Review of Dawn of the Dead (2004) by Brett H — 30 Oct 2015

Zack Snyder's adrenaline-charged remake of the George Romero classic updates the story in virtually every way and it is one hell of an entertaining ride that is in my opinion, better than the original! This film starts with a bang and features one of the coolest, "shit has gone crazy" panning shots I've ever seen and a noticeable difference here is the zombies HAUL ASS after you; they are pretty terrifying.

The cast is rock-solid with a noticeably diverse group of characters ranging from young to old as well as multi-racial and multi-gender, and it's refreshing to see a cast that isn't completely white-washed.

The story plays out similarly to the original film, however there are many more characters and thus more chances to show off the terrific modern special effects when some of them inevitably die. Holing up in a shopping mall for safety offered great social commentary in the original film regarding the rise in commercialism and the parallels of the zombies and our society roaming the malls was pitch-perfect satire.

While that satire isn't as well-represented here, the film has a great montage in the middle showing how the survivors are coping with their situation by screwing around and even involving a sniper on a nearby rooftop who shoots zombies resembling celebrities as a darkly comic game.

The key ingredient of this film is that it is fun, there is an entire sequence near the end where the survivors modify shuttle buses to fight back against the hordes of zombies and it's like something out of a video game and it is awesome! There are admittedly some darker moments like when certain survivors don't trust one another and a truly disturbing scene when a zombie baby is born and then dealt with, but these scenes add to the tension and truly make it memorable.

Zack Snyder has always been a director to hate on, but I feel he is unfairly judged as it is not easy to remake a beloved, iconic horror classic such as Dawn of the Dead and actually improve on the tone and impact in every way, and it's easily one of the best in its genre.