Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Synopsis: This movie opens with an exhausted woman named Ana nearing the end of her shift as a nurse. We watch as she heads home to her suburban home and spends a romantic evening at with her husband. The next morning they wake up to find a little girl standing in the doorway to their bedroom. The girl’s face is horribly mutilated and before they can react she attacks and kills Ana’s husband. From this point on the movie is a non-stop zombie attack until Ana and several other survivors end up barricading themselves in a mall.

The Good: The cast in the movie is pretty damn good. Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, and Jake Weber all do an excellent job of portraying a few of the survivors. Also genre vet Matt Frewer gets a small but very interesting part as a doomed father. The script is fast paced and keeps the scares and gore coming at the viewer. That is both a blessing and a curse. We the viewer aren’t given the chance to get bored, but at the same time the script leaves very little time for character development. When I was more concerned about the fate of the dog than I was of the humans that can be a problem. The best example of this is the character of Steve who is supposed to be the sleazy villain among the survivors. Ty Burell does the best he can to make him an effective character but the script neither gives him the time or the material to work with. The gore is pretty well done with a minimum of CGI and the zombies look great.

The Bad: The lack of character development isn’t the only issue that I had with the script. I really hate the ending of the film I mean I detest it. If you don’t want to ruin what should have been the ending don’t watch the credits. In addition to the ending you also have a character make a really stupid and unnecessary decision to sacrifice himself. Perhaps this was an issue with the way the film was cut but I still can’t figure out why the CJ character stays on the bus. Oh yeah I really, really hate zombies that run. Sure it was there movie and maybe they think that is scary, but as a fan I think that it sucks. Also I was a bit put off by the CGI fest that was the escape from the mall. Can anyone really say that it doesn’t look totally fake?

The Score: 2 out of 4

Maybe I’m being picky in this review but then I’m not the one who chose to put the name Dawn of the Dead on my film. If you are going to remake the classic Romero film then you automatically are going to have to deal with comparisons. While I enjoyed this movie it is nowhere near the original.

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