DAWN OF THE DEAD [remake]
Dir: Zack Snyder

George Romero's original "Dawn of the Dead" had corpses again rising up from their graves to consume the flesh of the living, only this time Romero had the inspiration to set his film in a shopping mall. The parallels between zombies and shoppers, shambling about, mindlessly consuming, was just too good to resist; the film has since become a critic's favorite, cited (along with the original "Night of the Living Dead") as a cult horror classic.

To be honest, while I do like "Dawn," it isn't my favorite of Romero's "Dead" films; that would be the not-as-highly regarded "Day of the Dead." I'm familiar with criticisms of that film--too talky, too hemmed in by production constraints (Romero had to rewrite the script and set the film in an underground military complex when the budget was drastically reduced), the characters too unsympathetic and cartoonishly drawn to sustain our interest.

But the "Dead" movies aren't so much examples of sophisticated filmmaking as they are powerful metaphors given evocatively free rein by a cunning and imaginative filmmaker. "Night of the Living Dead" was about how well a handful of people under pressure are able to uphold normal standards of humanity and decency (not too well, unfortunately); "Dawn" was the same formula set against a large-scale parody of American consumerism--even the blandly overbright quality of the lighting was perfect, as it mimicked mall lighting exactly.

"Day of the Dead" took that struggle--of survivors quarrelling among themselves about the best way to survive while zombies pressed in from outside--and pushed it as far as it could go. The arguments were uglier, the characters coarser because the stakes, reduced to as little as they can be, are that much higher (Who thinks of being nice or decent when you and all you know or even heard about are going to die out?). And it actually makes sense that "Day," conceptually the most ambitious of Romero's "Dead" films, should also be the most spatially constrained--instead of showing us a world taken over by zombies, Romero hit upon the brilliant possibly genius idea of showing us a blank wall, and telling us that beyond the walls is a world taken over by zombies. Our imaginations went into overdrive accordingly, and claustrophobia and the stench of desperation the characters gave off completed the effect--of a deadend, no-win situation, of a candle burning itself out, of rats crammed in a tight hole tearing themselves into pieces. It's Romero's most intense work, and if it's not his most subtle, well, neither is the end of the world.

Zack Snyder's remake of "Dawn" also takes place in a mall, also has some of the infighting among the survivors that makes zombie films interesting, also has the memorably terse reply from the original as to why zombies would congregate at a mall: "Memory, maybe. Instinct." Romero fashions an opening that recalls the creepiness of his "Night of the Living Dead"--there, two siblings visit a mother's lonely grave; here, mother and father wake up to a daughter's embrace. Ana, the mother (Sarah Polley, who's too good to really need to appear in anything like this), wanders around what looks like a city somewhere in Canada (it's supposed to be Milwaukee), and hooks up with Kenneth, a police officer (Ving Rhames) and various other survivors, including the pregnant Luda (Ina Korobkina), finally ending up in the shopping mall. There's some resistance from the mall's security guards, led by C.J. (Michael Kelly), but that's pretty much resolved early on. Most of it follows Romero's original--the aimless wandering about and partaking of various foods and goods; the constant bickering; the random potshots at passing zombies (here they sharpen the game by looking for and aiming at celebrity lookalikes--well, maybe not all are meant to be lookalikes); the eventual crisis and disintegration of their secure little conclave.

What hasn't been done before in Romero's original has been buried under a revved-up version, with loud metal music quickly replacing the soothing Muzak, and shaky handheld shots and shock cuts replacing Romero's steady and deliberate filmmaking. Snyder shoots like a filmmaker fresh out of commercials and music videos (nowadays there's not much difference); he gives his picture a similarly hip, glossy look. Romero, working on smaller budgets, knew that his makeup effects were the money shots (the, in effect, reason his films got financing), and would shoot them straight on, under bright lighting. He shot very much like a pornographer, and the effect of his gore was similar to the effect of sex in American pornography, presented bald, with no apology or style: you couldn't look away, you couldn't pretend it wasn't there. Snyder's MTV style turns Romero's satire on consumerism into yet another consumer product, yet another tarted-up example of the modern horror film where, because the camera shakes so much and cuts away so often, the full impact of the images can barely register onscreen.

And what's with this recent trend of fast-moving zombies? Romero's zombies, despite their unintelligent, shambling walk, were unsettling precisely because they were so slow, so clumsy; they had one thing these newfangled zombies don't--time. You felt that they never hurried because they knew they didn't have to, that they had the world on their side. The horror of Romero's zombie movies is the horror of men trapped in a sunken submarine, or of a town sitting beside a crumbling dam--you can fight off leaks as hard and often as you can but you know that sooner or later the water will close in over your head. These new zombies lack the terrible patience of Romero's zombies; they seem more like the punks you see in post-apocalyptic films of the '60s and early '70s--not so much undead as a little crazed, or hopped up on drugs.

Snyder's "Dawn" isn't all bad; it has one good scene, of Luda giving birth (the sick baby joke to end all baby jokes), and it is grittier and more unsparing than Danny Boyle's arty "28 Days Later." To tell the truth, I enjoyed myself; I just didn't think I was in the presence of a genuine horror classic, the way I did when watching Romero's original "Dead" films. - Noel Vera

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@hotmail.com)