Well, I've finally seen it..and...

Rating: Null/10 (5 November 2004)

There are not words enough to control my fury right now. First, Gus Van Zant destroys 'Psycho' with his pathetic shot by shot remake, then Michael Bay and his troop of incompetent failures tred upon 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre'. Now, now we have the writer of 'Scooby Doo', a commercial director who should have stayed in commercials, and a mostly forgettable cast raping the memory of yet another classic, perfect film, 'Dawn of the Dead'.
I am probably the biggest Romero fan boy there is, yet I tried desperately to like this movie, I wanted to like this movie. I wanted to know that it's new concept and thoughts were closer to Tom Savini's 1990 remake of 'Night of the Living Dead' than to the pathetic, non-sensical mess this thing was. It took Romero's classic, stripped it of all its merits and concepts, and reduced it to nothing more than a moronic gore fest geared towards a moronic audience, loaded it up with mindless (and in some cases, nameless) characters, threw in music to rip your eardrums out by, and then ripped off one of the few horror gems in the past 5 years ('The Blair Witch Project') for it's ignorant conclusion.
Plot line is that something unknown is causing the dead to return to life and attack the living. In the midst of this carnage, a small group of survivors gather and seek shelter in the closest local, the shopping mall. They include Michael (Jake Weber), Anna (Sarah Polley), Kenneth (Ving Rhames), Andre (Mekhi Phifer) and Luda (Inna Korobkina). After a run-in with mall security, they begin to settle in for what could be a long wait for help. After realizing it won't be coming, they begin to formulate a plan to get to safety.
Acting? Wellpathetic would be entirely too kind a word, but I'm not sure I need to plant that blame at the feet of the actors. The leads all do well with what they have, but the problem is that the story is so vapid that it would be hard to recite with a straight face. Most of the characters were throw away, and we didn't even learn their names. For example, the very attractive wavy-haired blonde was apparently named Monica, and she was literally nothing more than filler. It took more than too much time to give us Lindy Booth's character name (Nicole), and up till that point, she was nothing more than pretty redhead background filler. Not that she's all that great anyway, as anyone who's seen 'Wrong Turn' realizes she's nothing more to a film than a pretty face.
Characters were wooden and dull; there were only 3 worth caring about. Michael, Kenneth and Andy (Bruce Bohne), who owned the gun store across the street. Mall security guard CJ (Michael Kelly) redeems himself, and you eventually grow to like him, but the rest of the cast you don't care about, you wouldn't want to care about, and worst of all, you don't get time to care about.
The only good thing out of this movie was the fact that its success (and rapid understandable drop-off) enabled George A. Romero to make his upcoming 'Land of the Dead'.
Pathetic, brainless junk geared for a pathetic, brainless audience. Quit eating it up people, and Hollywood, get some original ideas. They're out there, I promise.
0 out of 5, and I wish I could give it less than that.