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Before going to sleep last night, I watched the re-make of Dawn of the Dead. In my opinion, this is one of the stronger movie re-makes. Most of the re-makes, especially in the horror genre, are weak at best.
For example? This week gave us a re-make of the Rutger Hauer classic, the Hitcher. Instead of Hauer, we get Sean Bean. And Bean is a fine actor, and certainly makes the role as menacing as he can. But this re-make doesn’t try anything original. The single difference? The lead does not meet the love interest half way into the film. They are a couple at the start. And instead of the male being the focus, it’s the female.
The new version follows the original faithfully. Which frankly? Is annoying. I saw the Hitcher already. Don’t need to see it with another set of actors.
The re-make of Dawn of the Dead, on the other hand, uses the original film as inspiration. Zombies over run the cities, panicked residents hole up in a Mall. But that’s it. We don’t get the same set of characters. The opening is entirely different. And it’s probably one of the top film openings. Seriously, it starts out kind of mellow. We meet our hero Anna who is a tired nurse, trying to get home for the night (already an hour past the end of her shift). There are random comments about people being brought in with bites. But everything seems calm. But when she and her husband are awakened by a neighbor-everything goes wrong. The movie gives this grand sense of confusion and disarray and culminates in the strumming guitar of Johnny Cash’s the Man Comes Around. The song is perfectly fitting for a zombie apocalypse. And the opening credits advance the story with footage showing news reel footage of military and police attempts to stop the zombie hordes.
Anna is joined by Ving Rhames’ as Kenneth, a police officer. He’s an imposing presence, a character driven to find his brother in the chaos. They quickly meet up with even more characters, who warn Anna and Kenneth not to go in the direction they (the other three) came from. The five opt to set up shop in the Mall.
Now we get to one of the biggest complaints from some who did not like the film. The mall is not crawling with zombies. The zombies can’t get in. And I say, so what? The zombies do not need to be inside the mall for the threat to be there. When you stand on the roof and look at a sea of the undead, that’s horrifying on it’s own. One of the accusations was that this removes the subtext blasting mindless consumerism that was in the original.
But you know, when Dawn of the Dead was originally made? Malls were not common. It was kind of creepy and malls represented something different. Now? Malls are everywhere. They don’t have a “frightening persence” anymore. In fact, Mall as safe haven makes more sense in this day and age. Because I tell you, when the zombies attack? I am going to the Mall of America. I think the film makes a stronger statement now about how people are able to insulate themselves from the horror of reality.
The film has all sorts of nice character moments. For instance, Matt Frewer plays a guy who has been bitten. He knows he is going to die, so he spends his last few hours comforting his daughter (who is, understandably, distrought at losing the only remaining family member she has) and telling her how proud of her he is. It’s a shame Frewer’s character is only on screen for a few minutes.
The film brought a lot of new things to it, but the one other change that drew wrath was…running zombies (which we also saw in the psuedo-zombie film 28 Days Later). I never had a problem with fast zombies. And I find them way scarier than slow and lumbering zombies. Why? Because, when the zombie masses come, if they are the slow and lumbering? I have a chance. If they a fast? I am overweight and out of shape. I am dead in about the first ten minutes.
So, yeah. I really do enjoy the Dawn of the Dead re-make…and I sure wish more of these lame re-makes would follow the lead and ind a new perspective on the same story. I mean, I saw the Original Dawn, if all the remake did was update the gore? What’s the point in that?
