When There's No More Room In Hell...

Rating: 7/10 (1 May 2004)

The dead will walk the Earth...over my dead body! Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, and Mekhi Phifer lead the cast in this re-imagining of George A. Romero's horror classic: Dawn Of The Dead. I say re-imagining; because, any attempt to classify this film as a remake would be inaccurate. Aside from cameos by original "Dead" actors, a few in-jokes related to the original "Dead", the shopping mall setting, and the title, this film is its own entity. After an intense beginning full of horrifying images, the film settles into "introduce the motley band of characters" mode. A nurse, police officer, young interracial couple, mall security with little men syndrome, and a few others are thrown together in order to build up the zombie fodder numbers. We don't really know who is going to get it next or why. The film is absent of the social commentary that Romero's film contained, but there's a terrific scenario involving a rooftop sniper trying to survive that reduces normal human beings to mindless, non-discriminating perpetrators of equally bloodthirsty violence. I doubt whether the writer or director intended this scenario to have any effect beyond the comical one it had. The film contains a few other welcome scenes of grotesque humor as well, mostly in the middle third of the film. The film picks up again when the survivors decide that they must flee before becoming zombie stew. The film contains several extremely intense scenes of graphic gore and violence in the last third of it. It seems like nearly every object becomes a potential weapon in this film besides the wide assortment of guns and ammunition: An ax, a croquet mallet, and the horror film staple, a chainsaw. The film is supposedly set in a fictional town near Milwaukee, but it was obviously filmed elsewhere. Aside from the Wisconsin license plate on a car in the early part of the movie and a media news brief, there is nothing else that I saw that places the film in Wisconsin. Most of the movie was actually made in the Canadian substitute for the Midwest these days: Ontario. The film bears more than a passing resemblance to the recent 28 Days Later, but it stands on its own merits. There are too sudden character transformations and a few plot holes, like how did they know which boat to run to near the end? However, this film will satisfy most horror fans out there. Stay tuned through the closing credits. *** of 4 stars.