a remake that has no right to be good (but is anyway)...

Rating: 7/10 (29 March 2005)

Not too long ago, Hollywood rode high on the crest of the teen-horror revival (begun by Wes Craven's "Scream") as a glut of winking slashers designed to make us nostalgic for the franchise staples of yesteryear("Halloween", "Friday the 13th", etc.) became the main attraction at multiplexes the world over. Not surprisingly, what at first looked like a trend proved a mere fad and fizzled out in a fraction of the time it took to put Freddy and Jason down. These films were little more than self-conscious showcases for vapid pretty faces with little in the way of acting talent, and CGI-approved gore that made one nostalgic for hand-made FX.
Therefore, with Hollywood running low on creative ideas (what else is new?), the teen-horror infatuation was abandoned (or perhaps more accurately, 'transposed') in favor of 'remake mania.' In hopes of snaring both the curious and ignorant, those charming studio executives have shamelessly gone for the throat--especially in the horror genre--in cranking out one soulless remake after another. We're at the point now where there's a direct correlation between using horror remakes as an excuse to launch the film careers of music-video directors, and the results are accordingly shallow product. This raises the question of the necessity of remakes, especially remakes of films that, in most regards, leave no room for improvement and at best will only be perceived as failed hackwork? Why not create a good film out of one that is a piece of unredeemable garbage? Paradoxically, the films of Ray Dennis Steckler or Ed Wood, while incendiary, low-budget, and considered by many to be awful, still attract a cult following that would be just as upset as those who loved, say, George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" and were slack-jawed in horror at the notion of it being remade.
With every reason to be skeptical and expectant of a rotten retread in the best-case scenario, Zack Snyder's "Dawn of the Dead" takes all the money-grubbing remakes of late (hello, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"!) to task, and in turn shows what a good remake should be. (At the very least, he shows a reverence that is seriously lacking in the horror genre.) As if aware of the sheer inability to match the wit, intelligence, and horror of Romero's original, screenwriter James Gunn (who previously scripted Troma films) takes the skeletal structure of the original and infuses it into a modern telescope. As before, we are introduced to the survivors of a plague that has swept the world, seeking refuge in a shopping mall. As opposed to the blue-faced, slow-moving zombies of Romero's original, the dead of "Dawn 2004" are rotten-faced speed freaks who dash crazily after humans who let their guard down. The details of the plague are left appropriately vague--Snyder is less concerned with the cause than he is with knocking you out of your seat (which happens time and again); whereas Romero's film was a more relaxed meditation on consumer culture, Snyder seldom allows time for the audience to catch their breath, as he is staging one elaborate jolt after the next. Oddly enough, this method consistently holds up, and while it can easily be decried as skimping on the depth of Romero's original, it glues you to the screen all the same, and in my opinion, that is a different kind of success.
Granted, when the survivors start piling up, few ever get out of the first dimension, but dimension is irrelevant so long as the 1-D characters are given splatterific deaths (I was surprised the chainsaw dismemberment didn't give this an NC-17). After all, within the first few minutes we can pretty much tell who will be around at the climax and who won't. Perhaps there was more CGI used in this film than I noticed, and Snyder's gritty style (which employs a certain dank paleness) obscured it a bit; in any case, the zombie and human kills, and the way they are photographed, is presented with a rollicking intensity that few films of late have shown. "Dawn 2004" is what "28 Days Later" would have been had it jettisoned its preachy plot. Whether the decision to make the zombies fast-moving savages was an effort to create tension or appeal to our attention-deficit society, it works on both counts.
Ultimately, "Dawn 2004" is an example of a remake done properly, even though I still have the vaguest notion of what a remake really should be. No, it doesn't come anywhere near Romero's social statement, nor his dynamic precision in presenting believable, everyday characters, but it entertains, it frightens, and is bloody fun to watch.