by: JohnSoister
Posted on 01.11.10 in All Horror Films > Zombie
Release Date: 2004

“They’re coming to get you, Barbara!”

With that strangely memorable sound bite, screenwriter John A. Russo and director George A. Romero redefined a genre and permanently laid to rest the living, breathing, voodoo-empowered zombies depicted in the 1932 independent film, White Zombie.   Night of the Living Dead lurched into theaters on October 1^st, 1968.   Almost 40 years and five sequels later, the creatures born of Russo and Romero’s collaboration continue to be the most popular representation of Hollywood’s least expensive – and thus most bankable – movie monsters.  No matter whether they’re shambling through the latest celluloid nightmare, lurching from one comic book page to the next, or trying to devour Xbox 360 players in a spurt of pixilated blood, today’s zombies owe all that they are to Night of the Living Dead.  Still, it takes a lot more than chocolate syrup and 1960’s ingenuity to scare audiences these days.  This is doubtless due to the fact that today’s audiences are over-stimulated.   Blame this on the internet – that proverbial information superhighway where anything is just a click away – or on today’s popular culture that glorifies gratuitous violence and sexually explicit material.  Hell, blame it directly on Hollywood, where endless strings of “action sequences” are tied together with a few lines of lower-shelf dialogue and released as “movies.”   Scenes that would have terrified movie-goers a few decades ago barely elicit a shrug in 2010.  It’s not enough for a Millennium-Age zombie to come back to life and stagger off in search of human flesh.  Puh-leeze.  Nowadays, he’s got to come back and sprint after his victims, because staggering is not only soooo ‘70s, it also takes way too long (as, apparently do story arcs, character development, and plot devices).

And it’s with that thought in mind that, in 2004, the then-relatively-unknown Zach Snyder introduced his audiences to a more “modern” take on the second film in Romero’s Dead series, the 1978 classic, Dawn of the Dead.  While the original Dawn was a critique of American consumerism, the 2004 remake – dubbed a “re-imagining” of Romero’s initial concept – was no doubt influenced by the critical and commercial success of Danny Boyle’s 2002 film, 28 Days Later, with its high-octane approach to a cadaverous concept.  Loosely based off of Romero’s original script, the James Gunn rewrite ditches just about everything except for the shopping mall (the film’s primary location) and takes what has become the traditional zombie lore – unknown circumstances cause the recently dead to rise with a hankering for human flesh – and combines it with a love for the 100-yard dash.  These zombies – unlike Boyle’s monsters – may be dead, but don’t try to tell them that.  They fly across the screen like a team of Olympic runners, hurdling obstacles in death with a grisly ease that they never attained in life.  (Who knew that rigor mortis would shave ten seconds off your best time?)

Granted, zombies are make believe, just like elves, gnomes, and Eskimos (D’oh!), so it’s ludicrous to debate which cinematic interpretation is the most realistic.  Nevertheless, at the end of the day, it’s this silly business and not the caliber of the acting  – which, with the exception of leading-man-turned-unlikely-hero, Jake Weber, is exactly what one would expect in a movie headlined by Ving Rhames  and Mekhi Phifer– that is the downfall of Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead.  After all, movie monsters HAVE to have some sort of inherent weakness or there’s absolutely no hope for the good guys to survive, especially when their scripted actions show not even a shred of common sense.  Seriously, pit a bunch of characters like Ty Burrell’s idiotic Steve – who wanders away from the door he was instructed to guard during a pivotal scene in the film’s climax to go hang in the parking garage – or Lindy Booth’s moronic Nicole – who leaves the safety of the mall to rescue a dog that doesn’t need rescuing, because zombies don’t eat dogs – against a ravenous horde of undead who can truly haul ass, and then see if they survive past the opening credits.

• ★★★★★

  Acting:

• ★★★★★

  Blood:

• ★★★★★

  Violence:

• ★★★★★

  Partying:

• ★★★★★

  Language:

• ★★★★★

  Humor:

• ★★★★★

  Predictable:

• ★★★★★

  Girls:

• ★★★★★

  Gore:

• ★★★★★

  Sexuality:

• ★★★★★

  Torture:

• ★★★★★

  Overall:

I did like this remake, but as a seperate film from Romero's classic. They are not to be compared, in the least. I find myself keeping away from a lot of modern zombie films. If anything, I've been popping in a lot of the older zombie films, if only as background noise. True, there are a lot of euro-trash zombie films, but has anyone else seen Let Sleeping Corpses Lie? It's not too bad, and I didn't pop it in until a short while ago. Surprised I ever missed it.