Dance of the Dead - Watchable enough fluff

Sometimes your appreciation of a film will change over time and you don't even know it.  I enjoyed 'Dance of the Dead' enough the first time round to buy a copy.  I knew it was no classic horror, or even anything particularly original, but it was entertaining enough to keep me amused for an hour and a half.  It's been a few years since I watched it and on my second viewing, although it's still okay-ish, I didn't really enjoy it quite as much.

I guess the film-makers know they're not exactly making the next 'Citizen Kane' when their whole premise is to make a pun on a far superior zombie movie, i.e. George A Romero's 'Night/Dawn/Day/Land of the Dead' series.  It's about a bunch of teens who get caught up in a zombie uprising on the night of their big high school prom.  That's about it.

At least they didn't go for outright horror.  There's no way this film would have even nearly worked if it tried to be serious.  Therefore, it wisely goes for the route of horror/comedy.  The teens are all your pretty standard bunch of stereotypes - you have the geek, the cheerleader, the bully and so on.

The trouble is these days is that zombie movies are no longer a novelty.  If you like dark and horrific zombie films then there are plenty of good ones out there you've already seen.  If you like funny ones there's better out there than this. 'Dance of the Dead' is okay if you're in the mood for something light and can't be bothered to watch 'Shaun of the Dead' again.  It has some nice gore and a couple of the plot points actually surprised me with the route they go (with certain characters).

It's not bad, but it's not that memorable.  That's probably the reason I forgot about it over the years I hadn't watched it.  I don't know whether the film-makers were banking on a sequel, but it does seem to end in the middle of a scene, leaving me to wonder whether they actually just ran out of money and sort of thought they'd make it look like they're ending on a cliff-hanger.

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights