Review by Ian Keogh

Dead Day presents a world where for one night every year the dead emerge from their graves, and return to them at dawn. No-one knows exactly why or how, which has led to speculations, superstition and cults, while the dead themselves have motives aligning with who they were before they died.

Ryan Parrott’s focus is on a single family, with Daniel not keen that his wife Melissa has chosen to meet her dead first husband. Eve is too young to really understand what’s going on, but Brandon’s up for sneaking out to catch a Resurrection Festival.

While the focus is restricted to a handful of characters, Parrott keeps the world fresh by constantly throwing in ideas about the world they live in. Ideas like the Lifers, who track and burn the dead so they can’t return in future. The sheer volume of thoughts about such a world raises Dead Day from a standard action thriller. Such interludes also include horrific moments as some returning dead who have a mission in mind, and others rather sweet, such as a musician largely ignored in life, yet discovered after death.

Concentrating on the ideas flowing through the script could mean you’re not realising how good artist Evginiy Bornyakov is. His storytelling is impeccable, he brings the cast to life, the violent action is cinematic, and we’re shown what people are feeling. One scene requires an especially gruesome revelation, and Bornyakov supplies something stomach-turning.

Due to the pre-imposed restrictions of dusk until dawn, everything occurs over a single night. While the obvious action tropes of Melissa’s journey provide the original thrills, the secondary experiences of Brandon eventually reach a similar plateau and Parrott draws the threads together so well. By keeping the story focussed on people, ensuring the dead can speak and mixing past with present, Dead Day is an unpredictably compelling action thriller with a great background. Other creators would have made a career mining it, but Parrott moved on.