Dawn of the Dead

With the disappointment of last year’s abysmal remake of Tobe Hooper’s horror classic ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” Danny Boyle’s surprisingly effective 2002 zombie thriller “28 Days Later,” and several lesser films like “House of the Dead” and “Cabin Fever” all coloring my expectations, I went to see first-time director Zack Snyder’s remake of George Romero’s 1979 piller of the zombie movie canon “Dawn of the Dead.”

Although Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” was actually part of a trilogy, bookended by 1968’s “Night of the Living Dead,” one of the great horror movies of all time, and the lesser “Day of the Dead,” the new film has been refashioned as a stand-alone story, beginning with a patient with a mysterious illness appearing at a hospital at the end of nurse Ana’s (Sarah Polley) shift. By the next morning, the city is overrun by fast-moving, flesh-eating zombies.

Fleeing her home, Ana traverses a maelstrom of grisly violence and spectacular car crashes, trying deparately to reach a safe haven before eventually losing control of her own vehicle, eventually banding together with a small group of survivors, including police officer Kenneth (Ving Rhames) husband and pregnant wife Andre and Luda (Mekhi Phifer and Inna Korobkina) and regular-guy-doing-his-best-in-a-bad-situation-type Michael (Jake Weber), who seek refuge in a local shopping mall from the hoards of ravenous zombies gathering outside.

The cunning, fast-moving-blur zombies of “Dawn” have more in common with the speedy undead of “28 Days Later” than with the lumbering, rotting husks of Romero’s films. Though it’s somewhat lacking in originality, and though it forces the audience to endure some clunky scenes and mediocre writing, the new film is far superior to the original in terms of the quality of the acting and overall production value (and, incidentally, in terms of being blood-and-gore-centric, “Dawn” pales in comparison to the ultraviolent “Passion of the Christ.”)

Although it obviously will never been considered a classic on par with the George Romero’s three “Dead” films, Snyder’s remake is a proficient, entertaining thriller that ditches most of the anti-consumerism subtext of Romero’s 1979 original to focus on prosthetic blood and gore and digitized mayhem (although the opening credit sequence suggest a post-9/11 political critique, the film never elevates its violent struggle against the undead above a strictly literal level).

Look for Tom Savini (the special effects and make-up artist who created the zombies for Romero’s original zombie trilogy and directed a 1990 remake of “Night of the Living Dead”) as a local sheriff.

—Matt Parks (April 3, 2004)