Night of the Animated Dead

Night of the Animated Dead (2021) is Jason Axinn's animated horror, ready to watch online on iFILM. It's a near shot-for-shot remake of George Romero's 1968 classic, redrawn as animation and turned loose on the gore the original never got to show.

The story tracks its source beat for beat. Siblings Johnny and Barbara visit a rural Pennsylvania cemetery and run into a shambling corpse. Barbara flees to an abandoned farmhouse, where a handful of strangers gather behind boarded windows, led by a drifter named Ben. Outside the dead keep multiplying; inside the survivors tear at each other almost as hard as the things clawing at the door. The voice cast pulls in Josh Duhamel, Katee Sackhoff, Jimmi Simpson and other familiar names.

At a lean 70 minutes, the animated format lets it restore beats the 1968 shoot had no budget or rating to deliver. For Romero fans and anyone curious to revisit a familiar story from a fresh angle, it's an odd, debatable experiment worth a look. Stream Night of the Animated Dead (2021) online on iFILM.