Festival of the Living Dead 2024

While attending a festival to commemorate the original zombie attack, Ash and her friends encounter the living dead and must fight back or be devoured.

Review

The festival is a Burning Man type event held to celebrate humanity’s defeat of the zombie outbreak of 1968. It will come as no surprise that history repeats itself and the dead rise at the festival, leaving Ash to find a way to survive and find Luke (Shiloh O’Reilly; Thanksgiving, Christmas with a Kiss), the little brother she was supposed to be babysitting but who is also at the festival thanks to a plot device that redefines stupid.

Not only did the events of Night of the Living Dead actually happen, the filmmakers are so desperate to tie Festival of the Living Dead to Romero’s film that Ash and Luke are Ben’s grandchildren. Now, I don’t remember Ben mentioning a family during the movie, and he certainly didn’t start one afterwards, so I have my doubts about that. There’s also the little matter of having to forget Romero’s own sequels to buy into this timeline, but zombie fans should be used to that by now.