Dawn of the Dead
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Dawn of the Dead, directed by George Romero
The world is in chaos. No one knows what’s happening, but everyone knows something is wrong; the dead are rising from the grave to terrorize the living. How much more wrong could it be? The government is doing its best to control the situation, but people are fleeing from cities right and left. One group of four flies a helicopter out, and ends up landing on an abandoned mall. The place is rife with zombies, but with a little teamwork, it’s not too difficult to barricade them out. Plus, the mall has all the resources and toys one could ever need…
It has been theorized that the basic monster archetypes of the horror genre, the vampire, the werewolf, the ghost, and the zombie, are all based on specific fears common to all mankind; and while each archetype in turn can be said to have aspects of all these fears, each archetype better signifies one type above all the others.
For example, a vampire story is generally about a fear of sex and disease, or even more generally, the fear of intimate invasion from an outside source, and all the terrors that brings. Werewolves are about the Ego and the Id, or an invasion from within- the basic worry that no matter how hard you might try, there’s always going to be some part of you that will never be good, and if that part ever got out it, it would wreck horrors. Ghosts are about death and the unknown; is there something beyond what we can normally comprehend? And if so, is it watching us? Judging us?
It’s zombies that we’re here to talk about today, however, and it’s zombies that I’ve always found to be the most frightening of all the above, because zombies are about entropy. A zombie is the ultimate symbol of human order breaking down; a slowly rotting familiar face in every direction that will destroy all the systems and values that you cling to, until, in the end, it devours you alive. Vampires, well, wear a condom and lock your window. Werewolves can do with some psychotherapy. Ghosts, either find out what they want and give it to them, or ring up Ray Stanz and Pete Venkman, who’ll take care of your problem for a moderate fee. But zombies? They cannot be reasoned with. They cannot be avoided or appeased or kept out. They are the crumbling center of the world- you can keep them at bay for a time, but eventually, they will get inside, and it will all be over.
I was thirteen or so when I first saw Night of the Living Dead. I was home alone on a one winter afternoon when I watched it, and sweet jesus, was that ever a mistake. The gross stuff wasn’t that bad, and since it was on TV (VH1, of all things), I’m sure they cut out any of the really gooey stuff. It was the humans trying to fight the zombies off that really got to me; the way no one seemed to be able to complete a sentence without yelling, the way no one could ever get across even the simplest idea, and if they ever did manage to get something across, it went badly in a hurry. These people couldn’t have gone grocery shopping together, let along handle a credible, inexplicable threat, but there they were, and there I was, hoping against hope it might not
end too badly. It did, of course. Thanks to George Romero’s social pessimism and that numbnuts posse, it ended as badly as it could’ve.
The zombie girl and that damned trowel certainly didn’t help matters.
It was years before I saw Dawn of the Dead. I’d wanted to see it ever since I heard about it; people kept saying how it was even better than NotLD in its way, hard as that was to believe. I ended up seeing Day of the Dead first, the third part of Romero’s zombie as-of-right-now-but-hopefully-not-forever-trilogy, and that was a bit of a let-down. Day is good, in places very, very good, but too much of it is filled with unlikable characters yelling at each other over irresolvable conflicts. My expectations for Dawn were lowered- perhaps Night was just a fluke of some sort.
Then, one night in October I think it was a few years back, IFC showed Dawn of the Dead uncut, and I was smart enough to sit down in front of the telly and watch it straight through. Boy, was I surprised. Dawn is not the grim, claustrophobic vision of Night, nor is it the talky, misanthropic slog of Day; although it has elements of both films, it is its own beast entirely, and a damn fine piece of filmmaking at that. If I had to classify it as anything, I’d say it’s an adventure movie with strong underpinnings of graphic horror and pitch black comedy. But even that doesn’t completely cover it.
The plot is simple; a group of desperate survivors, on the run from the dying dregs of the “real” world, take refuge in an abandoned shopping mall. They clean out the zombies, block up the doors, and revel in the materialistic abandon at their fingertips. But paradise doesn’t last forever…
That’s about as much as a person can tell you without going into a scene-by-scene recitation. The story of Dawn of the Dead is not exactly what you’d call “tight”; aside from the zombie infestation and the characters themselves, there’s precious little in the way of overall plot, at least not in the traditional sense. Which is not to say that DotD is impressionistic or vague- far from it. More that it has that long trumpeted “documentary feel,” because it introduces a group of people and simply follows them along for a while.
It stands to reason, then, that those introductions have to be strong in order to ensure the characters themselves will hold our interest for the entire picture. Yes, yes, zombies do have a way of keeping us alert (unless they’re in a Mattei film), but there are- gasp!- long periods in the movie where the zombies aren’t there at all; or if they are, they aren’t an immediate threat. Ergo, the human side of things has to be strong enough that we care about the people even if they aren’t in immediate danger of being et.
Fortunately, Romero realizes this, and the movie opens with two separate storylines which eventually meet up at the twenty minute mark; storylines which serve both to set up the rapid decay of society and the zombie infestation which is causing it, and also bring in the four individuals whose fates will be our concern for the next two hours. There’s Francine (Gaylen Ross), who works for a television studio; her boyfriend Stephen (David Emge), a helicopter pilot; and his friend Roger (Scott H. Reiniger), a SWAT team officer who hooks up with fellow officer Peter (Ken Foree) during a chaotic, horrifying tenement sweep.
We see Francine first, catching a moment’s sleep in a corner formed by two blood red walls- someone wakes her up, and she wanders through the TV studio, people shouting things at each other left and right, no one knowing exactly what’s happening; there’s no overt violence here, but it’s disturbing as hell because no one seems capable of doing anything beyond contradicting one another. Everyone understands that there is an impossible situation outside, and that something must be done about it, but that understanding does not bring with it the ability to successfully communicate and work with others. Which is a major theme of Romero’s entire Dead trilogy- the framework of modern society essentially prevents us from dealing effectively with a threat which easily circumvents that structure. You can’t try peace talks with the zombies, and while you can shoot them, there are always more to take there place.
As it is, it’s a relief when Stephen arrives to take Francine off in his helicopter; there’s a selfish furtiveness to both their actions (I’m not sure if it’s ever confirmed, but it seems like the US is in a sort of police state at this point), but it’s easy to understand them. We want out of that room too.
Unfortunately for us, as soon as they leave, we cut over to the police emptying out a tenement building of humans and zombies. This is easily as off-putting as the previous scene, because we see the same rootless, angry behavior; only this time, the people have guns. And as if to make up for the zombie-less beginning, there’s gut-munching action a’plenty, including an exploding head, and the most vicious looking shoulder bite I’ve ever seen. Even worse are the remnants in the basement, a group of five or six zombies eating corpses and each other- it’s a great deal like the photos you see of the horrors of abject poverty.
Wading through this mess are Roger and Peter, two men driven to the absolute limits of themselves by the work they are required to do. Roger tells Peter about his plan to escape with Fran and Stephen, and invites him along. Peter accepts, and after wading through some more carnage, they go AWOL.
Here’s the fascinating thing; after these two intense set pieces, our heroes fly their way to the mall and things get actually, well, fun. Swear to god. Oh, sure, it’s not all play; it’s a pain in the ass to get the mall sealed off from the zombs, and in the process somebody gets bit, which in these movies almost always means a slow painful death. And there’s the satire on consumerism, as each person delights in looting through every store, mostly for things that only would have mattered to them years ago, if then. Then there’s the inevitable end of Eden when the zombies find their way inside, as they always do. (Remember that entropy thing again?)
Still. NOTLD was a grim piece of filmmaking, and Day of the Dead isn’t exactly chipper. So imagine my surprise when I find the characters of Dawn actually enjoying themselves, something which hardly ever happens in the other two. (In fact, there are maybe two smiles in the whole of NotLD, and at least one of those is between the soon-to-be-deep-fried lovers.) This is probably the only trilogy I can think of where the middle picture is more upbeat then the two which surround it, and it’s that upbeat quality- that goofy, “Hey, wouldn’t it be whacked if” feel that is what makes Dawn such a joy to watch.
Much has been made of the satire in this movie, and it is effective; personally, I find the characters taking stuff from the stores they couldn’t possibly need far more effective than the mindless zombies who won’t leave the mall. I never found those zombies to work all that well as symbols of vapid consumerism, cause it’s sort of one note. Wow, they’re dead and they still want to buy stuff. What a world, huh?
Watching Fran and Stephen and the rest go hog wild in J.C. Penny’s hits home harder, I think. Because it’s exactly what I would do in the same situation; we’re so well trained to value these things that we don’t really need to survive that it would be next to impossible to ignore an easy opportunity to grab them if everything else had gone to hell. It would even be a sort of comfort, absurd as that seems; the world is going insane outside, but hey, I still have my flat screen television and DVD player with progressive scan. Zombies are scary, but they have no choice, they are what they are; the fact that we do have a choice, but we’ll be this way regardless- that’s some deep stuff right there.
Well, deep stuff that’s been in every review of this movie ever written, I guess. But hey, I’m just helping you out in case you missed any of them.
Even with all the obvious subtext going on, though, there’s something tremendously entertaining about watching people play with expensive toys. That whole wish fulfillment thing, maybe- I mean, most of us are never going to be rich enough to get everything we want, and, in a normal world, neither would Peter or Stephen or Roger or Fran. While it’s off-putting to see them fawn over now-worthless jewelry and trinkets, there’s also this strong rush of childlike giddiness; it’s Christmas day, only nothing’s wrapped and there are zombies outside. That giddiness is most likely tinged with a spot of hysteria, but that doesn’t make it any less infectious.
Recently, someone on the BMMB did a poll asking people which one of the Dead trilogy they thought was the best. I voted for NotLD, as much for its cultural impact as its obvious cinematic value. Most folks, though, voted for Dawn; and watching it again, it’s not hard to figure out why. Of the three, Dawn is the most watchable, I think- and even more importantly, it’s the most re-watchable. The free-form plot has a lot to do with that; movies with unusual structures tend to bring us back because it’s much more difficult to remember what happened in them. Even more important, though, is the sense of adventure, of play; tinged as it is with horror and selfishness, there is a brief sense of possibility that always puts me in a good mood. Sorta like “Time Enough At Last” if Henry Bemis hadn’t broken his glasses.
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Dawn of the Dead, directed by Zack Snyder
Ana has had a long day at the OR. The doctors are their usual arrogant, ignorant selves, and she ends up having work late- but she does get to leave, thank god. There’s this weird stuff on the radio, but she ignores it, as it probably has nothing to do with her, right? She says hi to the girl next door, promises her they’ll go roller-skating over the weekend; and then it’s park the car and go upstairs to say hi to the hubby, and a nice, tension reducing bout of sex. All in all, the day may have been long, but it ended on the right note, regardless of what’s playing on the news.
Tomorrow, everything goes wrong.
When they announced a remake of Dawn of the Dead, I was, shall we say, not happy. In fact, I was initially positive that the whole thing was some sort of hoax. It took me a long time before I could accept that it wasn’t, accept that somebody was whacked enough to actually do this- and when I did accept this, my mild amusement and befuddlement transformed itself immediately into white hot hate. How dare they? How dare? Must every good movie be sullied? Must we “modernize” all classics until future generations only know of the McDonald’s version that’s shinier, louder, and shallower than a Paris Hilton photo?
Apparently, yes.
I realize that decrying remakes before they’re even made is just another symptom of fan boy-ism, a knee jerk reaction which, while not entirely unfounded, speaks of a close-minded nature that any true cinema aesthete would do his best to avoid. But it’s damn hard not to respond like this, even knowing that it’s wrong. It’s like trying to hit it off with your new step-dad; he may be okay, but he wasn’t here first, dammit. And the sheer volume of the frickin things! I understand the inherently repetitive nature of narrative art, but for god’s sake could we maybe be a bit more subtle about it? I also understand the shakiness of the movie business these days, and how remakes often provide that valuable name recognition one only normally finds in franchise pictures, but c’mon; I bet a large, large portion of the audience for the new Walking Tall has never even heard of Joe Don Baker, let alone Buford Pusser. When remakes stop being about attracting an already existing audience to a new-but-familiar property, they start being about screenwriters being utterly incapable of coming up with anything remotely like a new idea. Hard to say which is worse, really.
Still. Remakes don’t always suck. The Thing kicked some major ass, although this was in large part due to Carpenter’s willingness to take the original movie and go in a completely different direction, a willingness not always seen in most remakes. Oh, sure, remakes these days don’t all lavishly copy their sources ala Gus Van Sant’s Psycho, but there’s precious little individuality going around these days. A modern remake’s biggest purpose, it seems, is to take a unique older movie and try to make it as generic and indistinguishable from other more recent movies as possible. There’s no attempt at making a movie that’s distinctively it’s own, or a movie that has any sort of depth or lasting impact whatsoever, unless you want to call the lot of ‘em blackly comic comments on the nature of capitalistic art- and if you do, I salute your enthusiasm and I’d like off your mailing list.
So, after the knee-jerk reaction fades, the question becomes will the new Dawn of the Dead manage to separate itself from its predecessor? Will it carve out its own niche? And will it avoid the trap of dumbing down classics for modern audiences?
Having seen the movie, I can say yes, sort of, and nearly.
As you may or may not have heard, the USA network showed the opening ten minutes of the new Dawn a few days before the movie opened wide in theaters. This was a brilliant move by the marketing department, because those ten minutes are probably the most interesting section of the whole movie, and one of the most immediately grabbing. We watch Ana (Sarah Polley), a nurse, signing off at the end of a long shift. She goes home, says hi to the little girl next door, then snuggles into bed with her husband, before the two get it on in the shower. Both go to bed happy…
Only to wake up the next morning to find the little girl next door at the bedroom door, and her face is all screwed up. Hubby does the obvious thing and runs to her, only to be rewarded for his troubles by a fatal neck wound. Ana kicks the zombie brat out of the room, tries to save her husband, who dies while she’s calling 911, only to come back to life and immediately attack her. She escapes, gets in her car and drives through her normally placid neighborhood, now gone utterly mad- she makes it to the highway, but crashes into a ditch and blacks out. Opening credits ensue, where Johnny Cash sings over scenes of death and violence.
Pretty sweet, huh? The striking thing about this is how well it’s played out; there are any number of hints that something creepy is going on before the zombie girl shows up, and, utterly realistically, Ana ignores them all. My favorite is when she’s driving home from work, and she purposefully jumps past the news bulletins on the radio until she gets some actual music. It’s a clever way of making us personally invested in the horror almost immediately, because while Ana’s life may not be directly comparable to our own, there’s enough which is familiar about it that we can put ourselves in her shoes. I made it a point of catching the preview when it aired, and while I still wasn’t entirely convinced, my expectations were higher. Clearly, the people behind this movie weren’t complete idiots.
Unsurprisingly, the rest of the movie fails to live up the expectations established by those opening ten minutes. It’s not bad, exactly, and there is much good to recommend it; but it is, for the most part, wholly unremarkable, and only comes off as a really good movie when you compare it to generic crap like Resident Evil.
When Ana wakes up after her crash, she meets, in rapid succession, Kenneth (Ving Rhames), Michael (Jake Weber), Andre (Mekhi Phifer) and his expecting wife Monica (Kim Poirier). Here’s where the cracks start showing, because all of these characters are instant stereotypes- Kenneth is the hardass ex-cop who trusts no one, Michael is the all around nice guy, Andre is the over-protective father, and Monica is the pregnant woman who pops up in this sort of movie a lot. Even Ana turns into Generic Female Protagonist, with the extra bonus feature of Basic Medical Training.
My problem isn’t so much that I don’t think these types of characters should be in movies; even as stereotypes, they can be powerfully evocative, especially in the hands of directors willing to push them in unexpected directors. My problem here is how immediately obvious it is exactly who’s who, and, in some way, how their story arc will most likely play out. (If you can’t see the soon-to-be-mom getting bit, you’re simply not thinking clearly.) You can feel the screenwriter making a conscious effort to establish all of these people at once- Michael is instantly kind, Kenneth is pissed off, Andre is protective of his wife, and Monica, well, she doesn’t say much. It’s like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, where we get those vignettes that culminate in the character’s “type” being shown on-screen; only here, the vignettes only last thirty seconds long, and there’s no irony in any of ‘em (no cool naming font either).
Perhaps these flash-characterizations were intended as a boon to the viewer because dear god, there are a crap load of people in this movie before the end. Without the stereotypes, it would’ve been damn difficult trying to remember which blonde was which, which mall guard was which- my favorite bit is when we think we’ve gotten the situation under control, we’ve got a good idea of who everybody is, and then there’s a literal truckload of new people brought in for us to contend with. It’s like the writer panicked when he realized he could no longer introduce characters and couldn’t think of any more conflict between the six or seven of them, so he loaded in ten new faces so we could spend the rest of the movie distracted from the heroes by all the white noise around them.
Fortunately, though, most everybody ends up as zombie chow, so that’s okay.
Speaking of which, this movie does have some pretty kickass zombie action. While the creatures disappear for the middle third, they make their presence known enough outside to remain a credible threat, and the gore is quite excellent, with the CGI enhancements being barely noticeable. As long as I’m talking good stuff, the relationship between Kenneth and Andy (Bruce Bohne), the unfortunate gun shop owner who lives across the street from the mall, is very well done; has a sort of prison movie feel too it, just these two guys bonding without having to talk about it. CJ (Michael Kelly), the jerk security guard, also has a nice character transformation; it’s always nice when a horror movie is willing to let the dick turn out kinda decent by the end. Not so lucky is Steve (Ty Burrell), who makes the mistake of both being a coward and insulting the female lead, and reaps the inevitable rewards of such behavior. (He’s like Paul Reiser in Aliens, only less unctuous.)
Everyone else in the cast acquits themselves nicely with the material they’re given. I like Matt Frewer a lot; he has a small part as a father bitten by a zombie who has to die twice. That dude looked seriously ill. Oh, and Lindy Booth is adorable, even if her character is a complete and utter moron.
I did honestly enjoy this movie. It may sound like I didn’t, but I think I can only appreciate it if I’m willing to put it in the proper context; too often, comments on the ‘net about films have to be ultra-positive or ultra-negative, and since most people were dreading this one beforehand, it’s only natural that we start singing its praises when we discover it doesn’t suck. And it doesn’t suck- but it’s also extremely flawed, and if we start accepting movies like this as the pinnacle of modern horror, I don’t think I’ll be going to the cineplex as much, because this is all we’re going to get. Bottom line: it’s decent. But if someone calls it a classic, feel free to laugh when they’re back is turned.
COMPARE/CONTRAST:
The remake of Dawn of the Dead is not a particularly close adaptation. James Gunn and Zack Snyder (screenwriter and director, respectively) essentially took the basic concept of the original, a bunch of folks holing up in a mall to get away from zombies, and made up a whole new story around it. There are connections, of course- cameos from the old cast, a few re-quoted lines- but if you changed the names, it’s possible someone could see the new version and think of it as merely an homage to what had gone before.
Which means I can’t do a point by point comparison, since it would mostly consist of me saying “This is different, this is different, this is also different.” There are a few things worth pointing out, however.
Character-wise, while some of the remake’s heroes are more likable than the original’s protags (I’m thinking specifically of Ana over Francine here- Ana is, while generic, at least a strong, competent woman, while Francine is whiny and a bit of a bitch), this is more due to a difference in intent between the two films than it is a failure on Romero’s part. The remake, bravura opening aside, isn’t supposed to be realistic, and it certainly isn’t intended as social commentary in any way; the heroes and jerks are neatly separated, because if they weren’t, if we were actually required to think about them before we decided what kind of people they were, we’d be distracted from the real purpose of the movie, which is to freak us out and get our adrenaline pumping. While there are a few gray spots, like the determined father and redneck-jerk-who-sees-the-light, these serve more to point out the general flatness of everyone else. I suppose one should be grateful that the filmmakers bothered to risk even that much, and I am- I just don’t think it makes up for the lacking in the other folks.
Contrast that with the original, where no one is purely likable. Even Peter, who is basically a better equipped version of Dwayne from NotLD isn’t perfect, although he’s the closest thing to a true hero the movie has. While this can make the characters more difficult to root for, it serves to make the story as a whole far more “real,” and far more intimate. The characterizations, while clear, are a good deal more subtle; while we know that Stephen is the inept white guy, and Roger is the ultra-competent soldier, it’s not like they’re wearing T-shirts that say that. And it’s not like they aren’t allowed to behave in ways that show them to be a bit better rounded than a simple archetype.
Story-wise, the heroes of the remake turn out to be far more proactive than their predecessors. In the original, the leads greatest desire is to get away from the horrors around them; they have no real hope of finding any larger force to take care of them, which it makes it far easier for them to settle into a routine when they find a safe haven like the mall. In the remake, there’s a constant sense of forward momentum. Everyone is stunned by the wide-spread chaos, but their response is to constantly be pushing for some sort of solution, someplace better then the place they have right now. There is a period of brief respite once everyone has settled into the mall, when we see a much shorter version of the “kids in a candy store” sequence from the original, but unlike the original, it is the leads themselves who choose to leave their asylum. In Romero’s movie, the outside world (ie, human recklessness and entropy) eventually overcomes whatever boundaries Peter and the rest have constructed around themselves. In the remake, Kenneth and Ana and the rest decide that they’d rather die trying to escape than remain where they are, and so they voluntarily re-enter the chaos they had sealed themselves away from. This is a much more optimistic ending than Romero’s, at least on a social scale; a lot of people die, but it’s more like watching grunts get shot in an old war movie- they’re dying for a cause.
Speaking of forward momentum, one of the biggest debates on the ‘net about this movie (aside from the usual “It sucks!” “You suck!” “Shut up!” “All this anger is really generated by my subliminal desire to shove my tongue down your throat!” crap) started when we discovered that- gasp- unlike most zombie movies, the walking dead in the new Dawn weren’t going to be walking at all. These dead, if you can believe it, would be running.
Oh, the uproar! The furor! Despite the fact that this is most definitely not the first zombie flick to feature more ambulatory corpses (the classic Return of the Living Dead springs to mind), a lot of people had some serious issues; the reaction seemed roughly equivalent to what would have happened if Mel Gibson’s The Passion feature a Jesus who actually, once or twice, though about nailing Mary Magdalene. (C’mon, it’s Monica Bellucci! I don’t care who your dad is, if you’re a straight guy, you’re gonna wanna tap that ass.)(Man, I can’t believe I just wrote that.) The arguments ranged from accusations that running zombies weren’t as “scary” as shufflers, to the even more surreal protestation that they were “unrealistic.” Unrealistic? Folks, when you have dead people doing stuff more involved than rotting slowly, you’ve crossed over into the Land of Just Not Happening ‘round Here. That’s like bitching about werewolves because they never have a flea problem.
As for the “less scary” criticism, well, having seen both films in rapid succession, I can say that it’s not so much a matter of “less” as it is a matter of “different.” A shuffling zombie and a walking zombie don’t represent the same kind of threat, and it would be foolish to expect them to deliver the same kind of scare. Romero’s shufflers, for instance, are not credible threats by themselves unless the human they are attacking is particularly vulnerable. They are no stronger than a normal human, although they are less affected by pain, and it’s not all that difficult to outrun them. For a lone zombie to be truly dangerous, the potential victim has to incapacitated somehow, or simply just not that good at protecting him or herself. It’s only when you get a zombie crowd that you’re really screwed.
With running zombies, though, you’re only hope is to see them before they see you, and even then, you need a weapon or access to shelter or your dead. The difference here is the immediacy of the threat- while shufflers are all about dread and slow, creeping doom, runners are a shot of adrenaline and a jump scare, but once they’re gone, they’re gone. They don’t linger in the shadows because they can’t. And while this means the visceral impact is heightened, you lose that awful sinking feeling that many of the attacks by Romero’s creatures inspire.
You also lose a great deal of subtext. There’s no real time to think about anything in the remake; and while there is a hint of symbolism in the fact that a person can only be turned if they are bitten, much like a plague, even that’s treated more as an obstacle to overcome than anything with any deeper social meaning. Just as the heroes in the new Dawn are more proactive, so are the zombies- while we never see them performing any complex problem solving, their propulsive nature means they are a threat even if you don’t let your guard down. The remake is thus entirely about the moment-to-moment, as while there are a few scenes where the characters can be introspective, or consider their situation, these are far overshadowed by the attack sequences. In Romero’s Dawn, death by zombie is only inevitable because of flaws in human nature, flaws which are exploited by the entropic force of the zombies themselves. In essence, both the living and the dead are passive forces, who only act when they have no other choice.
This, to me, is a far truer statement about the nature of humanity than what little message the remake manages to convey. Like a seventies disaster movie, the new Dawn tells us that, for the most part, people will work together in a crisis, aside from a few bad apples which are easy to spot, and if the ending- the very end- of the new version is a trifle more pessimistic than, say, The Poseidon Adventure, it still feels just as disposable to me.
So, to sum up: the original Dawn of the Dead is a classic, and an excellent piece of filmmaking, horror or otherwise. The new Dawn fails to measure up to the high standard of its predecessor, but perhaps it never could. However, despite my criticisms, this does not mean it’s a bad movie- in fact, it’s easily the most enjoyable pure horror film I’ve seen in the theaters in quite some time. It is, in the end, a rollercoaster ride. You go on it a couple of times, maybe you puke, and you most likely forget about it on the car ride home.
SOURCE: QQQQ
SCREEN: QQQ
The remake ending? It’s Fulci-riffic!