Where do the zombies in Syfy’s Day of the Dead come from and has their origin story been used in other zombie movies or shows? Day of the Dead was one of director George Romero’s more experimental zombie outings. The 1985 hit was an extremely bleak story set years after the zombie apocalypse, and its slow-burn plot explored the attempts of some survivors to eke out an existence and rebuild society long after civilization had already crumbled beyond saving.
Brutal and uncompromising, Day of the Dead is one of Romero’s darkest stories and features human characters more monstrous than the zombies. Despite its grim tone, though, Day of the Dead spawned a franchise of remakes, reboots, and so-called sequels, few of which bore any resemblance to Romero’s movie. Most recently, 2021 saw the arrival of Syfy’s Day of the Dead TV show.
However, despite its title, Syfy’s Day of the Dead show also has few canon connections to Romero’s movie. Its action begins at the start of the zombie apocalypse, and the Day of the Dead show’s zombies have a more timely origin story than those of the 1985 movie. The Day of the Dead show’s undead come to life thanks to fracking, an idea recently seen in The Dead Don’t Die (2019). The Syfy series does also depict the discovery of a chained-up, seemingly long-dormant zombie under the fracking site, which implies there was something strange going on before the hydraulics disturbed the ecosystem. For now, though, the series is eschewing George Romero’s original zombie backstories in favor of the loose implication that fracking led the undead to be revived.
There may be more to that story over the coming episodes. However, as of the pilot, the explanation provided is almost exactly the same as The Dead Don’t Die’s non-answer to where the movie’s zombies came from. The Dead Don’t Die’s undead rose due to polar fracking, whereas the energy extraction is much more local in the small-town setting of Syfy’s Day of the Dead show. However, the general premise that the dead rise from their graves because of something to do with fracking - and the show's decision not to dwell upon or explain the connection - is otherwise almost identical to the approach taken by The Dead Don’t Die.
While recent critically acclaimed horror hit Midnight Mass was similarly obtuse about the origins of its evil, the series gained great reviews thanks to its thoughtful deconstruction of familiar tropes. Like The Dead Don’t Die, though, Syfy’s Day of the Dead series has not been as fortunate with reviewers. Both the 2019 movie and Syfy's Day of the Dead series received negative reviews, calling them derivative and over-familiar. It is a charge that is hard for the Syfy series to deny when Day of the Dead’s zombie origins is effectively lifted from a recent movie in the subgenre. Day of the Dead may explain its zombies further in forthcoming episodes, but so far, its answer is one familiar to fans of the genre.
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