A New Dawn

I always try to watch some appropriate movie for Halloween every year. For a while, it was actually Halloween, John Carpenter's classic boogeyman movie. This year, I decided on the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead.

It would probably only be a slight exaggeration to say that I was blown away by the film when I first saw it in theaters. It took the amped up "fast zombies" of 28 Days Later, mixed in some humor and effective tension, and wowed me. Watching it again now, I saw some flaws that I either didn't notice or overlooked that first time around. And it basically comes down to using character stupidity to grease the plot.

The opening act of the movie is fantastic. We follow the lead character as she discovers the zombie apocalypse and fights for her life -- believably -- against something she doesn't understand. The middle chunk of the movie is almost as good. New characters get introduced, and they all behave rather reasonably for the circumstances, not immediately trusting each other, but doing things you logically would in order to survive.

But the logic police fall asleep on the job as the movie enters the final act. (Spoilers here for the rest of this paragraph, if you haven't seen it.) First, you've got the deranged father than wants to see the birth of his zombie baby. Then there's the girl that loves the freaking dog so much that she literally gets everyone killed. Because she goes after the dog, everybody has to go after her before they're able to form a good plan. Without a good plan, they don't make it back to safety without letting the zombies in, and so they have to go through with their plan to flee before that plan is fully ready to execute. Every death that follows as a result of this is basically on that dumb girl's need to save the dog. Which, by the way, didn't need saving, as the movie had established well by that point, the zombies have no interest in the dog. Sigh.

Ultimately though, this is all just enough revise my thinking about the movie to an A-, not enough to make me stop liking it. There's just still so much good stuff going on here. Truly gruesome and menacing zombies. Really messed up and horrific moments (like having your freshly dead husband suddenly try to kill you when you don't even understand what's going on). Plenty of humorous accents, many contributed by Ty Burrell (now best known for his Emmy-winning role on Modern Family). And a cast of actors that's great, despite none of them really being a household name.

It's a visceral, kinetic, exciting movie, a high-water mark that director Zack Snyder hasn't come close to matching in his subsequent films. (Though a mark which writer James Gunn did match -- and exceed -- when he wrote and directed Slither.)

Basically, watching it again kicked the movie out of my top 100 list. But as I said, I still consider it an A-. A must see for horror enthusiasts.