WTF was that!? (Day of the Dead ending)

[Repo Man]

OMG!!!  Day of the Dead.... the ending.... what... did... I...just... watch.  I mean, COME ON!  I know that zombie movies never have good endings, but that was just LAME!!!  
(For those who haven't seen it, the heroes are running to a helicopter while the military base is becoming infested with zombies... The girl opens the helicopter door, zombie arms reach out and grab her.. GASP!! She wakes up.  It was all just a dream.  She's really on an island, and the Jamaican guy is fishing).
George Romero, there is no excuse for @!#$ like that.  None at all.  The movie was good, the the ending was crap.  Notice I did not say the ending was bad.  It was total horses**t!!!

My nomination of coolest zombie movie ending:  Resident Evil.

[Chadzilla]

Due to budgetary restraints (i.e. no one willing to fork over more than 3.5 million for an unrated movie) Romero could not get his "Raiders of the Lost Ark with Zombies" finale filmed.  Romero was forced to write an entirely different script based on elements of his original vision instead and opted to keep the door open for another film in case he ever could secure a proper level of financing.  His take appeared to be if he couldn't finish it his way he wouldn't finish it at all.

Ironically similiar prohibitive costs kept his version of the Resident Evil movie from getting made (i.e. too gory and close to the game's harsher horror elements to appeal to a mass audience - thus the producers let him go - they did not want to make a twenty or thirty million movie out of what was a two or three million dollar movie script - and that is based on an established  marketing estimate of what actually sells to the mass audience and NOT what fans want - and development costs and rewrites were already pushing the budget of the thing way ,way up) and have tied up his proposed fourth Dead movie (Anchor Bay has signed to a three million dollar investment, but the budget for his pre-9/11 script calls for a budget between 7 and 12 million, and NO ONE will finance an UNRATED movie that costs that much).

I think the should ram a stake in the movie's heart and adapt his script into a novel, which should garner a respectable level of sales.

[Steven Millan]

           Romero will probably ,if he very badly wants to make the movie,either scale it down for an ultra hard R-rating(ala "Hannibal"),or release it unrated to indie art house theaters.
            Of course,the the DVD will always be far more gorier than anyone can imagine.

[J.R.]

Naw, best zombie ending was NOTLD. It was a stark and unjarring metaphor for racism in '68, and it's still powerful now. What mainstream big-budget would dare opt for an ending that bleak? Anyway, Day Of The Dead was meant to be an undead epic, with huge action scenes and a deeper exploration of the military's use of the zombies, but the budget got cut. Damn.

[Lee]

To bad for the budget cuts. This movie might have been good. The ending is sooo damn stupid it maked me wonder what happened to Romero(Considering that NOTLD and Dawn Of The Dead totally kick ass.).

[jmc]

He peaked in the Seventies.   I love the original NIGHT, MARTIN, DAWN, and KNIGHTRIDERS, but he hasn't made a good movie in a long, long time.   The effects were good, but DAY was pretty dull.

[J.R.]

Actually, after never even hearing of its release, I caught Romero's Bruiser on Showtime the other night. Not bad. Argento-Fulchi-esque.

[StatCat]

I actually like Day a lot more then dawn or night but it's all just opinions anyway. The zombies here are a lot more frightening and gruesome if you look at them then in the two previous movies. I also like it's seriousness and end of the world kind of feeling but the ending is a letdown. I don't know really how else he could of ended it come to think of it though.

[StatCat]

I actually like Day a lot more then dawn or night but it's all just opinions anyway. The zombies here are a lot more frightening and gruesome if you look at them then in the two previous movies. I also like it's seriousness and end of the world kind of feeling but the ending is a letdown. That aside I like it.

[John]

>Actually, after never even hearing of its release, I caught Romero's Bruiser on
>Showtime the other night. Not bad. Argento-Fulchi-esque

 More info please, I just flipped through the past 2-3 cable guides and didn't see any movie called Bruiser listed for Showtime.

 As for Day of the Dead, it's been a while since I saw it, but I seem to recall thinking that it was a flashback dream, not just a dream. In other words, that she was having a nightmare about what happened to her, not just that the whole thing was a dream and never actually happened.

[kriss emmett]

thats my opinion aswell i think it skips how she got out of that perticular situation but picks up the story again on the island thats how i remember it.

[J.R.]

It was on Showtime Beyond, a scifi-horror-based channel you can get on sattelite or digital cable. It was sort of comic-bookish with a twist, like Darkman. The hero wears a blank white mask to avenge those who have robbed him.