Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Starring Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber
Written by James Gunn and Directed by Zack Snyder


Continuing with my theme of watching Halloween related films around Halloween -- next up is Dawn of the Dead. Not the George A. Romero one from 1978, but the 2004 one from Zack Snyder. Who in the blue hell is Zack Snyder -?! My thoughts exactly. All I know is he directed the Michael Jordan video, Playground, and he actually did quite a nice job remaking Romero’s zombie classic, Dawn of the Dead.

Judging by a title such as, Dawn of the Dead -- one can pretty much guess what the film will be about. If you guessed it was a romantic comedy, there could be a slight chance that you didn’t quite finish grade 3, but if you guessed it was about a bunch of zombies who go around killing humans because they have a bad case of the “I’m the living dead and I need to eat humans” -- I would say you are pretty close and at least finished high school.

Dawn of the Dead wastes no time in getting to the blood and violence. We meet Sarah Polley, a nurse (you have to have at least one nurse character in a horror flick) and within less than ten minutes her family is zombified and she finds herself teaming up with a team of cliche characters (the tough cop, the criminal, the pregnant woman, the shady guy). And where do you head when you are being chased by a million zombies? Why the shopping mall of course! There the characters get to know each other and even start to love each other a little (don’t ask me why hanging out in a mall while being attacked by killer zombies is romantic, but it strangely just is). Oh, and they also find a lot of weapons and shoot a lot of zombies. Good times, indeed.

Like I mentioned, Dawn of the Dead starts with a bang. The opening credits are way, way cool and the violence and gore is fast and flowing -- but somehow in the middle to last half of the film, things get really slow. There is just too much talking and character development for this kind of film. I want blood and I want violence! That being said, Dawn of the Dead is a decent remake and still a lot of fun, but maybe it resembles Michael Jordan’s career a little too much; fast and fun at the start, but slow and a little too mushy towards the end.


THE RUNDOWN:

The Good: Zombies. Zombies getting shot. Zombies.

The Bad: Too much emotion for a zombie flick.

The Law: Watch the film either late at night or after eating lots of candy.