More Flaws Than You Can Shake a Dead Limb At

Rating: 3/10 (12 May 2005)

I'll make it simple. Both Snyder and Gunn managed to put together an action film with gore and flash. However, they didn't make a ZOMBIE film. They made a horror film that settles for the lowest common denominator. Sadly, this is the modern trend for nearly any horror film created by a Hollywood company (remake or original).
To avoid looking like a simple basher, I would like to start out by saying that the tandem did do a few interesting things. The special effects and the montage sequence at the beginning added much to the original story. I wouldn't be surprised if Romero would have loved to have added a similar montage to his original piece if he had the budget at the time to do so.
Sadly, that's about all they did right. Snyder quickly took away the core emotion of the original, gutted it, and filled it with stuffing. This remake is something that had much potential with such a large budget and advancement in filming techniques. However, Gunn managed to write some of the worst pieces for a ZOMBIE film. This film was written in the manner of a body-count film. The characters are introduced on screen, we don't care much for any of them, and they are quickly exterminated in the flashiest manner possible. Gunn couldn't have given a damn about his characters, and Snyder did little to help by making the Zombies doped up on meth.
Thus, instead of making a very character oriented film like Romero did back in the 70s, Snyder and Gunn created a plot-driven film. With such a take on a genre with more depth than any other in the horror branch of film, there's little interest left for the audience. Romero had 4 characters in his mall, and only these 4 characters had any real screen time. They bonded. They grew. The audience grows attached to the characters. These characters pushed forward the events of the film. However, Snyder managed to avoid this and go straight for the jugular. There was no character development. There was no attachment. All you had was a group of over TEN CHARACTERS on screen getting butchered one after the other. There was so much potential with the ORIGINAL group that Gunn had written into the mall at the beginning of the film, however, he opted to add more and more so he could kill them off. Character development and meaning were sacrificed, leaving a very hallow film with nothing but running corpses and explosions, and none of the creative flair Romero had written and directed.
Take away the "Dawn of the Dead" name and all you have similar to the original is the mall and Tom Savini making a cameo. You won't care for the characters or the hell they are put through, as they aren't on the screen long enough for you to attach to them. Gunn shows his amateurish writing ability (which, oddly enough, gets you far in Hollywood) with this screenplay--then again, he wrote the second Scoobydoo film, so there is little shock there. Snyder did a decent job with the weak material he was given on paper. He could have done a much better job by directing focus to a small portion of the core group so we'd grow to care for these people. However, he too fell into the pathetic Hollywood style of bang over substance and gave us a flashy action (and body-count) film with corpses on meth.
If you haven't watched this film, don't rush to see it. Watch the original, and await Romero's Land of the Dead this June. This is a forgettable film with an unforgettable heritage.