Dawn of the Remake

To follow in the footsteps of Romero's classic is an impossible task. Yet despite the name, this professed remake could more accurately be perceived as a completely different movie. Though certainly a homage to the original, the only real similarities are the zombies and the mall. Almost everything else was completely different. This is intentional. The writers and director knew full well that they could not simply reshoot the original. Instead, they chose to take the concept from the original and recreate it into a movie of their own.

The premise of the movie follows that of the original. Zombies begin to appear all over the world for an unknown reason. A group of survivors fleeing the plague take shelter in an empty mall, where they are then trapped, besieged by limitless hordes of the undead.

Unlike the original, however, the second generation cast is a larger and more diverse group. Indeed, the large ensemble cast is by far the greatest strength of the 2004 remake. Though mostly still based on the classic zombie movie archetypes, each character seems more dynamic and 3 dimensional than you would find in most zombie movies, and indeed most horror movies in general. Many of the characters even develop as the movie progresses, which gives interesting depth. Though generally considered an Action movie, Dawn of the Dead remains just as gripping, even during the downtime.

Dawn of the Dead also pushed the envelope a little, something very few zombie movies seem capable of doing these days. Most noticeably, the zombies in the 2004 version can run, negating the biggest advantage that we humans would have over the living dead. In addition, they are as strong and coordinated as they were in life, able to punch a wind shield or break in a bathroom door. This makes individual zombies infinitely more dangerous than their traditional counterparts. In the original, the survivors used clear, clever wits and skilled marksmanship to clear out the infested mall. In the remake, no amount of planning could save them if the horde managed to find their way inside their makeshift fortress. Only brute force, constant running, and an inordinate amount of luck allow some of them to make it out with their lives.

However, some of these creative ideas should have stayed in the cutting room. The largest, glaring example is the zombie baby. One of the characters, a pregnant woman, already a zombie movie cliche, gets bitten and even after death is able to give birth, to an undead newborn. The baby is pretty quickly put down, but its very presence in the movie negates any sense of gravity that the movie might otherwise have possessed. True, it's impossible to say definitively what would happen to an unborn child were it infected, but in terms of film style it lowers the movie from a Horror classic in the making to the level of just a really good B movie. It's cliche, it's corny, and it unravels the suspension of disbelieve, a hard thing to establish in a zombie movie. This isn't the only example of this sort of B movie additions to an otherwise excellent movie, but it is the clearest.

So you have a mixed bag, the Dawn of the Dead remake makes a valiant effort to bring the genre out of the ditch of cliche where it has fallen. The characters are for the most part believable and human. The makeup and special effects are professional and expertly crafted. In particular they avoided the temptation to overuse CGI, which most modern viewers can see through immediately, and have thus kept the visual aspects of the movie gritty and powerful. So despite its occasional stray into the cliche, the new Dawn of the Dead carries on the legacy of the original.

Four and a Half Stars.