Brilliant Redux - wished I had a few more bites

Rating: 9/10 (20 March 2004)

And now, a clinical dissection of many critic's most common beefs with this film.
These Zombies are fast  That also makes them scary; a Romeroesque zombie poses little threat to anybody with a sledgehammer, and actually might be fun to deal with if you've got a twelve gauge, .o6, etc and a good back-up man. Don't believe me?  Watch `Night' or `Dawn', the characters themselves are laughing it up in multiple sequences. That slow zombies could overwhelm the combined might of America's hunters, police, military, and tool sheds never made any real sense. I dare you to tell me different.
I miss the `subtle attack on American consumerism!'  well rub the sleep out of your eyes and put away your Movie Guide books; first and foremost it wasn't that subtle, it wasn't really even that clever given that 75% of the original dawn took place in a mall. What were they suppose to allude to, the vast wasted space that are America's parking lots? Besides its been replaced successfully with a reinforcement of iron class structure  but I won't bore you with a neo-Marxist rant, you can connect those dots.
This wasn't anywhere near as scary as the original Did you even see the original? Sure it was gory, but scary? What part of the pie fight was the scariest for you?
Too many characters and no development  Well again, just tell me the top three things that pop into your mind about the original fab four. Not to knock the original script, but characterization was not its strong suit, the characters were nearly interchangeable. Here we get to see a true spectrum of human reaction to overwhelming tragedy. I felt for these characters, I could write a mini bio for each of them  compared to the original, I could say Roger was the white cop, what else could you add?
In short, I found this a brilliant and captivating re-visioning and hope it leads to additional films for the series. It was creepy and technically well executed. I only wish it was longer, several non-action scenes I suspect ended up on the cutting room floor. e.g. CJ gets let out of holding cell, Frank's degeneration
Well done
8/10 overall, 10/10 for Zombie horror