DAWN OF THE DEAD (2004) Way, WAY better than it has any right to be This isn't right, this should've blown goats! Well maybe not "should", but who wasn't sceptical as hell when it was announced that George Romero's classic zombie apocalypse epic was getting remade? I sure as hell was, and I'm the sunshiny optimistic always-look-on-the-bright-side-of-what-idiots-are-doing type. I had the same trepidation about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, which I haven't seen yet. But then both movies demanded a little more sincere curiosity (instead of just reflexive dread) by having pretty badass trailers. My trepidation about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remains; nothing with Michael Bay involved has been good yet, and I don't see why things should change now. I'll rent it though. 'Cuz I've got a coupon. If I didn't have a coupon, I'd wait until I could get it in a stack. No sense throwing too much money at something Michael Bay was involved in. But, never mind. Dawn Of The Dead is the movie here. No one will blame you for dreading this movie. I don't have any set rules against remakes, but I do generally believe that if you're going to remake something, remake something that didn't work the first time, so you can do it right this time; remaking something that worked just fine the first time seems futile at best, and at worst, a crass cash-in on a name others worked hard to make famous. And remaking something that likely as widely hailed as any other movie as the all-time greatest in its chosen genre (zombie horror)? That's like re-painting the Mona Lisa. To the filmmakers' credit, this is by no means a straight remake. The basic "zombies in a shopping mall" concept remains, and there are some fanboy-pleasing nods to the original film, but in the end this a pretty different movie in most aspects. Which is well and good; I don't want a classic remade to be as close to the original as possible. Gust Van Sant did that with Psycho, and nobody's forgiven him for it yet, or found a point in him doing it. If anything, this movie is closest in tone and setup to the original Romero zombie flick, Night Of The Living Dead. This is a balls-out, super-violent (can't wait for an unrated DVD), visceral horror movie with little use for subtlety and not much modern cheekiness in evidence. It does not appear to be made with any sort of message in mind; there is none of the heavy-handed satire of Romero's second zombie movie (which, though I love it, was pretty laid-back about its horror), and none of the REALLY heavy-handed "the real monsters are us!" balderdash of the third. Its plot and character relationships are also a little more like the first film, with hastily-acquainted individuals and groups coming together bits at a time, fighting and/or banding together to repel the zombie menace. There are echoes of the second film - an intimidating black policeman, a pregnancy, people having entirely too much fun killing the zombies - but the contexts are different, and take the story different places. The movie starts with a normal evening (well, date night) for an overworked nurse (Sarah Polley), and then civilization basically falls overnight. These first ten minutes or so were shown on TV before the release of the film (didn't see it; we don't get that channel up here) and it's as intense and fright-filled an opening as I've seen in a horror movie in many years. It's bloody, pretty unflinching for a movie that actually got a rating, grim and humourless and has a constant feeling of extreme danger once things go sour. The rest of the movie is made with much the same tone; maybe not as breathless (especially once they get inside the mall) but it's still a serious horror movie that would rather be intense than sarcastic. When a very sarcastic character is introduced later in the movie, he's not made out to be funny at all. A cast mostly composed of Canadians which might seem only peripherally familiar even to us (closest thing to a big star is Ving Rhames as the cop; Polley, Mekhi Phifer, Matt Frewer and Jake Weber make up a distant second tier) helps give the survivors some authenticity; some of them are faceless to the point of near invisibility (I'd forgotten all about that old guy until the chainsaw mishap) but none of them seem like movie stars, nobody's too pretty or squeaky-clean. At least, not by today's standards; look around sometime. The best twist on the original is the character of Andy (Bruce Bohne), a gun store owner a few blocks away who is trapped on his rooftop and communicates with the mall crew with a marker board and binoculars. I liked this guy - he cheerfully considers the fall of all civilization an opportunity to finally shoot at moving targets that fall down - but it's an odd omission that in all their communications about the extent of the carnage, chess, and zombie celebrity look-alikes, they don't really talk about the zombies, specifically. If you were on that mall rooftop, what's the #1 most important thing about the zombies you'd want somebody to know? Nobody tells him. Oh yeah, the zombies. Like the "rage"-infected people in 28 Days Later, these zombies can run, climb, jump, you name it, if humans can do it, they can do it too but of course they don't seem to feel pain. They're zombies for a more kinetic 21st century. I can only imagine how much grumbling that's caused among zombie die-hards who have seen dozens or hundreds of movies where zombies always shamble. I have seen that some people, incredibly, are finding fast zombies hard to believe. (think about that for a second) That, and a seriously played-down cannibalism angle; whatever cannibalism is going on here is somewhat implied. We see some chewed-off body and face parts, and I think one character made a reference to them eating each other. Personally, I like the fast zombies; if there's one thing we've learned from movies with traditional zombies, it's that most people who get killed by them do so because they were getting careless or cocky or stupid. Shambling zombies have their charms, to be sure, but the quick zombies give moviemakers two opportunities: to avoid the traditional, worn-out suspense scene where some sort of task (usually refuelling a vehicle) has to be performed while some zombies slowly close in, and to make a more compelling, immediate menace for a generation of viewers who grew up blasting away at and not getting bit by slow, shambling zombies in video games and probably won't be very forgiving if they know they're better at it than the people in the movie are. The cannibalism angle I don't miss much either; it was a little superfluous even in Romero's originals. It's bad that they can kill you, and way worse that they can make you one of them...but the threat of being eaten by them does not really add to their menace when they can do so much worse. It was more of a gross-out than a fright thing, and I'm not sure if that particular gross-out would work so much today...I mean, you'd be seeing it on Fear Factor every week if it weren't illegal. Zombies are, essentially, goblins; irredeemably horrible creatures intent only on destruction who always win in the end due to persistence and sheer numbers. So too were the creatures in Aliens. They can all do a lot worse things than just kill you; you could count yourself lucky if they just eat you. The plot does present the occasional problem (that #1 most important thing about the zombies might not be easy to get across in big letters on a whiteboard, but it's important enough that you'd think they'd take the time), and there are some moments where stuff seems missing, like the trip back from Andy's to the manhole. The cheekiness present in so much of today's horror is largely absent, but not entirely, such as a stupid lounge version of an already bad Disturbed song or a line about elevator music that was funnier in Deep Rising. Rock video/commercial director Zack/Zach (the spelling is unclear) Snyder includes a few touches I can't say I like - zombies making wildcat noises, too many slow-motion shots of bullets and spent cartridges falling to the ground - but for the most part seems to have taken his job seriously. For all its flaws, the new Dawn Of The Dead is an aggressive horror flick that hits hard and often. It's not an atmospheric horror movie, or a "thinking man's" horror movie; it's more of a kick in the balls than a bump in the night. One of its most intense scenes is when two armoured buses are held unable to move by what seems like an ocean of zombies, a moment of huge spectacle one might usually think of as out of place in an intimate genre like horror, but it works here because of that no-subtlety approach. It is, admittedly, not really "in the spirit" of the original, which you'd think would be the ultimate crime for a remake of such an esteemed film, but that it works as well as it does at what it's going for can make such things easy to forgive. Except for those suddenly fast zombies, this may well come to be known less as a remake of a 70's movie than as a sequel to Tom Savini's remake of Night Of The Living Dead, meaning we may yet see a Day Of The Dead remake. I doubt it, but you never know. If we do, I hope it's more in line with the larger-scale earlier visions of it than the bicker-fest that was ultimately made. BACK TO THE D's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE