Another remake....

Rating: Null/10 (31 March 2004)

another 48 million for Universal Studios.
Great stuff, if you like that sort of thing. Unfortunately, I don't. Hollywood has churned out yet another popcorn movie, a rehash of an idea first done by George Romero in 1978. My main problem with remakes is that they are very rarely done to express some sort of artistic license. The majority of remakes, sequels and spin offs that have come out of Hollywood in the last five or so years have all been sub-par, boring and formulaic, especially in the horror genre (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Freddy Vs Jason etc).
Dawn of the Dead is no exception. Here we get two hours of non-stop gore, sex, violence and bad language. A zombie apocalypse has wiped out the world and our heroes are trapped inside a shopping mall whilst a zombie army gathers outside waiting to eat their flesh and nibble on their nobbles. Great.
What made this film strong was the special effects, fast pacing, and comical lines. What made this film completely weak in every respect was that it is a remake of a really decent original horror film that has been dumbed down to include special effects, fast pacing, and comical lines.

First let me get this off my chest; I know its sometimes frowned upon to look at a remake of a film and judge it as being bad simply on the basis of the original, well, that is the curse of the remake. If you are stupid enough to rehash an idea that someone has already done you are bound to get criticised because people will ALWAYS compare, and that is what I am about to do. (may be very very insignificant spoilers here)
First off, the remake decided to put different characters (fine) in an almost completely different situation (not so fine) with completely different style zombies (fine, i guess) and see what happens. The result is a bunch of poorly written under-developed generic characters performing ridiculous dialogue in a ridiculously stupid situation.
The original Dawn put four characters, who we learnt about from their actions and way of dealing with things, in a shopping mall, surrounded by SLOW zombies, shuffling about consuming material items in a barracaded shopping mall. What made the original believable and scary was the fact that even though the zombies were slow, and the four characters had almost no problem with dealing with them, the living dead were still overtaking the living. We learnt that the human race had morality issues with the dead and were hesitant in killing them (think of Miguelito from the original dawn). The original showed a nightmare situation where beaurocrats held up the human's survival, even though they had a better than average chance of sorting the problem out. That in itself is a social commentary on how the human race is too inept to work together to deal with a common threat. The remake does not have that, instead we get insanely violent zombies running around, tearing flesh from people's arms who then almost immediately turn into zombies. There is no time for any sort of analysis in this movie, its all about headshots, tearing flesh and running endlessly from zombie infestation to zombie infestation.
Also, we don't ever really get a chance to be scared by these so called zombies, they run around screaming and looking like variants of 28 Days Later (the filmography even changes to look like that film in the later half). They aren't terrifying, there's just a lot of them, covered in blood, screaming. Obviously Romero's stark commentary is missing from the movie, we don't ever see the zombies interact with the shopping mall, they're just outside it. What this remake has done is removed the zombies from the shopping mall, removed the characters from the shopping mall, and just thrown it together for a bunch of cheap shocks and scares that don't mean anything.
This movie is poor. It doesn't deserve the recognition it is getting, because it is hardly worth watching. I have seen a thousand action movies and this one just fits perfectly into the generic formular that has dogged Hollywood movies since day one. When a film is remade, it is supposed to be retold, updated for the times. This film is just a case of a wolf in sheep's clothing, on the outside it promises to deliver all the shocks, scares and rollercoaster emotion of the original, and instead gives us two hours of boring CGI effect and lots of running around using the F-Word. Great, if you like that sort of thing.
Obviously fans of the original will see this movie, and so will all the consumers out there who swallow this **** day in and day out. It makes me angry, but not as angry as knowing that what could have potentially been a really, really great updated version of the original has now turned into an insanely inept clarification of what I have always thought about Hollywood movies.