Directed by Zack Snyder. 100 minutes.
Starring Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, and Mekhi Pfeifer. Released by Universal Pictures.
Zack Snyder’s remake of George Romero’s 1979 horror classic, Dawn of the Dead, is a pleasantly unpleasant surprise. After last year’s debacle that was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Snyder’s reimagining of the 1970s zombie film is a much-needed improvement. Deciding to skip past the political and sociological implications that Romero littered throughout the original film, as well as Night of the Living Dead, and far-removing itself from the human element of the story’s situation, as did last year’s 28 Days Later, this new Dawn of the Dead is a straight up horror film and a technically adept one at that.
As the film opens, Sarah Polley is a nurse who has worked a long day. She comes home, spends an evening in with her husband, and awakens to find her next-door neighbor standing in her bedroom with ripped lips and blood and saliva dripping from the jowls. Not a good sign of things to come. She escapes and drives through her neighborhood, which is an impressive vision of hell on earth. Fires plummet to the sky, neighbors stand on lawns with guns, people run hectic in the street, undead run everywhere. Polley crashes into the woods off the highway and is discovered by a group of people that include a cop (Ving Rhames), a young man (Mekhi Pfeifer) and his pregnant fiancé, and another man (Jake Weber). They make their way to the local shopping mall, which is where Romero’s original took place.
In Romero’s film, the mall was used as a symbol of the American consumerist society of the 1970s and many jokes were made at its expense. Zombies tried walking up the down elevators, dreadful muzak played on the speakers (this joke is somewhat played for laughs once again here), and, on the news, announcers stated that the zombies would most likely show up at the place where they spent most of their time, which explains the mall being overrun with them. At the mall, they meet three security guards who are not so friendly and, then later, are joined by another truck full of people. Most of them will become zombie food, but some of become larger figures as the film goes on.
Perhaps, the most interesting relationship in the film is formed between Ving Rhames and a man named Andy who is stranded on top of a building across from the mall. The two of them become friends, play chess, and swap messages via binoculars and signs. There is even a dementedly funny moment when they snipe zombies in the parking lot. All of this, of course, leads up to the big moment when the group tries to escape from the mall. This scene is funny when one of the more cynical characters breaks down their escape route.
Dawn of the Dead is not a great movie like the original one was, it has no political or sociological agenda, and will not become any sort of classic. However, it is frightening, exciting, entertaining, and very well made. With horror films getting dumped on the general populous every several weeks these days, it is a rare thing when one of them actually gets the job done. Snyder’s film does and it proves that every once in a while a remake can be the exception to the rule. Every once in a while