I was rather excited when I first heard about a "Dawn of the Dead" remake, partly because I was pleasantly surprised by Tom Savini's 1990 updating of "Night of the Living Dead" (also reviewed), which against the odds actually turned out to be pretty good.
I've loved the 1978 G. Romero version of "Dawn of the Dead", sequel to "Night of the Living Dead", but it was getting somewhat long in the tooth and starting looking horribly dated...a major problem with many classic 70's movies. So, the updating of a genre classic seemed to be a good idea and timely. The plot seemed to be the same, the characters were being played by non-stars and the early stills looked promising.
Then the bad news started to seep in. Romero didn't give his blessing, `nobody' director Zack Snyder was at the helm and he had also decided that his living dead were going to be able to run the hundred yard dash without a hint of difficulty. None of which bode well. In fact, the remake was looking more and more like a cynical attempt to cash in on a famous eye-catching title and a cheap re-visioning of Romero's script instead of actually creating a new one.
The James Gunn script (Michael Tolkin and Scott Frank were brought in for rewriting) of the new "Dawn of the Dead" follows Romero's quite closely; a group of human survivors of an unexplained apocalypse seek refuge in a huge mall complex as the recently dead start returning to life with an horrific desire to feed on living flesh. It may sound a bit thin, but in Romero's hands it was the middle section of a running series and he used it as a stinging critique on American society and its indulgent consumerist excess.
Snyder's film dispenses with Romero's sly swipe at consumerism though. The super new 'American' malls of 1978 had become so commonplace, not just in the States but also in most parts of the Western World that such a comment from that angle would have been redundant. In fact the Thornhill Square Shopping Centre in Ontario was considered old fashioned. It was torn down after shooting wrapped. Of course consumerism is still a large part of modern human life (probably more so than in 1978), but a mall these days is nothing new. In fact the mall motif is used in Snyder's film because he probably couldn't think of anything different other than the set-up provided by Romero.
Where both versions succeed however, is in grimness which is an essential element in any zombie apocalypse movie. Romero's version has liberal doses of humour (some of it silly like the ineptly handled pie-fight sequence) to relieve the tension and the slowness of the piece. But Snyder wisely abandons putting in slapstick, in favour of more considered humour as in the scene where the survivors and the isolated Andy (Bruce Bohne) in the gun store across the street, relieve their boredom by shooting zombies that look like famous celebrities: "...Rosie O'Donnell! tell him to shoot Rosie!" It's funny, but grim, because the celeb zombies are searched for among thousands of other hungry walking corpses waiting outside in the streets below. It's a vision of the breakdown of social norms and structure. The original version presents this breakdown too, but in a more subtle way. Humanity slowly turns off the lights of offices in the city and melts into darkness as the survivors steal a TV station helicopter and learn to begin surviving on their own in the grim new reality. In many ways Romero's more studied and slower film presents a more realistic breakdown of social order than Snyder's fast paced vision.
But Snyders worst 'sin' in his magpie remake is his misguided tinkering with Romero's take on the living dead. Whereas Romero's favourite monsters are a slow, rotting, shuffling horde whose sheer number and relentless advance is very much part of their creepy menace, Snyders zombies are like Linford Christie or Ben Johnson. They have no problem racing at 25MPH toward their victims. There are some who find this particular addition to "zombie attributes" exciting, but I found it to be a completely ridiculous. Snyder's living dead possess the muscular strength needed to run at sustained speeds but they cannot break the windows of a shopping centre to get to the human flesh inside. I can suspend belief enough for the idea of the dead coming back to life and wanting to eat flesh, but I draw the line at them running all over the place without any difficulty at all. They are, after all, re-animated corpses and should be subject to some sort of difficulty in movement. The worst offender of these new super strength zombies is the legless corpse who attacks the heroes in the underground carpark. It's a haphazard attempt at a cheap shock and it doesn't work.
On the plus side, Snyder's film has better make-up effects and more accomplished gore. Of course, Tom Savini was at the cutting edge of horror makeup in 1978 and there have been many advances made in makeup effects (a lot instituted by Savini himself) and many have been incorporated into David Anderson's special effects crew for the movie, I'm sure. However, as Snyder admits himself, Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" is gorier.
Also in the movies favor is generally good acting from all concerned. Sarah Polley (as Ana) deserves special mention as she is in nearly every scene and carries her character well and Jake Weber (as Michael) also does a good turn as the quiet unassuming member of the group. Ving Rhames (as Kenneth Hall) plays himself again and most of the others are there really just to make up numbers, but do a good job.
Other highlights of Snyder's version is an exciting helicopter shot opening and great end credits using a "Blair Witch" style handheld camera sequence, although the inclusion of Disturbed's - 'Down With The Sickness' is annoying and further sends the 2004 film down the MTV route. In fact the end credits present scenes that are far more terrifying than anything that actually makes it into the film's main running time.
Zack Snyder's "Dawn of the Dead" is not a bad film overall and it's certainly a worthy entry into the 'Living dead' cannon, but it suffers from a number of mis-steps and ideas that could have / should have been dropped in the first place, like the ridiculous zombie childbirth and the running corpses themselves...and where Romero's long script and running time leaves the viewer satisfied at its end, Snyder's film seems rushed at its end. It feels clipped as if the film had been mercilessly cut down from a much monger project. As a result I was left wanting and unsatisfied at the conclusion.
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Originally Posted by DjfunkmasterG
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), and I bet there's an absolute boat load of folks out there who love Day of the Dead very much.
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