Unneeded remake is surprisingly good and satisfying for fans of the original

Rating: 8/10 (14 July 2019)

Surprisingly good remake of the George A. Romeo zombie apocalypse classic. It's tricky doing a remake of a beloved cult classic, so when I originally went to the theater to watch this film, I went in expecting to hate it, especially since the film was written by the same guy who wrote the terrible live-action Scooby Doo movie, along with some first-time director I'd never heard of and who'd only done music videos and commercials. However, right from the opening moments of the film, with a quiet suburban neighborhood quickly descending into a fight for survival from zombie hoards to when the opening credits roll to Johnny Cash singing "When the Man Comes" around, I was hooked! Little did I know that writer James Gunn would go on to write other terrifically smart and subversive mainstream genre films like "Slither," "Guardians of the Galaxy" as well as the little seen low budget films like "Super" and "The Belko Experiment" and that director Zach Snyder would go on to tackle (more successfully than you'd expect) other sacred cows such as "The Watchmen" and "Man of Steel." Compared to Romero's original, this remake is minus the political subtext Romero infused into all of his zombie films, but it does manage to capture the original film's balance of comedy and horror. Both films are for the most part straight faced horror films, punctuated with moments of levity and black humor. The remake delved less into the audience fantasy aspect of getting to have the run of a shopping mall (similar to "Night of the Comet"), but the humor Gunn placed into his script was arguably much more witty when compared to Romero's more pie-in-the-face style of slapstick comedy. The remake also boasts a strong cast that includes Sarah Polley (a nurse), Ving Rhames (a cop), Mekhi Phifer (an expectant father), Jake Weber (a nice guy), Ty Burrell (a rich jerk), and Michael Kelly (a mall cop). Another charm of the film for fans of the original is that while it does deviate from the original in many ways (running zombie instead of slow zombies, changing most of the characters and scenarios, and keeping really only the basic concept of people holding up in a mall during a zombie apocalypse), the filmmakers included many Easter eggs and nods to the original films, including a truck crashing into a diner (a nod to a story shared by Ben in the original film) or the mall being named after the lead actress in the original film, or cameo appearances by the three stars of the original film (Scott H. Reiniger, Tom Savini, and Ken Foree), and many others. Overall, the world did not need or ask for a "Dawn of the Dead" remake, but Gunn and Synder managed defy my fanboy reservations and won me over to their new vision of Romero's horror classic. Well worth watching for fans of contemporary zombie films as well as for fans of the old school original film.