director
Zack Snyder
screenwriter
James Gunn
based on
a screenplay by
George
A. Romero
producers
Marc Abraham
Eric Newman
Richard P. Rubinstein
cinematographer
Matthew F. Leonetti
music
Tyler Bates
editor
Niven Howie
cast
Sarah Polley (Ana)
Ving Rhames (Kenneth)
Jake Weber (Michael)
Mekhi Phifer (Andre)
Inna Korobkina (Luda)
Ty Burrell (Steve)
Michael Kelly (CJ)
Kevin Zegers (Terry)
Michael Barry (Bart)
Lindy Booth (Nicole)
Matt Frewer (Frank)
Bruce Bohne (Andy)
Scott Reiniger (The General)
Tom Savini (The County Sheriff)
Ken Foree (The Televangelist)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 98m
u.s.
release: 3/19/04
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
see also:
- dawn
of the dead (1979)
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Of the recent spate of unnecessary
remakes of horror classics (last year's Texas
Chainsaw Massacre being the nadir), the new "re-imagining"
of George A. Romero's 1979 Dawn
of the Dead is probably the least shabby. For some of
the running time, I agreed to accept it as a variant tale following
survivors at another mall at the same time as the events
in Romero's film. But this remake, directed without much personality
by first-timer Zack Snyder, cannot come anywhere near Romero's
achievement -- which was not only a satire of consumerism, but
also a snapshot of an exhausted, demoralized American period.
As the Romero film opens, the flesh-eating zombies have been
rampaging for a good long while (it was, after all, a continuation
of Romero's 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead); the
lead characters have been dealing with the aftermath, on the
front line of the action, so we understood why their instinct
was to move to the relatively quiet confines of a shopping mall.
The new film opens with a glimpse
of normality, only to be shattered when people start dying and
coming back to life. The pre-credits sequence, which follows
young nurse Sarah Polley as she frantically negotiates her way
through a neighborhood gone mad, does capture what it might be
like to go to sleep in ignorant bliss and wake up to a world
in which everything has gone to hell. It packs an eerie post-9/11
frisson. From there, though, as Polley meets a few other
survivors (Ving Rhames, Mekhi Phifer, Jake Weber) and they head
to a local mall, this Dawn of the Dead becomes an enclosed
Assault on Precinct 13 clone without much resonance or
point. Screenwriter James Gunn keeps piling on new characters,
none of whom (including a dog) makes much of an impression.
Never mind that recently deceased
people shouldn't be able to run (this aspect seems stolen wholesale
from last summer's 28 Days Later,
in which the villains weren't technically zombies anyway); never
mind the baggage we bring to a film bearing the title Dawn
of the Dead. In and of itself, the movie becomes repetitive,
a one-note affair searching for a second note, sometimes finding
one but then losing track of it. The survivors hole up, fending
off zombies while attending to conflicts and crises (a trio of
armed, cretinous security guards; a pregnant woman). In a rare
affecting moment, a cadaverous-looking Matt Frewer turns up as
a bitten and infected man who knows he has to be killed; an interesting
subplot left out to dry involves a man on the roof of a neighboring
building, who picks off zombies and communicates with the survivors
via dry-wipe message boards.
Eventually, Dawn '04
devolves into zombie-attack scenes; some get shot in the head,
some don't, and it's all filmed in the same headache-inducing
step-printing/undercranking style Danny Boyle used for 28
Days Later, with lots of jerky, unscannable movement. The
movie drags out two original Dawn stars, Ken Foree and
Scott Reiniger, as well as original Dawn make-up artist
Tom Savini, for obligatory nothing cameos, though Foree does
get to intone, once again, the famous "When there's no more
room in hell" line. Dawn '04 is commendable in a
couple of areas; Jake Weber makes a bright, shrewd protagonist
with an undercurrent of ruthlessness -- a credible survivor type.
And if you stay through the end credits you'll get grainy video
footage more chilling than just about anything in the movie itself
(aided considerably by Kyle Cooper's splatterpunk credits design).
I'm willing to believe that
this Dawn was made by fans of the original, who got control
of the project (which was going to be made anyway) and tried
to stay true to it while creating something new. Unfortunately,
or perhaps fortunately for those who feared a true desecration
of Romero's masterwork, this is only a moderately competent zombie
flick. If it generates interest in Romero's film (recently reissued
on DVD), so much the better, but it's sad to imagine that newcomers
to the Dead films will see the remake first and consider
it the definitive version. Despite the remake's box-office success
and unaccountable critical support, though, I have faith that
Romero's film will outlive its own rehash. It's essentially the
difference between a classic driven by vision and a copy driven
by dollar signs.
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