Dawn of the Dead (2004) review.
It’s been 20 years since Zack Snyder arrived with an incredible opening scene and a movie that would be better served by almost any other title.
Classic movie reviews will contain spoilers.
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Directed by Zack Snyder
Screenplay by James Gunn
Starring Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, Mekhi Phifer, Ty Burrell, Michael Kelly, Kevin Zegers, Ken Foree and Tom Savini
Dawn of the Dead (2004) Review
It’s been twenty years since Zack Snyder hit the scene with his directorial debut…a remake of George A. Romero’s masterpiece Dawn of the Dead. He announced his presence with authority during a fantastic 10 and a half minute opening scene. It introduces us to Sarah Polley’s Ana…and completely shatters her world. I remember the entire opening airing on cable as part of the marketing for the film. It was a clever move. It completely hooks you. There’s no doubt it aided the film’s box office success. Everything we need to know is told to us in those 10 and a half minutes. How the zombies act…the immediate fall of institutions designed to protect us…the losses survivors were suffering with…society plunged into chaos…the dangers brought by other survivors…Snyder’s visual style. It’s all right there in what is, arguably, the finest work of Snyder’s career.
Which is a nice way of saying “it’s all downhill from there”. A montage of the world collapsing accompanies the opening credits. It’s here that we get the first of what will be many on the nose needle drops in a Zack Snyder film. It’s Johnny Cash’s The Man Comes Around, for the record. Admittedly, Dawn of the Dead (2004) holds together better than most of what follows. It was too early for the Snyder style to devolve into self-parody. In fact, his visual style here is stronger for being rawer than later work. It still has that Snyder’ gloss…but it isn’t as shiny here.
Snyder’s eventual successor as the king of DC movies James Gunn wrote the screenplay. It’s credited as “based on the screenplay by George A. Romero”. It retains the concept of the original…survivors living in a mall…but it misses most of the point. By 2004 George Romero had been ripped off so many times that Dawn of the Dead (2004) could have been called anything, really. Though…nothing as marketable, I suppose. Without even getting deep into what Romero was saying in his film…we’ve got fast zombies here. Don’t mistake me…I am not against fast zombies. Train to Busan is a masterpiece. But what are they doing in a Romero remake? Feels like sacrilege.
The man thought so himself. He said on more than one occasion that fast zombies weren’t scary, and that Dawn of the Dead (2004) made for a good action movie…but lacked a reason for being. He was right, although part of that wasn’t Gunn and Snyder’s fault. Romero’s Dawn was a dark satire born out of the arrival of the mega-shopping complex. What was new in 1978 lacked purpose by 2004. Fast zombies were popularized two years earlier with the release of Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later. Unlike malls, they were very much in style in 2004. Which, again, begs the question…why is this a remake of Dawn of the Dead?
Let’s set aside what the movie isn’t (for a moment) and talk about what it is. As Romero said, Dawn of the Dead (2004) is a good action movie. It has a great cast and visual flair. He compared it to a video game…something that has been said about more than one Snyder production. I don’t believe that is an insult, mind you. In fact, if the intention is to make an engrossing action horror movie…that’s a compliment. It’s a gory good time that you can turn your brain off and enjoy. Which is the exact opposite of what the source material intended.
Nowhere is the disconnect from the original clearer than in the film’s ending. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead ended with a famously bleak scene. By comparison, Romero’s Dawn ending is downright hopeful. The survivors escape in a helicopter…their fates left unknown. It gives you a glimmer of hope that although society has crumbled, humanity will find a way to live on. Dawn of the Dead (2004) also sees its survivors escape on a vehicle. This time, a boat. Then it shows you what becomes of them. Dreams of living on an island, removed from the plague, are dashed as they are set upon by a horde of zombies. While their ultimate fates may be unconfirmed…the point is crystal clear. There is no better tomorrow.
The argument can be made that Dawn of the Dead (2004) is a zombie movie remade for its time. It looks and feels like it belongs in 2004. More characters, more deaths. More action, more gore. It’s bigger and louder and messier. Is that really all that Gunn and Snyder had to say about the mid-aughts? It’s a surface level commitment to adapting the material. A fun-to-watch chapter in the zombie movie canon. Mislabeled with the title of a classic that it has little in common with beneath that surface level.
Remakes have always been somewhat more acceptable in horror. In the grand calculus of horror remakes… Dawn of the Dead (2004) isn’t even a bad one. It’s a good movie full of fun moments. It features, by far, the most inspired needle drop in Snyder’s career (a lounge singer cover of Disturbed’s Down with the Sickness). He also won’t start abusing slow motion until three years later with his second feature, 300. For all the script’s flaws in failing to understand Romero’s movie (or at least update it with modern themes), Gunn writes better characters than anything Snyder has tackled alone. In a lot of ways… Dawn of the Dead (2004) is better than it should be while managing to do little that it should.
Scare Value
Dawn of the Dead (2004) is a good movie. It’s important to stress that. Because it’s a bad remake. It’s a bad Dawn of the Dead movie. It belongs in the conversation for best zombie movie between Danny Boyle’s popularization of the fast variety and Train to Busan‘s mastery of it. This is Zack Snyder at his most playful. Somehow a world literally eating itself alive is less bleak than his take on Superman. Just one of many difficult things to decipher about this movie. A movie that may still stand as Snyder’s best.
3.5/5
Dawn of the Dead (2004) Links
Streaming on Netflix
Rent/Buy on VOD from VUDU and Amazon
Buy on 4K/Blu-Ray from Amazon
