THE DAY OF THE DEAD is an indie horror/thriller, shot in Chicago with a Hispanic cast. It feels more like a social drama than a horror film, because the horror content is severely limited. The plot involves a gang of thuggish thrill-seekers who murder a young immigrant Mexican girl for kicks, only to soon regret their actions. The political angle looks at the plight of immigrants in America, but mostly this is the usual indie nonsense with unconvincing acting, some cheap gore scenes, and a lot of bad direction.

I must say that writing a review of a movie gets increasingly harder over time. Oh yes, it is easy to thumb down this movie for it is just a bad one. But where to begin? It is the underpar acting? Is it the bad dialog? Is it that the movie does not know what it wants to be? The movie has an interesting setup. A group of better-off citizens picks up the strays of society to murder them as part of their perverted fantasies. However, they overplay their hand and kill an illegal Mexican. Enter an officer of the law and the father of the victim. Why is this interesting? Because it offers many ways to explore humanity, which in the end is what makes movies great. And if you do not agree with this, then we have nothing to agree about. So at first, it seems that the movie goes down this path. The victim is followed for no less than thirty minutes and it is shown how she ekes out a precarious existence in the shadows of society. She is an illegal immigrant and speaks not a word of English. Her fate is sealed when someone, in an act of goodness, gives her a list of potential customers to work for, one of which is her nemesis.After the killing, the focus of the movie is shifted to the agent and the investigation. Unfortunately, the actress is at best mediocre and it doesn't help much that there is no adequate supporting cast, setting, camera work, dialog or plot. The investigation has little option for surprises as we already know who did it, what they did and why they did it. So no surprises there. What the movie is left with is how to agent solves the case or, like Columbo, how the murderers get caught. For a moment it looks like we will see a cat and mouse game, like in Hard Candy, but neither the actors, not the writing is anyway near the level required. What dialog there is, is so cringeworthy that it embarrasses more than anything else. Clearly, the writers can't write and the actors can't act. They pull the weirdest faces at the wrong time into the conversation. The camera work is equally weak. Sometimes it focuses on details that are totally irrelevant to the story. Panning is just bad and angles are weird, not to create a strange eerie feeling, for if that was meant, then it would be consistent, but instead, it is inconsistent and pointless.Two-thirds in the movie it gives up on the murder case and decides to turn into a horror movie. Yes, the killers now get themselves killed, by scream like types. It isn't hard to guess who the killers are, but harder is to figure out how they know whom to kill, and how and when. But hey, this is a horror movie. Why have a reasonable logic plot in a horror movie, right? Maybe because two-thirds of the movie was not a horror movie?So now the script is falling apart and like many bad scripts, it has to fill the plot holes with deus ex machinas. At some point the officer gets cuffed and she liberates herself by rubbing the chain against stone for a few minutes because the script needs her to. Her intelligence level, which wasn't impressive to start out with, is dropping just so she does the stupid action that allows her to run into danger. For one, she has no partner nor a backup. Her stupidity is glaringly demonstrated by the fact that in the first part of the movie she helps women train against assaults, and when she herself is assaulted later in the same way, she doesn't apply the same tricks. The movie finally ends with a full horror theme and thus demonstrates it's abysmal failure. If the movie was meant to be a horror movie, then it fails to set up properly for it. In fact, this end feels just like it tacked on so the movie could be wrapped up.All in all a bad move that is not worth your time. IMDb allows me not to give ratings, so I don't. Just make up your own mind reading the above.

Supposedly based on true facts, a gang of suburban kids is sport-killing home-less people just for fun in the streets of Chicago. One day, they decide to try a new excitement, by murdering a young Mexican working girl, assuming there would be no consequences since she was illegal. They were wrong. I streamed this on ADC through my Roku and it was in the horror category, but this movie is a hybrid. Yes, by the title you might assume there are going to be zombies and such. Not really, but sort of, or maybe not. This movie is way more like a crime thriller with a sadistic streak until the final third where it goes Japanese horror.If it's true this movie was made for $100K, these guys did an amazing job. Great realistic acting, realistic story, realistic directing and a pretty top notch script for the most part.The film is also very unique in that it moves back and forth from English to Spanish with subtitles, creating an even more realistic setting.Overall, it's a gritty and compelling movie and you may not love the weird turn it takes but it worked for me.This is an interesting director and I'd like to see more of his work.For the record, I had nothing to do with this picture. I just really like it. If IMDb had an 8.5, that's what I'd give it, but I'm stuck with a 8.