Day of the Dead: Bloodline (2017)
Directed by Hèctor Hernández Vicens
No — Day of the Dead: Bloodline is not woke, scoring 8 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Day of the Dead: Bloodline is a 2017 remake of George A. Romero's 1985 film, and it arrives with the enthusiasm of a corpse that has already been autopsied.
Consciousness Markers
The cast includes a female lead and at least one Black supporting actor, but no deliberate diversity agenda is evident.
A female doctor is the protagonist and drives the cure narrative, but the film does not advance an explicit feminist agenda.
No LGBTQ+ characters or themes are present.
No racial themes or commentary are present.
No environmental themes are present.
No anti-capitalist themes are present.
No body positivity themes are present.
No neurodivergence themes are present.
No revisionist history elements are present; this is a horror remake, not a historical revision.
The film does not lecture on social issues.
Why it received this score
Day of the Dead: Bloodline is a 2017 remake of George A. Romero's 1985 film, and it arrives with the enthusiasm of a corpse that has already been autopsied. The plot is familiar: a zombie outbreak, a military bunker, a search for a cure, and a great deal of shouting in corridors. Hèctor Hernández Vicens directs with a straight face, which is more than the material deserves. The protagonist, Zoe, is a female medical student turned camp doctor, and she drives the cure narrative. A Black actor appears among the survivors. These are casting facts. They do not constitute a social program. The film never stops to comment on them, and that is the point.
This is not a film with progressive sensibilities in any modern sense. It does not concern itself with identity, ecology, economics, or the politics of the body. The villain, Max, is a stalker and would-be rapist, but his behavior is deployed for horror, not for a lecture on consent. The film is too busy with gore and poor decisions to moralize. Its only ideology is the bunker mentality: authority versus survival, and neither side has a pamphlet. The script is content to let a woman hold a syringe and a Black man hold a rifle, and then it moves on. There is no sermon here. There is barely a script.
The result is a remake that was panned, and rightly so. It is not offensive in a cultural sense. It is simply inept. The lack of social messaging is not a virtue, but it is a fact. We can file it under zombie, remake, and diminishing returns. The closest thing to a progressive gesture is a female doctor who knows how to use a vaccine. That is not a movement. It is a plot device. The film ends with a cure and a message to survivors. If only it had a message for critics.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
In a world overrun by zombies, military personnel and survivalists live in an underground bunker while they seek a cure.
Questions about Day of the Dead: Bloodline
Is Day of the Dead: Bloodline woke?
No — Day of the Dead: Bloodline is not woke, scoring 8 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does Day of the Dead: Bloodline have any woke elements?
Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Representation Casting at 15.
How does Day of the Dead: Bloodline compare to other 2017 movies?
It ranks #184 of the 309 films from 2017 we've scored; their average is 19. The wokest is I Am Not Your Negro (92).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.