We never learn what brings about the day in The Day—that is, humankind’s postapocalyptic doom—but to judge from our hardy band of survivors (and an incoherent script), it is a time of low ammo but plenty of cigarettes, an age of burly beards but no umbrellas. Working in a relentlessly dull grayscape, director Douglas Aarniokoski has obviously seen The Road and wished it had more generic action; the gang finds a farmhouse where the cannibals smell them out. Almost half a century after Night of the Living Dead, filmmakers are still misunderstanding how George Romero made his besieged shut-ins compelling.
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