Movie Review – Day Zero (2022)

July 11, 2023

3 minutes

“Day Zero” is meant to be a vehicle for action star and retired MMA fighter Brandon Vera. Unfortunately for Vera, that vehicle is at a standstill.

While Day Zero can be compared to movies such as 28 Days Later, The Girl with All the Gifts, or even Army of the Dead because they all are part of the action-horror genre, that is sadly where the comparisons end. Day Zero lacks originality, memorable stunt choreography, or an emotional core. Writer Ays De Guzman takes a page from A Quiet Place by having Emon (played by Vera) struggle to get to his family while trying to connect with his deaf daughter Jane (Freya Fury Moniterro). Day Zero has the meager bones of a subpar movie.

Vera’s acting range and charisma is nonexistent. I imagine the production called for a Dwayne Johnson or Dave Bautista type, so the hunt was on for someone with muscles, tattoos, and a background in marital arts. Timoy (Pepe Herrera) is the comic relief and the only one in the entire cast whose performance seems organic.

The biggest problem Day Zero has is that both the action and horror elements are boring. It doesn’t help that the choreography is often static. In the trailer, Emon fires a gun at a zombie, and the sequence goes into slow motion. The it tries to compensate for the lack of energy with digital blood. Oddly enough, when Emon’s wife Sheryl (Mary Jean Lastimosa) is attacked, she uses an umbrella to impale her attacker – except that the camera cuts away from the action, so we’re left to imagine whether she’s stabbed the monster in the chest or head. This was one of the moments that had me questioning whether this movie featured zombies or infected individuals. It doesn’t help that the movie is inconsistent on whether blunt force trauma to the head is what kills them exclusively.

The only emotional beat in this movie is the final sequence, although Emon’s acting has little to do with the effective moment as opposed to what’s written in the screenplay. Ultimately, the story of Day Zero sees a father imprisoned, wanting to meet his daughter but under better circumstance (i.e., not in jail), and once he finally meets her, he’s forced to send her away to protect her from himself after becoming infected. As sweet as that story is, we’ve got several movies with similar stories that handle there material much better such as Train to Busan, Dawn of the Dead (2004), or Return of the Living Dead.

These days, a lot of people talk about being sick and tired of zombie movies, and it’s movies like Day Zero that make me agree with them.

Rating: 1/5.