Dawn of the Dead - 2004

Zach Snyder's career to date has consisted of remakes and comic book adaptations. His directorial debut was a remake of a classic horror film. Not only a classic horror movie, but perhaps th grestest zombie film of all time made by the godfather of zombie movies George A. Romero. So you can expect a level of trepidation about it. Thankfully the reboot, reimaging, re-envisioning, whatever you want to call it changes enough from the original that Dawn of the Dead 2004 can be judged on its own merits. It may never be as good as the original, but then it never really attempts to be. It has replaced the bumbling, shuffling zombies of Romero's classics with the fast moving infected similar to 28 Days Later. This as always is a debatable subject, but should be saved for another blog, but does at least give the writers a new approach on the themes presented by confinement of the refuge in the Mall.

Dawn of the Dead is a satisfying, if somewhat underwhelming entry into the zombie genre, and feels perhaps a bit too much like a MTV music video than a atmospheric horror. The script is ok, but has some of those awful, on-the-nose expositionary scenes wedged in to try and give the characters depth and make the audience care. For the most part, like most zombie films, these scenes are enough to make the inevitable deaths meaningful. However, the film is also extremely predictable. Character stereotypes are included and ticked off, before going through the expected arc and changing, finally succombing to the zombie hordes usually to save some less deserving character. There are too many characters and so most are sketched lightly, giving you cliches. The number of characters are there mainly to act as a body count and here again the film falls short. Unlike say Romero's most recent Diary of the Dead, which despite being flawed is certainly creative in the manner of which it disposes of both zombie and human, the best Dawn of the Dead can muster is a game of spot the celebrity lookalike zombie, or accidental death by chainsaw. Which brings me onto another point. Snyder seems to have a fetish for weaponry. The film contains a number of unnecesary close up ons firing guns and the aforementioned chainsaw etc. This may just be a ploy to appeal to a new generation, but it succeeds only in removing the sort of tense atmosphere horror movies should be working to create.

Having said that, when the film moves up a few gears in the final act Snyder seems much more at home, and thanks to the likes of Sarah Polley and Ving Rhames, the film's becomes tense, engaging and discomforting, if never quite terrifying.

So not a bad entry in the zombie genre, if lesser than its predecessors and other recent zombie fare. Snyder has gone onto big and bolder stuff, but has never managed to throw off the MTV stylings which deflate this film. A middling script is salvaged by good casting and when the zombie hordes do attack it manages to get the pulse racing enough to make the whole things enjoyable.