Allow me to revisit...

Rating: Null/10 (18 October 2004)

It has been months since I originally saw this film in the theatre, and having caught sight of the director's apparently preferred cut of the film on DVD-Video (which, from memory, doesn't seem all that different to what was shown in Australian theaters), I felt some things needed to be said. For all of the praises sung for this film, it really is quite a hollow and disingenuous shell.
I don't know where the fast zombie trend came from, but it really does the whole concept a disservice. George Romero's zombie films, to me, represented a commentary on modern commercial society. No matter how slow, pathetic, and stupid the zombies were, they would eventually get their hands on you simply because there were so many of them. In this day and age where garbage like American Idiot supposedly gets untold millions of viewers while more intelligent television such as Quantum (no, not Quantum Leap, just Quantum) gets cancelled faster than a baby at Planned Parenthood, the zombie film commentary on society has grown more relevant with every passing day. Zombies are the lowest common denominator, and the good zombie film shows how their numbers grow as those who can think for themselves diminish.
One featured comment has the gall to compare this shallow piece of trash to Paul Verhoeven's work on the basis of having "completely unnecessary but compellingly disgusting gore". Wrong. Paul Verhoeven's unique characteristic, at least where Hollywood was concerned, was his ability and desire to show the consequences of violence. You never saw a "you got me" reaction shot in a Verhoeven film. What separates his work from this bottle of parade gloss is that he also had something quite relevant to say about society in between his bouts of putting his characters through every layer of hell. Without the use of what the zombie represents, relative to modern society, this remake has absolutely nothing for the viewer to think about.
The soundtrack, more or less entirely composed of contemporary numbers chosen by the MPAA/RIAA machine, is one of the most insipid things you will hear outside of a political spiel. It furthers the theory that Hollywood's film and rock stars live in their own self-contained bubble from which they gain absolutely no insight into the functioning of the rest of the world. Really, the number they try to use to show how "x-treme" they are is about as hardcore as my seventy-two year old, Bing Crosby-worshiping neighbour.
It is somewhat ironic that of all the zombie films that could be remade to modern standards, this is the one they chose. The original Dead series had meaningful, relevant things to say. In spite of a generally languid pace, they created tension that the viewer could really feel. This modernisation tries to move along at a rocket pace, but in so doing loses everything that the viewer can have an emotional investment in. The characters are little more than pieces in a chess game like that played by two of them a little of the way through the film.
Plot improbabilities also plague the film. I don't know exactly where a sixteen year old girl is going to learn to drive a truck like that, but I'd love to find out. Exactly how one becomes a zombie isn't really even defined until the last minute, and then it smacks more of plot convenience than a planned plot element. Exactly why they had to situate our heroes in a shopping mall that doesn't have a gun store boggles the mind, too.
In all, this Dawn is worthy of about five points. It keeps the viewer amused for a couple of hours, but once you start to scratch away the gloss and polish, you find that there is very little underneath.