Dawn of the Dead 2004

As a zombie movie fan, I had to go see this movie opening weekend and revel in some gory undead goodness. I also went because I have fond memories of the oringal and wanted to compare the two and see if the remake stacked up to the original at all. I'm happy to say that while it doesn't surpass the absolute amazingness of the original, it does hold up as a fine movie in its own right.

The basic premise of the movies is the same. The dead are coming back to life and some survivors make their way to a mall where they hope to wait out the plague and make a home for themselves. Instead of just four members, this time there is a large group that comes together at various parts of the movie to give the audience a larger character base watch be killed off. As you can imagine, characterization suffers and when some of them do die, it is only with a passing interest that we notice. There are the heroes in this movie and there is the cannon fodder.

The zombies are also faster this time around, a nod to Nightmare City and last year's 28 Days Later. This works for the movie and against it. While it is more terrifying to have a horde of zombies rush you like the defense of a football team, you can scarcely believe that anyone could get away from them outside of tossing grenades or using a tank. Also, since most of the zombies are dead and wounded, I would think that a good amount of them must have suffered some sort of leg damage and regardless of whether they feel pain or not, it would certainly hamper their movement rate. That's why the dead in the original were slow. They were slow from being killed in various ways. Here they seem to retain a lot of their faculties for trying to find a way in to the mall to get their prey.

Sadly, even though there are a thousand zombies in the parking lot, none of them think to smash the doors. Come on, with that much brute strength you think they would have forced the doors a long time ago.

Ving Rhames and Sarah Polley turn out fine performances, as does the rest of the cast. The directing is in the vein of music videos, fast and flashy but it suffices though disorients quite a bit of the time as well. The script suffers from some logic flaws as well that lead the survivors into danger several times but it can be overlooked for the sake of suspension of disbelief.

It's a good film that I hope to get on dvd soon to watch a few more times. It scared the hell out of my girl and made me jump in a couple places as well. Stay for the end credits where the movie continues off after an ambiguous ending that is a nod to the original and gives the audience and more definite sense of closure. Check it out.