Dawn Of The Dead (The Remake)

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Runtime: 100 minutes

Directed by: Zack Snyder

Starring: Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Mekhi Pfiifer, Jake Weber, Ty Burrell

From: Universal

A movie I did not know I was seeing until it began. If you're wondering how such a scenario was possible, two times a week this month AMC Theatres is having a “Thrills and Chills” deal where for 5 bucks, horror fans attend a surprise screening where the only hint provided is a runtime and rating. I've never been able to do such a gimmick before so I was interested; of course it was possible that I'd view something not to my tastes-whether or not it had been seen by me before-and I'd love one day to attend something like a New Beverly Cinema secret screening... but this will have to do. I won't be able to attend all of the Thrills and Chills screenings by any means but I'll have to see at least one more of those.

I am such a nerd that from the context clues of seeing Sarah Polley playing a nurse, I knew what this was even though tonight was the first time I had watched the Dawn of the Dead remake. While the original Dawn hasn't been seen by me in eons, I recall that being preferable to this—but that's not to slight the remake. At least it does something different in that it is more about action than having the mall setting be commentary on consumerism. It starts off rather well before getting a collection of random characters together in a mall. Not all of those characters I cared for in the sense that some were just written badly and were unpleasant stereotypes. Furthermore, that scene w/ a Richard Cheese song was a real WTF moment and I am not completely sold on the footage you see in the end credits.

Be that as it may, I still found this to be pretty good overall. Caring about most of the characters did help-I actually did not know beforehand that James Gunn wrote the script so credit has to be given there. These are fast-moving zombies so no surprise that the action scenes are rather frenetic and they were pretty exciting. It has graphic gore, no fear of having harsh/brutal moments and-not surprising for Gunn-a few funny moments. As I understand most of the remakes of a movie in the Dead franchise are rather ghastly (i.e. atrocious)-not to mention how horror remakes turn out in general-it was a relief to see one that did not piss off the genre fans or were pathetic compared to the original.