There are two types of people who will see Dawn of theDead. The first type of person has never seen the 1978 GeorgeA. Romero film that this “updated remake” is based on.The second type of person has seen it. The first person willprobably enjoy Dawn of the Dead. It’s a slick zombieaction movie with all the mandatory buckets of blood and gore andexploding zombie heads. None of the performances really stand out,but that’s okay. It’s standard Hollywood fare, but withzombies. Lots of them.
Those who have seen the original movie, however, will have amixed reaction. Some people will expect Dawn of the Dead tobe similar to the original, which it isn’t. None of thecharacters are the same, none of the action is the same, all thatremains is the setting – a shopping mall surrounded by theliving dead.
For comparison’s sake, and for those unfamiliar with theoriginal Dawn of the Dead, here are the basics: Dawn ofthe Dead is the sequel to Romero’s 1968 Night of theLiving Dead, in which the dead rise to attack and eat theliving. In Dawn of the Dead, a group of four people try toflee the living dead by helicopter. They land on top of a shoppingmall and, rather than risk running out of fuel, they decided toturn the mall into a makeshift fortress. Surrounded by shamblingzombies, they struggle to live out some semblance of normal life.In the end, their stronghold is compromised and the survivors areforced to flee.
The new Dawn of the Dead is the first feature film bydirector Zack Snyder. Since this one is a stand-alone film, theyare forced to cram the exposition into the first five minutes ofthe film. I mean this quite literally. Before you even see theopening credits, we go from “I am living a happy andzombie-free life” to “oh no, my neighbor’s kid istrying to eat me.” After that, it’s only a few minutesmore until we have assembled the entire cast and they lockthemselves in a nice, empty shopping mall. Then, surrounded byzombies, they struggle to live out some semblance of normal life.In the end, they decide to run for it, their stronghold iscompromised, and the survivors are forced to flee.
On the surface, it’s a pretty standard remake. You changea few details here and there, add fancy camerawork and specialeffects, and you’re done. But in the case of Dawn of theDead, every change is made to make the movie more marketable toa post-28 Days Later audience. And ultimately, these changesundermine the thematic roots of the source material.
Make no mistake, if 28 Days Later had not been assuccessful as it was, there would be no Dawn of the Deadremake. Universal studio executives took one look at 28 DaysLater and decided that they needed to get a piece of the zombiepie. So they hire Zack Snyder to helm a big-budget remake of GeorgeA. Romero’s classic zombie film. Only, they need something tosnazz it up. They need something to sell people on. Something thatthey knew worked in 28 Days Later and should therefore workfor Dawn of the Dead.
The answer, of course, was to make the zombies run.
Anyone who has seen any Romero zombie movie knows that the”classic zombie,” as we’ll call it, shamblesalong at a near-walking pace. You could outrun them easily, butthey didn’t tire, and there were lots of them. Not so in thenew Dawn of the Dead. These zombies are runners.They’re fast, very fast. Imagine being pursued by a horde ofshambling, stumbling undead. Pretty creepy, right? So it shouldfollow that being chased by a swarm of cannibalistic Olympicsprinters is scarier, right?
It’s not quite that simple. Ignoring the fact that heavilydecayed human bodies would have a hard enough time with simplelocomotion, let alone running at breakneck speeds, the decision tomake the zombies run after their prey made them a completelyundefeatable force. In the original Dawn of the Dead, agroup of people could survive indefinitely if they worked togetherand paid attention. But against a Boston Marathon of the sprintingdead, you don’t stand a chance. You might be able to escapethe inevitable for a while, but no matter how well you worktogether, you will ultimately be overrun and devoured simplybecause they’re faster than you are and they outnumberyou.
In all three Romero zombie movies (Night of the LivingDead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead),things go wrong because of other people. It is human pride,arrogance, and/or greed that leads everyone to their doom. Humanflaws kill everyone. The zombies are inconsequential.
Imagine a group of people on a tightrope over a tank of hungrysharks. In the original Dawn of the Dead, people fall offthe rope only when other people push them off or they get too sureof their foothold and slip. Humanity’s only hope is otherhumans, but other humans are also humanity’s worst enemy.It’s a very dark, bleak outlook on life.
But in this new Dawn of the Dead, the sharks can fly outof the water and grab people off the rope. In this kind ofsituation, it makes no difference how well you work togetherbecause it’s only a matter of time before you get snatched.As odd as it sounds, this is a much brighter view of human nature.It’s no longer our fault we get eaten. We didn’t standa chance anyway. There is no fundamental human flaw that getseveryone else killed.
In this way, Dawn of the Dead is a disaster movie, ratherthan a quote-unquote zombie movie, only there are zombies in theplace of a meteor or an earthquake. There is no escape, and nothingyou can do, so there is no blame. Sorry that you’re going tobe eaten by zombies, but hey, you’ll die with a cleanconscience.
Even though the new Dawn of the Dead is very pretty tolook at, it ripped out the guts (haha) of the original and tossedthem casually aside. Gone is any semblance of deeper meaning orsocial commentary. All we’re left with is spectacle, with nosubstance.
That having been said, I want to take this opportunity to telleveryone to stay for the credits. I hate it when directors stickactual content into the closing credits, but they do it, and Idon’t want people to feel like they missed out. So stay forthe credits. At the very least, you’ll get to see breasts.That’s gotta be worth staying in your seat for five extraminutes.
