Night of the Animated Dead (2021) Review
In Night of the Animated Dead, siblings Barbara and Johnny visit their father’s grave in a remote cemetery in Pennsylvania when they are suddenly set upon by zombies. Barbara flees and takes refuge in an abandoned farmhouse along with stranded motorist Ben and four local survivors found hiding in the cellar. Together, the group must fight to stay alive against the oncoming horde of zombies while also confronting their own fears and prejudices.
Night of the Animated Dead features the voice talents of Josh Duhamel (Jupiter’s Legacy, Transformers) as Harry Cooper, Dulé Hill (The West Wing, Psych) as Ben, Katharine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps) as Barbara, James Roday Rodriguez (A Million Little Things, Psych) as Tom, Katee Sackhoff (The Mandalorian, Battlestar Galactica) as Judy, Will Sasso (MadTV) as Sheriff McClelland, Jimmi Simpson (Westworld) as Johnny and Nancy Travis (Last Man Standing) as Helen Cooper.
I love the Romero original and with such a high benchmark to measure up to it’s inevitable that it’s not going to completely replicate the thrills and chills of a midnight movie classic, and it doesn’t. It’s not a bad movie – it’s certainly a better take on Romero’s original than NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 3D was – but it’s just not great either. Director Jason Axxin’s take lacks any dynamic oomph and that’s due to the pacing and the animation style its presented in.
Personally I would have liked to have seen it DC-Comic style, that would have worked better for me, and given that Romero was a fan of the comics too (hence his movie CREEPSHOW) then it would have been a perfect fit. Instead the animation feels a little static and considering that the running time is just an hour, excluding ten minutes of end credits, it moves through the original story half-an-hour less than the original movie did but paradoxically plays like it’s barely moving at all.