Dawn of the Dead (Widescreen Unrated Director's Cut) Review
I can't really compare this with the original version as I've not that in full yet, but of all the zombie films I've seen, this 2004 remake is definitely one of the best. I've seen this film 3 times now! It's exciting through out and creates a lot of suspence in many scenes even if you can predict what's going to happen. It's a bit like 28 Days Later with running zombies rather than slow, mindless zombies that can creep up on you from behind like with the Romero films. So more like the rage virus from 28 days Later only they're still undead rather than simply infected and they look like zombies as well, menacing, frightening and creepy giving an upper tempo to the film with a sense of emergency making the effort to keep them out of the mall much more intense. The only thing that I think could be improved about the living dead in this film is that everyone who dies from anything should come back as a zombie rather than just people who are bitten or infected, it would make it more exciting. Brilliant acting as well and a good wide variety of characters and although there isn't whole lot of character development, there are so many different characters - a strong police seargent, a tough, bitter security guard with a cowboy moustache, a sarcastic guy, a jack-of-all trades, a former criminal with his pregnant wife, and then there's the nurse who's the love interest. So like I said there's a wide variety of characters which I think again makes it more exciting because the higher the number of characters the more action filled zombie scenes you're going to see because any of them can be confronted by a zombie.
The special features on this DVD are good as well with the news broadcast and Andy's Terrifying Last Days. When watching the DVD it was good to watch these 2 features to warm up for the actual film. The news broadcast being that it shows you how the zombie outbrake increases more and more with scenes of bite victims being interviewed, people being got by zombies, and panicked news reporters. A brilliant feature with a lot of sparkle to it! Then Andy's Terrifying Last Days being a video made by Andy, the gunshop owner stranded alone in his gun store across the zombie infested parking lot. We don't get to see much of Andy's point of view during the actual film, so it's good to see what kind of a character he is, what he's thinking and how he fights to stay alive.
I would definitely give this film 5 stars as it's entertaining and exciting from start to finish and I'd certainly reccomend it to fans of the zombie genre. An exciting all action packed zombie film!
Dawn of the Dead (Widescreen Unrated Director's Cut) Feature
- POLLEY/RHAMES/PHIFER/BARRY
Dawn of the Dead (Widescreen Unrated Director's Cut) Overview
Packed with more blood, more gore, and more bone-chilling, jaw-dropping thrills,
Dawn of the Dead Unrated Director's Cut is the version too terrifying to be shown in theaters! Starring Mekhi Phifer, Ving Rhames and Sarah Polley in an edgy, electrifying thrill-ride.
When a mysterious virus turns people into mindless, flesh-eating zombies, a handful of survivors wage a desperate, last-stand battle to stay alive…and human.
Dawn of the Dead (Widescreen Unrated Director's Cut) Specifications
Are you ready to get down with the sickness? Movie logic dictates that you shouldn't remake a classic, but Zack Snyder's
Dawn of the Dead defies that logic and comes up a winner. You could argue that George A. Romero's 1978 original was sacred ground for horror buffs, but it was a
low-budget classic, and Snyder's action-packed upgrade benefits from the same manic pacing that energized Romero's continuing zombie saga. Romero's indictment of mega-mall commercialism is lost (it's arguably outmoded anyway), so Snyder and screenwriter James Gunn compensate with the same setting--in this case, a Milwaukee shopping mall under siege by cannibalistic zombies in the wake of a devastating viral outbreak--a well-chosen cast (led by Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, and Mekhi Phifer), some outrageously morbid humor, and a no-frills plot that keeps tension high and blood splattering by the bucketful. Horror buffs will catch plenty of tributes to Romero's film (including cameos by three of its cast members, including gore-makeup wizard Tom Savini), and shocking images are abundant enough to qualify this
Dawn as an excellent zombie-flick double-feature with
28 Days Later, its de facto British counterpart.
--Jeff Shannon
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