Review: Zack Snyder's "Dawn of the Dead" holds up 20 years on
Movie of the Week #12 is a minor zombie classic
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The biggest problem with Zack Snyder’s 2004 film Dawn of the Dead is that it bears the unfortunate burden of sharing its title with a masterpiece. George A. Romero’s 1978 original is an unmitigated triumph, a film that feels as fresh, arresting, and surprising today as it probably did 45 years ago, despite the incalculable influence it has had on those many years of pop culture. That first Dawn of the Dead is both deeply scary and profoundly funny, a biting work of smart, playful social satire that is also laced throughout with edge-of-your-seat tension, seamlessly shifting between divergent tones in a way very few films have ever managed to master. None of that is true of Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, a film with no ambitions of satire or social critique, and which is concerned more with action than with tension (as evidenced by its 28 Days Later-inspired use of faster, more powerful zombies than the slow, lumbering creatures of Romero’s films). That isn’t a critique, mind you: Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead knows it wants to be an intense, bombastic, character-driven popcorn zombie flick for the 21st century, and it executes on its ambitions quite well. Its only problem is that title: Unnecessary in the first place (the film is a remake in name only, borrowing the mall setting and little else from Romero’s work), and inviting comparisons to a film it could never match under any circumstance. It would be like making a fun little flick about a man starting a newspaper and calling it Citizen Kane; whatever you come up with, that title can only ever be an anchor.
But then, this Dawn of the Dead landed right in a middle of a period where studios were really only investing in two kinds of horror movies: Remakes of genre pillars – Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, etc. – and Saw-inspired ‘torture porn’ flicks. In the midst of the horror renaissance we’re living through these days, that era feels especially distant, and most of what it produced has failed to stand the test of time. Yet twenty years on from its release, love for Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead has endured, and mostly managed to overcome the barrier of its title. It’s enjoyed multiple lovingly-produced home video releases from Shout! Factory (the most recent 4K set is a stunner), and even a brief theatrical re-release earlier this year to celebrate its 20th anniversary (which is how I saw it for the first time). Certainly, part of what’s kept the film alive and in the conversation is the names of the people who made it: Not just Zack Snyder, who made his feature directorial debut here, but also screenwriter James Gunn (the person who, coincidentally, later succeeded Snyder as the DC film universe’s creative mastermind) and star Sarah Polley, in one of her highest-profile leading roles before she left acting behind to direct some of the best films of the 21st century (if you haven’t seen Stories We Tell or Women Talking, please feel free to step away from this review and do so now). It’s an assemblage of talent that practically begs a critical reassessment.
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