Dawn of the Dead



A few days ago I wrote about the Dawn of the Dead preview they showed on TV, and how I hoped that the ten minutes they showed from the beginning of the film wasn't the best part of the movie. As it turns out, that ten minutes was the best part. The rest of the movie isn't that bad, but it's not going to become a horror classic.

Like the original Romero zombie movies no explanation is offered as to why the recently dead are coming back to life with a taste for human flesh. No one in the film even calls them "zombies," just "undead cannibals."


Cue the R.E.M. song.

After the preliminaries are dealt with and it's established that humankind is essentially screwed, the story focuses on a small group of survivors who barricade themselves inside a mall while the undead congregate outside. The group is larger than in the 1979 original, and much less well-developed as characters. There are a couple of characters who barely got any dialogue at all. Towards the end of the movie it seems like some character relationships were supposed to pay off, but they didn't really.

There was also one scene where I thought horror movie cliches came too close to the surface. When the decision is made to quit the mall and make a run for safety two reinforced buses are prepared. The hospital intern (the main character, played by Sarah Polley), the nice guy, the orphaned girl and the dog are in one bus, while the black guy, the promiscuous woman, and the sarcastic jerk are in the other. Care to guess which bus is going to have trouble?

That being said, Dawn of the Dead is an efficient delivery medium for gore and scares, and some humor. Perhaps the best addition to the original story is Andy, a gun store owner trapped in his store across the street from the mall. He and the cop (Ving Rhames, excellent as usual) strike up a rapport even though they only communicate by holding up signs on top of their respective buildings.

Posted: Sun - March 21, 2004 at      

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