Dawn of The Dead Before Dawn

I saw Dawn of The Dead on Sunday night. As always with movies I am interested in but didn’t necessarily really want to go see, my aunt is the one who suggested we go see the movie. The next movie I was planning on seeing would either be The Ladykillers or Kill Bill Volume 2. But still, Dawn of The Dead was a gory good time. Even though it’s a remake, at times it reminded me a lot of 28 Days Later. The zombies were fast and the reason people turned into zombies was a disease of some kind spread by bites (similar to the disease in 28 Days Later where it took contact with an infected person’s blood). However, this movie was much better than 28 Days Later. The movie was a little longer than I expected (it kind of dragged in the middle) but much of the film was exciting, fast-paced, and funny.

Here are some observations about the movie and my experience seeing it. SPOILER ALERT, especially if you haven’t seen the original movie.

-My aunt and I saw the film at the Ford City theater. She had a gift card for AMC Theatres and it was the only one remotely close. I’ve been there before, but not in a looong time.

-I don’t know if this is the case with all AMC Theatres, but I was surprised when I saw that the previews had been edited together. Gone was the green screen reminding you that the preview was for All Audiences. When one preview ended, it went fairly seamlessly into the next. I had seen most of the trailers before. I think this is the summer of epic period pieces of all types. I saw trailers for Van Helsing, Troy, and now King Arthur which promises to tell the “true story” of the legendary King. I was really hoping to see trailers for Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban...or at least Spider-Man 2. No such luck.

-That sneak peek they showed on USA was truly uncut. In fact, after where that preview ends, they show the opening credits.

-What’s fun about horror movies is that sometimes you don’t know if something is funny on purpose or not. There were many scenes like that in Dawn of The Dead. Take for example, a scene in the opening where a main character’s husband has become a zombie and is chasing her. He runs after her car (he’s visible in the background) only to change course and go after another non-infected woman who screams when attacked. That got laughs out of everyone in the theater.

-Horror movies are the prime example of the common mantra: Americans have more problems with sex than violence. Among the violence seen in Dawn of The Dead: countless numbers of zombies being shot in the head (with one poor zombie getting half his head shot off), zombies biting and eating people (although the eating was really brief), zombies getting set on fire, zombies getting the shit knocked out of them, a zombie getting their legs cut off with a chainsaw, a woman getting cut into with a chainsaw, and a woman who’s about to “give birth” having her “water break” except the water is blood. And this is rated R. I don’t really have a problem with that except that if the same variety of sex acts appeared in a film, the movie would be rated NC-17 instantly. Then again, here’s something else to think about. The original independently made Dawn of The Dead was released unrated. This remake by major studio Universal and got the R rating. Hmm.

-Two black males are in the movie, played by Mekhi Phifer and Ving Rhames. Which one do you think ended up acting stupidly and getting killed without getting attacked by a zombie? Which one survived? Think logically, and you’ll figure it out easily.

-It didn’t surprise me one bit that most of the characters dwelled on the deaths of their loved ones that much. In fact, only Ving Rhames’ character actually seemed to be genuinely sad about losing someone for more than a scene. The girl who lost her dad because he was going to turn into a zombie got over that by the next scene. And the woman whose husband chased her down earlier never even mentions missing him at all. I guess showing the characters mourning would have made us care about them. And given that most of them die, we really shouldn’t.

-Is this a trend...new directors starting out with remakes of classic horror films? Zack Snyder directed the remake of Dawn of The Dead, which is his first film after directing many commercials. Marcus Nispel directed the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was his first film after directing many music videos. What’s next? A remake of Nightmare on Elm Street directed by Dave Meyers?

-One of the best characters in the movie was Andy, a guy who had only about 1-2 lines of dialogue total. He was also a survivor who holed himself up in his gun shop as opposed to the shopping mall the rest of the characters are held up in. He communicates with the characters via a dry erase board that he holds up while on the roof of his shop. One of the best laughs in the movie comes when Andy becomes a zombie. What he “writes” on the dry erase board is priceless.

-I’m glad they avoided an Alien homage during the scene when Mekhi Phifer’s wife is about to give birth as she slowly turns into a zombie. They showed the baby poking through the mother’s belly and I hoped they wouldn’t have the baby burst out of her stomach. They didn’t.

-If my spoilers didn’t turn you off from seeing the movie, make sure to stay through the credits. They show you the real ending of the movie, which is just like the way the original ended (unlike the Planet of The Apes remake...I remember explaining that to my aunt once and realizing just how convoluted it was).