Zombie Flicks: Dawn of the Dead (2004)

When this film came out in the spring of 2004, I hadn't even really seen the original Night of the Living Dead yet but I did know that Dawn of the Dead was the sequel to that, so naturally, I thought to myself, "They made a remake of a sequel? How does that make sense?' But, by the time I finally got around to seeing it the following summer on DVD (the day after I saw the original for the first time, no less), I now understood because, by that point, I was aware of Tom Savini's remake of Night of the Living Dead and I even thought that it might be a belated sequel to that. I turned out to be wrong, of course, since, even though this is technically a remake of a sequel, it creates and builds it own story and mythology off of it. As a result, it's a good example of what a remake should do in how it takes the same basic premise as the original, with a group of people holding up in a shopping mall during an outbreak of zombies, and does its own thing and becomes its own movie. And I will say this right now: out of all the horror remakes that came out in the 2000's, some of which I do like, this is the best in my opinion. I knew this movie had to be something special in order to get all of the good reviews that it did upon release (Entertainment Weekly gave it a score of "A"), which almost never happens with these types of remakes, and they were right, because this movie kicks a lot of ass.

A nurse, Ana, heads home after a long shift and spends a romantic evening with her husband, Luis. The next morning, however, all hell breaks loose as a zombie outbreak rips through the country, with Luis being killed and turned into one by a zombified girl who lived next door to them, and Ana has to flee from the chaos and carnage that's blanketed her little neighborhood and the surrounding countryside. After crashing her car off the side of the road, she comes across a group of survivors and they take shelter in a large shopping mall nearby. After dealing with a hostile group of security guards inside and allowing in a large group of survivors who arrive in a large cargo truck, they settle in to life in the mall, but with the number of zombies outside increasing day by day and several incidents proving that the mall itself as secure as they thought, the question remains: how long until they have to leave and when that time comes, where will they go?

This was the directing debut of Zack Snyder, who before this had directed and photographed a number of commercials for several big-name car companies as well as for Nike, Reebok, and Gatorade, a documentary short called Playground, and a lot of music videos in the early to mid 90's. Since debuting into the feature world with this film, he's become well-known for two things: his epic, visual style in films like 300 and Watchmen and for polarizing critics and fans with his comic book movies. For me personally, there's no doubt that the guy has a lot of talent and knows how to create eye-popping visuals and camera tricks, with this film being a prime example, but emotionally, his movies tend to not be all that compelling. Writing-wise, that's not his fault because he typically doesn't write the screenplays for his movies (this one was written by James Gunn), but it feels like he's not that good in getting the best performances possible out of his actors. For instance, the characters here, while well done, for the most part, don't hold a candle to those in George Romero's film in terms of charisma and memorability.

Snyder's style is apparent right from the get-go, with the first image being a pull back from a studio logo that becomes an x-ray of a human skull, followed up afterward by a very high camera angle that shows off the suburban neighborhood Ana lives in when drives home. It doesn't stop there, as the entire film is filled with all sorts of great camera angles and visual treats. Following a pan that shows how her neighborhood has degenerated into complete mayhem, when Ana is driving down the road after escaping, the camera is so high up that you can see for miles and you get a sense of how what's happening back in her town is just one part of a far-reaching disaster: there are explosions in the distance, cars running off the road, a helicopter flying right past the camera, etc. It's incredible. Another great moment comes during the characters' escape near the end. They have to use a homemade bomb to clear out the zombies, who are trying to tip over their trucks, and it's another high shot when they chuck the bomb and the explosion wipes out a lot of them. These very high camera angles are present throughout much of the sequence and it lets you see just how many zombies there are, which is hundreds of them! Snyder also plays with camera speeds, sometimes slowing it down to make it more impactful, like when Andre and Norma shoot each other, and other times speeding it up to make it really crazy and kinetic, particularly during the zombie attack in the basement (the movie looks a lot like 28 Days Later during that sequence). The look of the film is also interesting. It's that music video look that I usually get sick of seeing in movies nowadays but, for some reason, I really like it here. I think it's because it adds to the flavor of the movie and makes it feel like a big epic horror film, like something along the lines of a graphic novel. It has a very rich color palette, with deep greens for scenes inside the mall, especially when it's dark, and deep blues for the night exteriors. Even the exterior daytime scenes have a heightened reality feel to them.

Unlike the original Dawn of the Dead, which had a more tongue-in-cheek, comic book tone most of the time, this film, while not without moments of humor, is a horror film to the extreme, with a very dark and grim tone and, also unlike the original, this movie is clearly trying to scare the hell out of you. There's no social satire or political subtext here, except in the vaguest sense: this movie goes straight for the jugular! It also moves at a really good pace. It starts off with a big scare and almost doesn't let up till the end, so there's plenty of action and mayhem for those who just want a thrill ride, but there are some good character moments as well. One of the most emotionally powerful moments comes when the character of Frank (Matt Frewer), who arrived at the mall in the truck full of survivors along with his daughter, Nicole (Lindy Booth), is told that, because he's been bitten, he's going to eventually become a zombie. After a debate about whether or not they should kill him right then and there, Frank elects to be executed when the time comes and there's a very sad scene where he and his daughter, who's lost her mother as well, share a tearful final embrace before she runs off and Kenneth waits for him to change. The silent shot of Nicole crying hysterically on one of the security monitors is a very sad one and as you watch Frank try to savor his last moments of humanity before dying, it personalizes what's going on everywhere else, that there are countless others who are having to deal with the horrible reality of their loved ones becoming this monstrous ghouls. Another one is the issue between Andre and his pregnant wife, Luda, who he knows is doomed upon hearing about how anyone who's bitten becomes a zombie but, as she and their baby are al he has, he goes into a state of denial about it and keeps the fact that she was bitten a secret. It's really sad when she finally succumbs to the bite and dies in the middle of giving birth, and then becomes downright horrific when she turns and delivers a zombie baby, which Andre, in his now truly fractured state of mind, tries to protect to the death.

The big reason for this film's scarier and grimmer tone is the conception of the zombies. While they're not exactly original in how they probably took some cues from the "infected" in 28 Days Later, these zombies, regardless, are nothing like the ones in Romero's films or 99% of those made since Night of the Living Dead: they run like hell, are quite strong, and are extremely aggressive, snarling and roaring at their victims when they're in attack mode. Save for the Return of the Living Dead movies, most zombies before this film were very slow and, while they clearly wanted to eat people, they rarely acted very fierce, whereas these things clearly want to rip your throat out and have the means to do so! Another notable change is how the outbreak spreads: here, you become a zombie if you get bitten and eventually die from the infection, not if you die altogether. A lot of people, George Romero included, don't like fast zombies, feeling that they take away from the fear, which I don't get at all. I don't know about you but, to me, their agility makes them even more frightening. In past zombie movies, they were so slow that their strength was mainly in their numbers, but now, not only are there thousands of them but they're lightning fast and agile. If you can't find a fortified place to hide, you're screwed for sure, especially given how, being dead, they're not going to get tired. Another reason that people don't like fast zombies is one that I roll my eyes at: because something that's dead and decaying would break its bones if it tried to run fast. Something that's dead wouldn't be running to begin with! That's like dismissing every single giant monster movie something that big wouldn't be able to move and the like. You're going to put logic into something that can't even happen to begin with? I don't know.

As in Tom Savini's remake of Night of the Living Dead, there's a variation in the makeup effects for the zombies, with some having just died and either look like crazy, blood-drenched people or, in some cases, have nasty, fresh wounds, and others that have been dead for a while and are clearly decaying. It's also massively gory, with a lot of gruesome, bloody deaths for the zombies' victims, blood spraying everywhere when the zombies themselves get shot, chainsawed, run over, etc., and plenty of disturbing images and ideas. There are a number of individual zombies who stand out to me, even though most of them appear in only one scene or in just a couple of shots in some cases. The first one you see, Vivian (Hannah Lochner), a young girl who lives next door to Ana and Luis, sets the tone for the film, as she comes in missing a chunk of flesh around her mouth, tears Luis' throat out, and acts extremely aggressive and fast when she attacks. The same goes for Luis (Louis Ferreira), who's really frightening when he turns, becoming a particularly aggressive, screeching ghoul, with these wild-looking eyes, who demolishes the bathroom door in order to get at Ana when she's hiding in there, which is sad given how close and loving their relationship was when he was alive. A couple of zombies that always stick out to me when they first get to the mall are this Asian one who's missing an arm and leads a big group of zombies in chasing them, and another who's missing half of his face and attempts to break through the front door, as well as a security guard who they come across when they get inside and, before he's killed, bites Luda's arm, infecting her. When the truck full of survivors arrives at the mall, one of the passengers is a seriously injured and rapidly deteriorating woman (Ermes Blarasin), who eventually dies and reanimates, charging at the group, which is quite a frightening sight, but is killed by a fireplace poker to the eye. There are zombies in the massive gathering in the parking lot who look (at least, I assume they just look) a lot like big celebrities, with one looking like Burt Reynolds and another like Jay Leno, and some of the men decide to have fun by having Andy, the owner of the gun store across the way, shoot them. Luda (Inna Korobkina) becomes quite a terror when she turns, snarling and snapping at Andre (the dark lighting in the scene makes it all the more nightmarish) as he tries to deliver their baby, which, when it's revealed, is quite a polarizing creature: some think it's disturbing, others think it looks silly. As for me, I'm kind of indifferent towards it. I thought the idea of Andre losing his wife and his unborn child to the infection was sad, as was him losing his mind over it, but when the zombie baby is revealed and screeches at the camera, it doesn't do much for me. One last zombie that I always remember pops up in the sequence during the ending credits when they find an abandoned boat floating in Lake Michigan. It's basically just a head and hand on top of a mass of bloody flesh in a cooler and it's very startling to see, something to make you go, "Oh, God!", which was my reaction.

Like the Romero films, another thing that makes the zombies here frightening is how they begin appearing and multiplying out of nowhere and with no warning. The film begins with Ana finishing off a long shift in her everyday job as a hospital when she overhears about how someone was hospitalized because of some sort of "bite." She doesn't know it, but things are beginning to unravel, and she and Luis miss a TV report about a rapidly developing "situation." Of course, the next morning, the life that Ana knew is destroyed forever, as it is for countless other people, and when the opening credits begin, you can hear a government official answering questions at a press conference and each time he's asked a question, "Is it a virus? How is it spread? Is it airborne? Are these people dead or alive?', he can, in a completely baffled and defeated voice, only state the simple, terrifying truth: "We don't know." I found that right there to be very frightening, that even the government has no idea what's going on. This thing just came out of nowhere, they don't why it's happening or how it's spreading, but it's doing so like a brushfire. That's something that I think this film has above the series it was spawned from: you never learn what's causing this outbreak of zombies. In Night of the Living Dead, it was heavily suggested that it was due to radiation released when a space probe exploded on its way, something that was never mentioned again in the other films, but here, while there are rumors that it's some type of virus (given that it's spread through the bites), a concrete explanation is never given. And as the credits roll, you're bombarded with quick glimpses of how the outbreak has almost immediately plunged the country, and perhaps the entire world, into chaos, as you see lightning fast shots of zombies' faces, cities and towns turned upside down by panic and riots as the military futilely tries to take control, news channels doing their best to provide details on what's happening, and clips near the end that suggest the zombies have reached Washington.

Like the original, you have a montage showing how everybody is adapting to life in the mall and it's one of my favorite moments in the film, as it's accompanied by a hilarious song called Down with the Sickness, performed by Mark Jonathan Davis (who credits himself as Richard Cheese) and Lounge Against The Machine. It's morbidly funny in that it does sound like something you'd hear in a lounge and has a very an upbeat tune, but the lyrics are some of the most grim, un-PC stuff imaginable. The final line is, "Get ready to die!" and the singer holds it like a typical final number in a big musical! It's such a funny way of showing that they're screwed and there's no way out of this situation, especially since it's been made clear now that there's no help coming.

Another thing that I thought was unique was how the movie doesn't end when the credits start rolling. It goes on for a few more minutes with footage from a camera that one of the survivors finds on Steve's boat, which they use to escape (in a way, predicting the popularity of POV horror films like Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity), and you eventually see that they made it to the island in Lake Michigan that they were gunning for... which turns out to be full of zombies too. What happens next is not clear, as it's absolute chaos, but it does feel that the characters were more than likely killed, as the rest of the credits play with random clips of snarling zombies popping up while a heavy metal version of "Down with the Sickness" by the group Disturbed plays (normally, I hate that type of music to death but I think it's suitable here). That shocked me when I first saw it. I was like, "They got away... oh, I guess not."

In spite of all the praise I've been heaping on the film, it's not without its faults and the slight against it, for me, is the cast, which is why I waited until now to talk about them. There are good character moments, as I described earlier, but whenever people talk about this film, they hardly ever mention the characters and for good reason because, for the most part, the characters range from okay to just forgettable. Ving Rhames, who plays Kenneth, the stern police officer who becomes the de facto leader of the group, is one of the most bland and uncharismatic actors I've ever seen. All I've ever seen him play is the same character: a big tough guy with no depth and this is no different. They try to set up a back story about him wanting to find his brother but it never goes anywhere. Sarah Polley is okay as the nurse, Ana, but she's still pretty bland for the most part (I don't care for the part where she's really ragging on Michael for his decision to kill Frank, even after she's made her point). Jake Weber as Michael plays a pretty decent guy who's made mistakes in the past, the biggest of which he considers being a bad husband, and wants to survive like everybody else. He's ultimately unable to join the others on Steve's ship and has to stay behind and commit suicide, as he was bitten by a zombie. The romance they try to develop between him and Ana is really flat, though. Mekhi Phifer does a decent job as Andre, who wants to make up for the life of crime he'd led up to this point, particularly to keep his wife safe and bring their baby into the world, which he ultimately fails at. Ty Burrell plays the typical selfish asshole as Steve, which is odd to watch since nowadays, he's well known for being an all-around nice guy due to Modern Family. It shows he's a good actor because I absolutely hated him here and wanted him to die so badly but, as is typical with assholes in these types of movies, he didn't buy it until near the end of the film. Michael Kelly's character CJ, the head security guard at the mall, starts off as an absolute asshole who's not above killing innocent people or members of his own team to survive but, by the end, he becomes a really decent guy, which I always like... and he dies, which I didn't like. His last line, "It fuckin' figures," is exactly what I was thinking. Terry (Kevin Zegers), the youngest of the security guards and the first one to show that he has a conscience, particularly when CJ refuses to let the truck full of survivors into the mall and makes it clear that he'll kill him and anyone else to stay alive, and forms a relationship with Nicole after her father's death. Other characters who are notable for one reason or another are Tucker (Boyd Banks, who, interestingly, worked with George Romero on Bruiser and Land of the Dead and also appeared in Jason X) and Glen (R.D. Reid, who I recognized from The Famous Jett Jackson, a Disney Channel show I watched a lot back in the day), an organ player who, for whatever reason, decides at one point to confess to a locked up CJ and the other security guard, Bart (Michael Barry), that he's gay and tells him when he found out, which absolutely tortures CJ and causes him to yell and sob in frustration. And finally, there's Andy (Bruce Bohne), the owner of a gun store across from the mall who communicates with everyone else via writing on a board and develops something of a friendship with Kenneth even though they never meet face-to-face, especially when he shows what a great shot he is by picking off specific zombies in the crowd. Unfortunately, he gets bit and changes, but the filmmakers clearly knew he was an interesting character because they gave him his own special feature on the DVD: a vlog that chronicles everything up to his change into a zombie.

Since it's a remake, there are naturally some cameos by the cast from the original, all of which appear on the television. Tom Savini appears as the sheriff of Monroeville (the location of the mall in the original) who informs the reporter talking to him that the best way to kill the zombies is to shoot them in the head, otherwise they just "twitch," as exemplified when a supposedly downed zombie starts convulsing on the ground and he gives the memorable, "Danny! Danny! Put another round in that woman over there! Look, she's a twitcher." He also mentions that you have to burn them as well. Scott Reiniger has the briefest of the cameos, as a general who warns everyone watching to stay in their homes. And Ken Foree appears as an evangelist who warns that this is a punishment by God for mankind's sins, repeating his popular line from the original, "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth." Also, while the actor herself doesn't appear in the film, one of the stores in the mall is named after Gaylen Ross

Another downside is the music by Tyler Bates, who I think sucks at scoring. The music does its job in heightening the scares but there's nothing distinctive about it and it all sounds the same to me. In fact, sometimes it doesn't even sound like music but rather like plain and simple noise. The only bit that stands out to me is a piece that plays when the zombies rush the characters when they first get to the mall, and I only remember it because it played during the trailer for Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween (which Bates also scored). I honestly have no clue how this guy keeps getting gigs. The soundtrack is a little better, though. I've already mentioned both versions of Down With The Sickness and what I've think of them. I never imagined that a song by Johnny Cash (another singer who I'm not really fond of) would ever be relevant in a horror movie, let alone a hardcore one like this, but The Man Comes Around really does fit with the montage of mayhem that you see quick, crazy glimpses of during the opening credits (the final line before the movie truly begins is particularly chilling). Of all the songs in the film that I can remember, the one I've never cared for is People Who Died, by The Jim Carroll Band. It always sounded way too cheesy and silly for this movie, especially after Michael kills himself off-camera before the ending credits begin.

To me, Dawn of the Dead '04 is by far the best of the horror remakes that saturated the market during the new millennium as well as one of the best horror movies of the 2000's period. Sure, it may not be as deep as the original, or any of Romero's movies, for that matter, but that's not really the point. This movie is simply meant to be a thrill ride and it's a great one, one that's able to overcome its shortcomings in regards to the less than compelling characters and lame, forgettable music score with a very kinetic pace, amazing, eye-popping visuals, entertaining action sequences, some well-done moments with the characters, fast and mean as hell zombies, gruesome makeup effects, and a very grim, doom-laden tone to it. Bottom line, if you want a fun, scary two hours, you can't go wrong with this.