What's wrong with the critics?

Rating: 4/10 (23 May 2004)

I don't get it. Why is it that the critics, who often dislike otherwise good movies over petty details, actually LIKED this thing? I hated this movie.
Warning: contains spoilers.
"Dawn of the Dead," or more precisely, "Yawn of the Dead" is another cookie-cutter horror movie for the masses. As the movie progressed I picked out so many things I hated that I couldn't fit it all into one review.
A note first: I am judging this based on its own merits as a stand-alone film. I believe movies should be judged on their own, and I have attempted, as much as possible, to enjoy it as its own entity, without comparing to the original. However, since it does bear a resemblance at some points, I have had to compare just a little to illustrate a point.
The movie begins pretty well. I knew the little kid was going to die, because otherwise she had no reason to be on-camera so early and for so short a time. Predictable. Willing to ignore that, it started pretty well. The city in flames, everyone getting killed... I had no problem with this early part and found it did quite well to bring about a feeling of apocalypse.
The movie went downhill quickly. The woman in the beginning forgot about her dead husband within 5 minutes. Why? Because they didn't want to concentrate on character development. This is the major problem I had throughout the whole film.
Another example of this: the conversation between the police officer and the young man in the bathroom was interesting. I would have liked to see more of this, see their opinions and conversations grow or shift as the movie went on. The problem is, again, the director wanted to throw a reference to religion in so he could say he did so, but didn't want to bring it up again, like he did with so many other concepts in the film. Religion is brought up, briefly, with a televangelist talking about "When there's no more room in hell..." but this is obviously thrown in only to use the tagline from the original. It makes no sense here, where the zombies are a result of a virus, and I can't see a Christian preacher saying this in any event(in the original it was quoted from a Voudon priest).
Note I'm not calling the characters by name. Why? They were too 2-dimensional for me to remember, to be honest. I couldn't remember half the characters in the film most of the time.
Another example. In the original, we learn that the woman is pregnant only after hints, secrets, foreshadowing, etc. In this one, two characters meet three characters, and BAM one is 8 months pregnant. Why? Because the director wanted the sudden shock of pregnancy, but didn't want to do as Romero did, byt actually using character development to lead up to the revelation. That would take actual work with a plot and with dialogue, and this movie is just about blowing people up.
The way the characters get to the mall is similarly contrived. When the two characters meet the other three, they ask them "Where are you headed?" One of the three responds "We're going to the mall." Which, of course, just happens to be right behind them, so that no time has to be taken up traveling to the mall or talking or anything. That scene was about when I realized the film was going to suck.
The whole movie is contrived, just like that scene, with weak(or no) dialogue and zero character development, except for the security guard wil suddenly becomes a good guy. The "surprise ending" was lame, also. I have no problem with characters dying en masse, but seriously, think about it. Did it really make any sense?
The major problem with the film is one I've been mentioning. The movie had too much crammed in, and not enough attention given to any one part. We have all the themes of the originals, really: religion; people fighting themselves while they should be fighting the undead; a fear of what is causing this menace; a pregnancy in the midst of this terror; innocent victims rescued and taken in; waiting on the military; and so on. The problem is, instead of concentrating on a couple strong themes and working them, the film has all of these things thrown in and then doesn't really pay attention to any of them, opting for zombie massacre footage instead.
Similarly, instead of having three or four characters developed and continued strongly, we have a dozen or so characters, most of which appear nameless and pointless, and which the audience doesn't care about.
I might have liked the movie more if I hadn't been in an audience full of idiots. Some people behind me started laughing when the one guy on the other building said he was starving. Yeah, that's real funny, morons.
On that note, I would like to say that the one part of the movie that I did like were the scenes where they were playing games with the guy across the street, or having fun in the mall in general. Those were decent scenes, and I think, aside from the graphic sex in one part, would have fit into the original movie really well.
One last thing: I saw a bunch of little kids in the audience. What's wrong with you people? Why the hell are you taking children to see this kind of movie? I mean if the graphic violence and profanity doesn't offend you, what about the nudity and sex? Is this appropriate for your children?
Overall, on a scale of 1 to 5 stars, with 1 being useless and 5 being perfect, I give it ** stars. Not quite horrible, but below average, certainly.