Thanks to their fourth amendment rights, Ana (Sarah Polley), Kenneth (Ving Rhames) and the rest of our rag-tag team are able to collect an arsenal of arms to fend off the zombies, which are called "twitchers." Only a shot to the zombie's brain kills them, and our shooters all turn out to be perfect marksmen who never miss. Our good guys are holed up at the local mall and don't know if anything else is alive in the greater Milwaukee area, where the story is set. In fact, they don't know much of anything, including how this disaster got started and how widespread it might be.

Although a thousand twitchers mill around outside the mall like teens at a rock concert, our team inside mixes worries with laughs. For people who are dealing with the end of the world, they are strangely obsessed with finding proper bathrooms. They spend their time playing basketball and having sex, among other activities. Most of this seems to serve only to kill time. The only truly ingenious part is a chess game, which Kenneth plays with a stranger on another rooftop. They communicate moves with binoculars and white boards.

The repetitive movie rapidly becomes tiresome. Only in the inevitable ending break for freedom does the movie again recapture some of the energy and imagination with which it started.

DAWN OF THE DEAD runs 1:45. It is rated R for "pervasive strong horror violence and gore, language and sexuality" and would be acceptable for older teenagers.