What would Horror Month be without a zombie movie or two? Well yeah, I guess it would still be Horror Month, but there are so many zombie films out there I had to put one or two on the list. Overpopulated as this subgenre of horror is, Zack Snyder's remake of George A. Romero's is a standout zombie movie and one of the best ones to come out in the last decade. It's not overly complex or anything, but it is what it is. And what it is is a mindless but extremely entertaining popcorn film.
Meh, Zack Snyder. I can take him or leave him really. His adaptation of 300 was visually gorgeous but kinda dumb, Sucker Punch was visually gorgeous but REALLY dumb and his take of Superman was decent but not really remarkable in any way. As far as the extremely divisive Watchmen goes, I actually enjoyed the movie. I hadn't read the book at the time, and even after reading it twice and watching Snyder's imagining a few more times I still like the movie a lot. It seems to me that Snyder has a fair amount of technical ability, but as a screenwriter he has a long way to go. Still, his movies are entertaining and have been pretty successful financially, and I'd say Dawn of the Dead is one of his best. The opening credits of this movie are really great, one of the highlights of the whole thing. They show red letters evaporating into blood, interspersed with news footage of the zombie outbreak while Johnny Cash's song "When the Man Comes Around" plays. The song is about the end of the world (more specifically the rapture), and fits well with the theme of the movie. It's a really good way to start off a plot that is pretty basic of the genre: zombie plague erupts unexpectedly and a group of people need to survive. Common plot devices are also used, someone in the group gets bitten as always and there's that argument about whether they should just shoot them or wait and let them turn or hope there's a cure. Although this is a remake it really doesn't have that much in common with the original. The only thing that's very similar is that they both take place in a shopping mall. Other than that, it's almost completely different.
Another interesting difference between this and the original Dawn of the Dead is the zombies. In the original the mall was full of them, but they were very slow and could only shuffle around. In the remake the zombies sprint at any living person they see right away, and the main goal of the characters is to keep them out of the mall altogether. This fits the tone of the films as well, the original is fairly slow paced like its zombies, while Snyder's remake is more action-packed, fast paced and explosive. There's certainly a lot more violence, which is fine because the blood and makeup effects look really good. There's a ton of blood, but it's not excessive enough that it looks campy or unrealistic. There's enough gore to make this not a film for the squeamish. It's quite graphic, which is the way movies like this should be. As far as acting goes, Dawn of the Dead is average. Ving Rhames is really good as Marsellus Wallace a cop who is by far the toughest and coolest guy in the group. And in this viewing I noticed for the first time that there are cameos by a few of the actors that were in the original. Pretty cool.
I had fun watching Dawn of the Dead again. It's a satisfying film that is exactly what you expect it to be: violent, intense, and exhilarating.
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