College Downtime Movie Review
Written by Hollowman - November 18th, 2004

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Starring: Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, Mekhi Phifer, Ty Burrell, Micheal Kelly, Kevin Zegers

Director: Zack Snyder
Rated: R
Rating: * * * 1/2 (3 and a half)

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Dawn of the Dead literally begins its brutal escapade of zombie attacks within the first five minutes of its opening. This tension is rarely lifted from the film, but when it does happen, it’s like coming up for air while being held under water for a long time. Throughout the entire film, director Zack Snyder is doing what he can to scare the crap out of us by either elaborately shoving zombies in our face or completely teasing us by building tension for a scare and revealing that there’s actually nothing around the corner. It’s the tongue and cheek scare tactics and excellent character development that make 'Dawn of the Dead' succeed the most.

The movie opens with a nurse (Sarah Polley) coming home to her husband after a long day. The next morning, they get a wake up call from their young neighbor. However, when the husband goes over to her, he gets a nasty surprise when she sinks her teeth into his throat and almost tears out the entire thing. The nurse beats the kid out of the room and tries to mend her husband. He dies, but comes back to life, though now as a zombie. He attacks her and she escapes through the bathroom window and takes off in her car. While driving, she sees the mayhem that’s happening. Something has turned everyone to either flesh eating zombies or their victims. (We actually never get to know what has caused it, but I’m sure we’ll find out in the upcoming sequel due out next fall).

Like all movies about surviving monsters, the nurse, Ana, finds herself in a group of other survivors including Kenneth the rough and tough cop (Ving Ryhmes), Andre the criminal turned responsible and caring husband and father to be (Mekhi Phifer) and his pregnant wife, and Michael, the honest, blue collar, natural born leader (Jake Weber). They end up taking refuge at the local shopping mall and are greeted by three hostile security guards, whose leader (Michael Kelly) is a trigger happy jerk that later changes his attitude in order for the plot to move along.

As far as the structure of the film, it’s driven by dialogue and character development. This gets interesting, watching the survivors interact with each other, but the script (written by James Gunn) makes the mistake of adding too many secondary characters in which we care little about. The only ones that we give any interest to are the army veteran trapped on top of his gun shop roof across the street (he spends his time target practicing on the zombies below and communicates with Kenneth by holding up signs) and the snobby millionaire (Ty Burrell) who’s always willing to sacrifice everyone.

But the rest of these secondary characters are there to just fill up space and add extra bits of dialogue. We don’t really have too much interest in what happens to them but we do understand that they’re needed to deliver extra blood and guts as zombie feed. However, Zack Snyder seems to want to keep them in order to add to one of the classic horror motifs: killing off the characters that represent moral controversies in society (there’s the panty dropping girl, the gay organ player of at the local church, the mouthy and unruly old lady, etc.). So, because the film is based on the idea of character development, it seems wrong to plague the script with too many characters. But Snyder’s style of non-stop scares and thrills and witty dialogue among the primary characters keeps the pace moving.

And on a closing note, the original ‘Dawn of the Dead’, which was directed by George Romero in 1979 and also took place inside of the local shopping mall, was also a social commentary on mass consumerism and the public’s obsession with it. It expressed the downfall this brings in people by having the group of characters divide in half and fight each other, as well as having to fend off the hungry zombies (which are much faster, stronger, and quicker to solve problems in this remake). In this new version, the mall is just the backdrop of the story. If anything, it somewhat (and I think unintentionally) gives off the impression of the greatness and popularity of consumerism; whereas, no matter how stressed, scared, or dead you may be, the mall is always the place to end up at to fix your problems. So, while Romero’s version remains superior by not only being a daring zombie film set against the backdrop of the problems with mass consumerism, Snyder’s version doesn’t fail to impress with his use of better acting, slick scare tactics, and interesting character development and dialogue.

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