Apocalyptic

Rating: 8/10 (25 April 2004)

More than any 'zombie' movie I've ever seen, this remake of Dawn Of The Dead feels most as if the world was actually ending. There's no surprise that Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes Around" plays during the credits as we see news footage of the chaos occurring all over the world. Most of the movie takes place in a mall, so basically we're left in the dark as to what's going on everywhere else. The TV broadcasts have shut down, rescue helicopters have stopped coming, there's some guy on the roof of a building across the street. You start to wonder if these characters are the last surviving people on earth. Unlike the original Dawn Of The Dead, we aren't shown any other groups of people.
And of course I have to bring this up: the running zombies. I actually thought it's scarier when they're running and screaming. Especially when they're in huge numbers like in one of the last sequences where the characters are trying to escape. But that's just my opinion. I guess overall more people prefer the slower, more reserved zombies.
So to add it all up, there isn't anything really new or unique about this movie except maybe that the aspect of the apocalypse is accentuated more than it usually is in these kinds of movies. You have the long quiet scenes followed by a loud scare, the gruesome deaths, the comic relief thrown in here and there (really great comic relief by the way), all the ingredients to make a zombie movie. I probably would have liked it better if the ending wasn't so stupid but for the most part its really enjoyable and mildly scary. If you like zombie movies I don't see any reason why you wouldn't like this. It's a powerful horror/action flick.
My rating: 8.5/10