Review of Dawn of the Dead (2004) by Shininglion — 01 Nov 2021

I was reaaaaaaally into zombie movies in my college days when this film came out, and for years this was my favorite one because it was the first and only at that time to get "running zombies" right. 28 Days Later is known for pioneering the concept in the mainstream but they weren't zombies in that film so this one can rightly be called the first mainstream film to have running zombies, a real threat, not the slow shambling masses of most zombie films.

Anyway, I'm stating the obvious here so I'll get down to it. This was my favorite zombie movie for years just because it has more action and is a more chaotic and truly terrifying scenario. An older me nearly two decades later can see that this film doesn't really hold up among the ranks of horror classics. I've even recently had a bit of a falling out with 28 Days Later which I also used to love, because in time I've come to view its ending as trite, ridiculous, and unbecoming of its characters. That said, that film is bursting with atmosphere and realism that Dawn of the Dead lacks. Dawn of the Dead feels very produced, theatrical, and put on, which is not itself a bad thing, but I think it leaves less impression than similar films like 28 Days Later for this reason. Overall it really lacks much plot and exists primarily as a disaster movie spectacle more than a horror film. After seeing the film a handful of times I now feel it really isn't very rewatchable. In fact having viewed the film in HD for the first time last night on streaming (after years of just watching my DVD) I think the film somehow got uglier the more crisp it is. The lighting is an unflattering green through most of the film with high contrast black shadows that look "trying too hard to be spooky". The blood is almost neon, looking a lot more fake as you get into the HD versions (where the color red is noticeably more intense than SD formats), which makes the film feel cartoony and less real, less scary in effect.

There isn't much real commentary in this film and the character interplay is very standard. There's different a-holes you can't trust at different points in the film. More tension between the characters and each other than the zombies and the characters. I'm not sure if that's what I want out of a zombie film, but if so it needs to be done well, and it is done in such a generic way in this movie that it makes little difference who was in the mall, just that they were all ultimately gonna have to face the zombies and each other's drama. In retrospect this film is only mediocre to me and I'm glad that since I recently purged my entire DVD collection I didn't repurchase this film on an HD format. I would be fine never watching it again. I watched it on Halloween and still didn't even get that into it, and yes, I'll remind you, it was my favorite zombie film for years when I was younger and more into the genre. I think once you've memorized the events and the disaster spectacle wears off there isn't much tension left in this movie.

There's some nonsense in this film that makes it feel less scary. One character puts down a crowbar and picks up a wooden croquet mallet instead to go fight a zombie. Luckily for him when he's attacked the mallet breaks and becomes a wooden stake. Also lucky for him is that he has the strength to shove a wooden stake all the way through an entire human skull, brain, bones and all, with one arm while being choked and sat on. It all loses its chilling effect from there as the zombies never really seem like much a threat from that point on.

In some ways this film is like a canary in the coal mine for the bungling "representation" era of filmmaking to come. The director must have thought "If I create a cast of superficially diverse characters, maybe no one will notice that they're all stereotypes with no depth." For that matter the cast isn't even that diverse.