Finally a truly enjoyable horror movie!!

Rating: 10/10 (28 March 2004)

In 1968, a young director by the name of George Romero filmed an inexpensive horror movie that would later be hailed by movie critics the world round as a cult classic (and for good reason!) That movie was, of course, the black-and-white zombie flick, Night of the Living Dead. I have seen the remake and it was truly enjoyable. Now, as a rule, I tend to find re-makes unneccessary for the most part; the original films are usually classics and a re-make often lacks the same texture and feeling that the original had. There are very few exceptions, of course, and Dawn of the Dead is one of them. First of all, let's face the facts about horror movies: most of the ones that have come out in the last year or two have, quite frankly, been nothing short of horrible, i.e. They, 13 Ghosts, The House on Haunted Hill, The Haunting, Wrong Turn, Cabin Fever and let's not forget the god-awful, pathetic excuse for a horror movie, Darkness Falls (if you haven't seen it yet, PLEASE spare yourself the misery and skip it...trust me, you're NOT missing anything...and if you have seen it, my deepest condolences for the time wasted watching it). There have also been some really good ones, most notably The Ring and Freddy Vs Jason (admittedly, it's really more of just a guilty pleasure for us NOES and FT13th fans)...I haven't seen the remake of Texas Chainsaw Masacre, but I've heard it's good so I'll rent it this Tuesday. But I'm straying from the point here. Dawn of the Dead starts off right away with a sense that things are about to go wrong, or already have. The pace is very even, very fluid and certainly doesn't leave you waiting for the movie to get to the point. It's effectively creepy, gory and scary as hell in all the right places and ways: what if you literally woke up one morning and discovered that the world you knew so well was changed forever? That the people you know and love are not only dead, but also part of the teeming thousands of walking, flesh-eating zombies on the hunt for blood? You actually care about the characters in here and fear that one of them will get left behind only to become lunch for the hungry dead. **Possible Spoiler** Another thing I liked was the ending: unlike the low-key 28 Days Later, this movie's ending is much creepier, and without the happy-go-lucky "everything turned out okay and they lived happily ever after" kind of ending that 28 Days Later tried to offer us. Plus, the zombies in here are really creepy, thanks to George Romero's famous touch. Trust me, this one's worth seeing!!