In 26 years the zombies have gotten faster, and the body count has grown. Just don’t expect this version of the film to challenge you like the original.
As soon as I finished the original Dawn of the Dead, I knew that my planned viewing of the remake was going to suffer in comparison. I remember the 2004 version from when it originally came out on video, and I was a fan. This was pre-Walking Dead (on TV, anyway) and there hadn’t been a cool zombie movie in a long while. The film still holds up compared to a lot of horror that I watch, and even reaches greatness on occasion, but it simply can’t compete on a thematic level with the ground-breaking original. Likewise, the characters here are far more stock (the rich asshole, the surly badass, etc.) than their fully fleshed-out predecessors. Yet, I bet there are many of you who would disagree with me, so let’s take a look at what is a pretty enjoyable popcorn movie.
No matter what you think about Zack Snyder as a film-maker, you have to agree that he has a knack for opening a movie. Much like Watchmen’s best segment is the alternate history lesson over the opening credits, Snyder reserves his truly exceptional work for the introductory segment of this film. Ana, one of our chief protagonists, wraps up a long shift as a nurse and drives home to her loving husband. Already, Snyder is dropping hints about the mayhem about to come, but if we notice, Ana certainly doesn’t. She wakes up the next morning to a neighborhood girl standing in her bedroom doorway, covered in blood. It turns out she is infected and quickly infects Ana’s husband, leading to a harrowing escape from her house. That leads to an even more harrowing escape out of her little suburb, which has become a chaotic nightmare overnight. It is a thrilling way to kick off the film, and ranks up there with Scream and the original Dawn in terms of brilliant opening segments. We learn everything we need to know about the zombie outbreak, and get a great introduction to Ana. Unfortunately, her character development pretty much stops by the time the title card shows up.
That’s my biggest beef with this movie: I can think of only one character that has an actual arc. It’s not surprising that character, the head security guard at the mall that serves as the main setting of the film, is also the most entertaining. At one point there is a dramatic scene involving a pregnant woman who has been infected, who is about to deliver her baby. It wants to be shocking and scary and devastating, but this woman has had less than five lines in the entire film up to this point. Her defining character traits are that she is pregnant and she has a boyfriend. He is not well developed, either, but we at least get a little time to learn about his past and his hopes for a family. Ultimately, the scene falls completely flat because we don’t have any reason to care about any of the principal characters involved. That lack of investment cripples the whole film. The original had four main characters, and 50% more run-time to spend with them. The remake, eager to pump up the kill rate, introduces more than a dozen. There is simply no chance to get to know any of them very well. Snyder does a very good job making his zombies scary, and directing some thrilling action sequences, but it all rings a little hollow due to the problems I’ve outlined.
I’m probably being unfair comparing this perfectly enjoyable movie to a horror classic that sits in my personal top ten. Then again, I’m not the one who called it Dawn of the Dead. On the positive side, I think the filmmakers were smart to take a couple of elements from the original (the mall, the zombies) and pretty much make their own story out of them. There are parts that work really well, like Andy, the sniper on the roof of the gun shop across the street, and the missions to start up the mall generator or make it to the marina. It flies by, and checks all the standard buttons you want out of a zombie story. If it fails to reach the narrative and thematic heights of its predecessor, then it’s in good company with all the other zombie movies out there.
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