Director:
Zack Snyder
Starring:
Sarah Polley
Ving Rhames
Jake Weber
Mekhi Phifer
Ty Burrell
Michael Kelly
Kevin Zegers
Michael Barry
Release: 19 Mar. 04
IMDb
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Dawn of the Dead
BY: DAVID PERRY
Like many of the films of the 1970s and 1980s, the horror
genre meant more than just clichéd shocks and awes. These were deeply
analytical, expressively political statements on society that spoke to the
masses, most of whom were unaware of the spoonfuls of liberalism being fed
to them. Clive Barker, Wes Craven, David Cronenberg, and John Carpenter made
millions by being the Michael Moores of their days. Even if their judgments
on Ronald Reagan’s America came in the form of a man degenerating into a fly
or aliens infiltrating the human race, these horror parables came with a
sociological message.
Although Alfred Hitchcock does and always will get much of the credit for
the reawakening of the horror and suspense genres into an art form, the
father of this style of politicking is more likely George A. Romero, whose
Night of the Living Dead had more to say about race politics in America than
Norman Jewison’s Oscar winning In the Heat of the Night. He didn’t stop
there, soon he turned to rampant materialism in a Carter-era shopping Mecca.
His Dawn of the Dead is seminal. Although never quite as scary as its
predecessor, the shocks are still there and the meaning is palpable. But
nearly none of this is found in Zack Snyder’s remake, a film that distances
itself from the original’s wit to make room for the very clichés that killed
the genre under the guidance of Jason Voorhees and a middle-aged Norman
Bates. Even if the zombies he’s creating are faster, more agile, and smarter
than those found in Romero’s Dead trilogy (which concludes with Day of the
Dead), they aren’t scarier. Their senseless brutality is defeated by their
anonymous numbers and slick-gore makeup. People might find the blue paint of
Romero’s zombies to be humorous now, but it showed a far more human looking
antagonist for the heroes to kill.
But what’s mortally wrong with Dawn of the Dead isn’t so much in the
zombies, but in the people we are meant to root for. The gaggle of
miscreants who are stuck in a Milwaukee mall as the undead attempt to knock
down the doors aren’t particularly engaging enough to really care about,
which means that even if Snyder were honest enough to deal with the
sociological repercussions of this scenario, as Romero did, these people
would still have the depth of Dakota Fanning’s trousers. While the
original’s cast slowly decay into scarier representations of ourselves, most
everyone in the new Dawn of the Dead just plays the roles they’ve been
relegated: the tough-as-nails black man, the smart and sexy nurse, the
caring father, and the antagonistic cad (the latter’s sudden reversal comes
as most unprovoked acrobatics since Jeff Goldblum's daughter in The Lost
World: Jurassic Park).
Even the setting, which was integral to the thesis for Romero, comes as a
castoff reference to the original without an ounce of context (save for one
line, in which the zombies’ attempts to enter the place are explained as
“memory, maybe, instinct”). Unwilling to fill the socio-political
critic’s shoes he’s purchased, Snyder would have been better off just nixing
the whole mall setting and title. There’s more 28 Days Later... to this
film, anyway. And if this were just called Zombies in Milwaukee, or some
other crappy title, unctuous critics like me wouldn’t be calling this an
ugly recreation of a classic. We’d just call it a bad horror film.
[Postscript: I will give the film some credit for a moment of
inspiration. The much ballyhooed opening scene isn't much to consider,
but the opening credits are fantastic and nearly worth the price of
admission (as long as you leave once the credits conclude). I must
admit, though, that I may just be a sucker for anything that marries anarchy
with Johnny Cash.]
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