Film Review: Dawn of the Dead
Saturday night, I leave my favorite eatery and make my way over to my video store. What a loser. I remain there for only the briefest period of time, say, about as long as it would take an Iraqi mortar team to launch some rounds at U.S. troops. It was hell on earth inside the store. Teenagers rampaged through the CD racks, high velocity rounds cracked over our heads and that funny looking foreign guy with the long hair wandered aimlessly. Cheney was there too, with tones of Halliburton cash, so somehow that was supposed to make it better for us whiteys. There was a good reason for my quick departure, and it wasn’t the heavy artillery fire or a pack of furtive gophers (again). I found the Premium Edition Director’s Cut of Dawn of the Dead, released in Japan only seven days previously, on sale.
Dawn of the Dead, released in cinemas earlier this year, is director Zack Snyder’s full force assault on the 1978 movie of the same title, directed by George A. Romero. Romero, (and Polanski with Rosemary’s Baby) gave a bloody, pus-filled screaming re-birth to the Zombie horror genre in 68’s classic Night of the Living Dead. Romero continues to produce film to this day. Right now, even as I write, filming is underway for Land of the Dead. Land is set up after a Zombie Apocalypse takes place. The survivors managing to exist in a walled city as they fight out keep the undead out. Cool. Enough genre comment, I hear you say. Get to the point and make a general umbrella statement to kick off the mood of your review piece, you idol-research-undertaking, procrastinating-monkey-dancer!
Dawn in its original cinema release stood as a fully fledged, well-toughened, drooling, bleeding, brain-biting addition to the hallowed genre of the Zombie movie. As I watched, I mostly found the director’s cut adds to and builds on the film’s strong points — such as its hardcore gore factor, its actual character development (yes, I know, I was pleasantly shocked too) and dark humor — without detracting from the film’s pace. This was confirmed the next night while watching Snyder’s intro on the bonus disc. Dawn offers a refreshing start to the Zombie movie by not explaining how and why people are re-animating and chewing each others arms, legs and feet off. It just drops you from a height into the middle of a rapidly developing nightmare and leaves you there with no pants and with very little explanation at all. Useful device when it comes to us viewers relating quickly to the film’s central characters/zombie fodder. Our shared bond of ignorance forces us forward as survival instinct spawned puppets along with movies cast.
Most of the characters in the original cinema release were given a semi-decent background story during the film’s plot development, and this is one of the two points that the director’s cut seeks to flesh out a bit more. That’s a really bad pun. Sorry. No biscuit for me. The insights that we get during montage sequences give a bit more detail and we audience members in cinema land see more of the inner states of the characters before we get to see some of their insides in a more corporeal sense.
Yes, if ever the Hollywood dream machine deemed it okay to view extreme violence on the human form by inventing a cinematic device to dehumanize our bodies, then the Zombie film is it. The cinematography is pretty well refined with a nice, distinctive palate and a well-balanced overall color scheme and contrast-to-brightness ratio. The shadows are dark, the neons harsh, the bloods red and the film switches between color tones nicely to help progress its emotional pitch. Genre-wise its heavily produced, slick lighting contrasts nicely to the low-fi world produced in 28 Days Later, which I also really like, but for very different reasons. Dawn also lays it on heavy with the references to other films. There’s even a great Fellowship of the Ring dig thrown in. Dawn delivers on the goop factor in its re-edited version. In spades no less. Only on the bonus disc can you really comprehend the shear volumes of stage blood and guts that went into this production.
The bonus disc itself does a nice job. It has a few good, detailed special effects documentaries and the deleted scenes reel. It really stands out when it presents Andy’s video diary and a short film of all the fake news footage from the movie’s TV sets played out in a chronological order. It gives your Dawn fan a more in depth look at the broader picture surrounding the film’s world. It even fills in a plot hole that I had wondered about. However, all things said, it would have been good to see a bit more on the bonus disc. There’s a good hour worth of viewing there, but it just didn’t have enough insight to make it really special. A gag reel would have been good. How can you not have hilarity abound on a set with that much stage blood?
Dawn sometimes losses points with some oddly clichéd characters, but hey, it’s a Zombie flick, not eurotrash conceived art house, so let’s not try and read too much into it. Believe me, you can though. Periodically the script turns slightly banal and ruthlessly course. The nonchalant humor serves to even it out, however, and the end product is a well tuned rollercoaster for your avid zombie or action fan. If you don’t like Zombie films, then what are you even doing watching it? Boyfriends talk you into it? Or, then again, maybe its time all of you non-believers were converted. Sharon, hand me my chainsaw, my shotgun and my black leather gloves, its time to go to the mall.