Dawn of the Dead

by Bill Henry on Mar.19, 2004, under Bill Henry's Movie Reviews

In a year soon to be filled with unnecessary remakes, a new George Romero-free version of Dawn of the Dead escapes the grave this week. It offers a good deal less than would a re-release of Romeroâ€™s surprisingly well-made and funny 1978 sequel to his break through movie, The Night of the Living Dead.
Rather than Pittsburgh, the end of the world now takes place in suburban Wisconsin (or more precisely Ontario subbing for Wisconsin). A hard-working nurse (Sarah Polley) comes home to her cookie-cutter community and after a night relaxing with hubby, the couple awakens to find the neighborâ€™s kid in their house, seemingly bleeding and in shock. But the audience already knows that the kid is now a horrible flesh-eating zombie and the husband quickly becomes one too. Nurse Sarah barely escapes with her life fleeing through an increasingly anarchic neighborhood before crashing to a stop. Luckily for her, angry black policeman Ving Rhames happens by to, at first menace her with a shotgun and then to rescue her. And so, with a few other stragglers culled from the screenwritersâ€™ guide to stereotypical character types for a post-apocalyptic scenario, the cobbled-together group makes their way to the local mall to lock themselves into the set where most of the movie takes place.
The parody of consumer culture that Romero supplied to his movie is now just a screenwriterâ€™s quick throwaway line. Or maybe it just makes more sense now to congregate at a mall (plenty to do, lots of food, they secure it every night) since Romero showed us a way. There are a few good scenes such as one involving a shooting contest using celebrity look-alike zombies. But more likely to occur is a predictable sequence with a pregnant zombie and an undead delivery.
Changes in make-up and a lot more money (mostly spent on firearms and too few overhead shots) are on hand this time around. Another significant difference from the earlier movie is that instead of the shambling undead from Romeroâ€™s version, we now have running, chasing, and pouncing zombies. Much as in 28 Days Later, there is no explanation as to how something with such a speedy metabolism can survive so long without sustenance. But this is not exactly a movie to sustain deep thoughts.
If it did, the audience might question why the group decides to abandon their haven for an idiotic plan to drive to a marina and grab a boat. They end up at an island where the surviving zombies from The House of the Dead presumably gobble them up.
And what of the surviving members of the audience? They have received very little for their time and ticket money. The world was not exactly crying out for a grimmer, dimmer version of Dawn of the Dead cranked out by a major studio machine. If the gang at Universal Pictures was so intent on exploiting George A. Romero, why not just re-release the original and then hire the man to make the same kind of clever, well-made horror movies that George A. Romero has been making for decades.