|
Review by Dustin Putman
3 stars out of 4
Call me a blasphemer, but George A. Romero's cult classic zombie trilogy
1;1968's "Night of the Living Dead," 1979's "Dawn of the Dead," and
1985's "Day of the Dead"—never impressed me in the way that it did
most other horror fans. Maybe my lack of interest is linked to the
speed of the undead. In Romero's world, the villains lumbered along
weakly, daft looks plastered on their faces, and never seemed to pose
much of a serious threat. And while "Night of the Living Dead" does
hold some worth in that, when it was released in the late-'60s, it
was considered a groundbreaking story idea, "Dawn of the Dead" always
struck me as a curiously outdated product of its times, filled with
cheesy make-up effects, groan-inducing humor, an overblown music score
by Dario Argento and The Goblins that was just asking to be ridiculed,
and mostly amateurish acting. Watching it just one day before the
release of its remake, "Dawn of the Dead" did not scare me, did not
make me laugh, and dragged itself out to an interminable 127 minutes.
Indeed, the film's one notably stro ng point is its sharp satire on consumerism.
A reimagining more than a direct update, 2004's "Dawn of the Dead"
misses that potential satire altogether, but gets just about everything
else, including all the glaring faults of the original, exactly right.
In the world according to screenwriter James Gunn (2002's "Scooby
Doo") and director Zack Snyder (in his auspicious debut), the undead
are fast and powerful, perhaps more so than live humans, and so the
threat that they bring to the proceedings is very real and exceedingly
palpable. Aided by stylishly saturated cinematography by Matthew F.
Leonetti (2004's "The Butterfly Effect"), who lends the picture a
wide scope, and urgency-drenched editing by Niven Howie, the speed
and rabid nature of the zombies raise this "Dawn of the Dead" to an
unexpectedly high plateau in the annals of modern horr or movies.
It also achieves the unthinkable, greatly improving upon the original
in a way that 2003's remake of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" failed to.
The ten-minute pre-credits sequence is a showstopper, an adrenaline-fueled
nightmare come to life as downright horrifying as any movie opener
since 1996's "Scream." Young nurse Ana (Sarah Polley) leaves the hospital
she works at and drives to her home in the middle of Milwaukee's idyllic
suburbs. She makes out with her boyfriend in the shower and goes to
bed, missing all of the signs around her, including a news report,
that something dire is afoot. When Ana awakes to find her boyfriend
mortally wounded (a neighbor child has ruthlessly bitten him on the
neck), only to have him suddenly attack her after his heart has stopped,
she narrowly escapes. Pure chaos has rang out on the streets, leaving
Ana fearful and perplexed as to what is happening in the world. Cu
e Johnny Cash's haunting "The Man Comes Around" and a marvelously
innovative and atmospheric opening credits scene, and you have a flawlessly
rendered setup to a superior, graphically violent horror picture.
The pulse-pounding pace at the onset slows down soon after so the
rest of the premise and characters can fall into place. After totaling
her car in an accident, Ana finds herself joining police officer Kenneth
(Ving Rhames), Michael (Jake Weber), and Andre (Mekhi Phifer) and
his pregnant wife, Luda (Inna Korobkina), to hide out in the Crossroad
Mall. "When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the
Earth," a television evangelist says before the broadcast suddenly
ends. That is, until it becomes clear the real culprit is a fast-acting
virus spread through bites that will reanimate the carrier once they
have died into a bloodthirsty zombie. Soon joined by some more humans,
including three security guards and several other refugees, Ana watches
as the days tick b y and the number of zombies increase at the mall
entrances. In lieu of waiting for their own doom, the group devise
a plan to escape to the nearby marina and sail to a hopefully deserted
island. First, however, they will have to get past the hoards of dangerous,
angry zombies clustering the streets.
This new "Dawn of the Dead," even more so than its 1979 predecessor,
is an unremittingly bleak motion picture, a gory, frightening portrait
of what is, in essence, the end of the world. As much as these characters,
including resourceful heroine Ana and tough nice guys Kenneth and
Michael, try, there is ultimately no true escape from the inevitable.
And while there are a handful of genuinely funny moments that naturally
come out of the dialogue, things are more or less played relatively
straight. Romero's "Dawn" used broad, corny comic strokes in the midst
of its carnage, while Snyder's "Dawn" more appropriately deals with
the reality of the situation. The latter effort, no surprise, enormously
holds more scares and effectiveness. Speaking of the dark and hopeless
conclusion, do not dare leave before the end credits are over. Everyone
in my theater cluelessly ransacked the exits the second they saw the
first end credit; what they missed was the entire conclusion of the
film, including the ultimate fate of the characters.
Sarah Polley (1999's "Go"), a Canadian-born indie staple who rarely
ventures into the mainstream, is exceptional as Ana, a young woman
devastated by what is happening around her, but who refuses to give
up hope. Polley brings to her lead role the stark, honest emotions
and no-holds-barred reality that goes along with the situation. In
the process, she elevates what could have been a standard-issue horror
heroine part to one with three dimensions and worth rooting for. All
other performances, save for the grating Michael Kelly (2000's "Unbreakable)
as stubborn security guard CJ, are concentrated and unfailing. Nonetheless,
most of the characters could have afforded the depth and care brought
to Ana, who is the only one we see with a life before things literally go to Hell.
Amidst the heightened suspense and skillfully created terror, director
Zack Snyder does make a few key errors that keep the film from being
the masterpiece it often flirts with becoming. For one, it is suggested
that what is occurring is strictly virus-based, but if this is the
case, then it is implausible that the entire town would fall apart
overnight. Where did the virus come from to begin with? And if he
wants us to believe that the long-since dead have risen from their
graves, then the film is missing any such clarification (a brief scene
where Ana drives by a cemetery and witnesses the dead rising would
have cleared this up, but is nowhere to be found). Any w ay you look
at it, It is an unavoidable and clumsy plot hole. Likewise, a stronger
sense of the interior mall setting should have been rendered, instead
of the majority happening in front of the same store over and over.
If anything, 1979's "Dawn of the Dead" did do a more satisfying job of this.
Nitpicks notwithstanding, "Dawn of the Dead" is creepy, smart, classy
moviemaking. The film takes no prisoners in its sole goal to scare
you silly. And what the viewer is left with by the end is an unshakable
sense of both pure despair (at the narrative's outcome) and adulation
(at the film's well-made nature). If George A. Romero's "Dawn of the
Dead" remains a classic of zombie cinema, then Zack Snyder's version
deserves the same label. Despite what prerelease naysayers and skeptics
might have thought, it defies lowered expectations. Superior in almost
every way, "Dawn of the Dead" is an unforgettable, nerve-tingling
ride through the American Dream gone hideously, gruesomely wrong.
Copyright © 2004 Dustin Putman
|
out of 4
