that they’re more susceptible to the actual scares that eventually strike. The smallest sound effect gets turned into a crushing, cacophonous assault. It’s a really effective way to build terror. Writer/Director Chaisson also handles the film’s music, which achieves a sublime, unnerving dissonance that further heightens the free-floating anxiety.
The story at the center of Recluse is slightly generic in some respects, but the film’s visual language and tone make it feel distinctly memorable. It also doesn’t hurt that the home that Joan returns to is basically an eerie art studio that’s full of contorted paintings. Recluse never struggles to generate mounting dread and terror that pump through every scene. Powerful, thoughtful cinematography consistently reinforces the film’s themes. Joan is constantly reflected in different surfaces or viewed through mirrors. She’s also often confined to tight, constricting framing that all speaks to her refracted identity during this moment of loss and her attempts to regain agency and control by making sense of something that’s seemingly unexplainable.
Recluse is full of truly disturbing visuals that make it seem like Joan is lost in a dream that turns out to be an extended nightmare. It’s a surreal journey reminiscent of invasive psychological horror like Silent Hill, with a touch of Sinister and Hereditary thrown in for good measure. There are so many individual frames that could endlessly fuel urban legends and creepypastas.
It does a great job with how it presents Joan’s fragile state of mind, where chilling flashes of the past sneak up on her and unresolved trauma manifests into unsettling imagery. There are endless shots that are obscured in darkness, or shadow is creeping in from the corners of frames like a suffocating force of nature. It’s very rare that a scene is fully lit. It leads to a very lonely, isolating atmosphere that’s easy to get lost in.
Chaisson’s debut stands out from the many other high-minded haunted house horror films without succumbing to the same pretensions that often drag down these stories. It’s a grief-stricken character study that’s full of upsetting visuals that scratch at something visceral and raw. The horror elements connect, and the answers to its grander mystery provide an appropriate and believable sense of closure. Those who are looking for an atmospheric horror film that isn’t afraid to be different while still channeling something real will appreciate Recluse.
Recluse made its world premiere at Tribeca; release info TBD.
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