“Keep behind me. There’s no sense in getting killed by a plant.”

Justin’s rating: Time to pull out daddy’s trusty hedge clippers!

Justin’s review: It’s not that I think it’s impossible for filmmakers to create a movie based on murderous plants. OK, The Happening is a bad example there, but what about The Ruins? That’s a pretty underrated flick that’s freaky as all get out. So it’s not impossible — but we can probably agree that “killer plants” is an uphill climb for any film not starring an Audrey.

Considering 1963 filmmaking technology, The Day of the Triffids probably should’ve been left as a book where the reader’s imagination would do the hard work of making these plants scary versus trying to do this on the screen. At the very least, the name “Triffid” should’ve been changed to something, anything vaguely menacing. The Day of the Triffids sounds like a whimsical Dr. Seuss outing.

During a poorly animated meteor shower across the English countryside, most of the people are blinded at the very same moment that spores are released that turn the local flora into giant man-eating plants. I guess that’s the only way that slow-moving plants are going to have a chance at winning, if people can’t see them coming.

Honestly, it would be pretty freaky to know that something was hunting you down to eat you — but you couldn’t see it. Unfortunately, this film focuses on the few people who can see, so that potential storytelling angle is lost.

Effectively, The Day of the Triffids becomes a zombie post-apocalyptic flick with plants taking up the role of the undead. In fact, there’s a Walking Dead/28 Days Later-style scenario where an eye-bandaged guy wakes up in a hospital to find the world changed. The triffids then lay siege to humanity while pockets of survivors try to barricade their homes or flee for safer regions.

The triffids themselves look a little like mangroves with long whiplash arms. They’re kind of a confusing jumble, which works in its favor as this masks the design shortcoming. It’s kind of like the Jaws scenario — show as little as possible of the actual threat while making your audience imagine a whole lot.

Seeing civilization crumble from widespread blindness is actually pretty unnerving, especially since the sightless people shuffle about with outstretched arms like zombies. There’s even a little The Last of Us going on, as the main character finds and “adopts” a young girl to be her protector.

The pair go on a European tour for no real reason other than forward momentum, bouncing from England to France to Spain to… submarines? Sure, why not, that’s pretty cool.

The best parts here are the little glimpses into the disaster and devastation happening in various places, such as a ruined hospital, a plane that’s trying to land (with blind pilots!), or a cruise ship that’s now lost at sea. Again, many of these scenarios would make for their own full-fledged stories.

While The Day of the Triffids struggles mightily with subpar special effects and dull lighthouse segments, the core of this story is far more engrossing than I would’ve thought. A modern remake really could get a lot more mileage out of this concept, but I think this stands well as a classic on its own.

Intermission!

• Reportedly, the director only shot 57 minutes for his cut, so the studio contracted another guy to create and shoot all of the lighthouse scenes with the arguing couple and splice that in.
• I am fairly confident that I can overcome a very fake Venus Fly Trap
• OK these opening credits need to calm the heck down
• Nurses love to help you light your cigarettes in hospitals
• You’d think that a lot of people would not have been blinded, since this meteor shower happened at night
• That hospital got absolutely TRASHED… and he slept through it
• The train blasting right through the station is a shocking moment
• Turns out that you can’t land a plane while blind
• This is back when women weren’t allowed to fight in movies, just scream and cower
• Plant Autopsy, this week on Fox!
• Could this husband BE more grumpy?
• That was the shortest dissection ever
• Dang girl, your screams are PIERCING
• “It’s like being nailed into your own coffin.”
• It’s a little goofy that the main guy keeps wearing his sailor hat everywhere he goes on land, I kind of call him “Skipper” in my head.
• Convicts are really big into making girls dance
• What is that ice cream truck music? It’s kind of melancholy.
• It’s literally the blind leading the blind
• Electric fences are super-easy to set up
• Sea water is “highly corrosive”