Why?

Rating: 2/10 (25 November 2004)

In brief : It would have been an average zombie movie if it hadn't tried to connect itself to Romero. By doing that though it set it's standards miles too high and never came anywhere near them. If it had a different name and had dropped 2 or 3 stolen lines it would have been a 4 or maybe a 5/10. By reminding the viewer of better films though it rates at best a 3.
Direction : Lazy best describes it. Zombie movies are not a genre big on story so to make a good one you need to make the world and it's characters really come alive. Snyder does OK with some of the characters but fails to do anything with most. Too many things happen without reason or purpose and he could have done with a few less survivors inside the mall.
Cinematography/Editing - Amateurish and very annoying. Most scenes fell into two categories - "ooh look at my new camera's zoom lens" or "I liked this shot in [other movie] I'll just steal that". The two worst examples of the latter are the American Beauty "look closer" teaser shot used at the beginning and the 28 Days Later stutter shots used at the end. The AB one just ruined any attempt to build tension and the 28 Days Later rip-off totally missed the point. In that film it was used for scenes featuring the "infected" to differentiate their chaotic nature from that of the normal people. In this film it was just stuck over the last ten minutes because someone thought "me likee, me steal". Without context it was just annoying and cheap.
Acting/Characters - The primaries were generally good and one or two were very good. Unfortunately there were a few that just got ignored and even the best ones were tainted at some point. For example - Ana and Michael - what on Earth was that about? I'll tell you what - some suit demanded a romance regardless of context or reason. Another example, the guards - they started out great and could have added a lot more substance to the film but instead everyone had to get along and "bond". Again I assume someone didn't like the idea of a film containing any kind of social commentary or depth. The gun-shop guy was a really nice idea, I wish they had used him a lot more and only had one or two people arrive in the truck. The couple with the baby are the best thing in the film, hands down. In fact they are the only thing that is in any small way worthy of the films claimed heritage.
Gore/SFX - Not enough of it basically and nothing new or interesting.
Plot - As I said above zombie movies aren't big here but this one had none, zero, zip. nada, not a bean. Nothing drove it on at all and consecutive scenes rarely connected at all after the first half hour. There is no sense of time passing in the film at all, they could have been there a week or a year but there's no way at all to tell. The passage of time and it's effect on the cast is central to the original but totally missing here.
CHUDs - Adequate for the task but nothing special. Their behaviour and abilities are rather inconsistent but not so much as to be a major annoyance. The makeup required is now run-off-the-mill so it's hard to say much but that it was up to the job. I didn't like the way they ran - running is not so bad on it's own but they were just too co-ordinated by far. If they had stumbled more or something they would have looked a lot better. Biggest complaint I had here though was that there was nowhere near enough moaning and groaning.
The Romero connection - I have no idea why they bothered. With the title changed and a few lines removed the only link would have been the mall and they could have just about got away with that. When compared to the original this film loses in every single way, including those where technological advances could have made it better. Almost all the things that mark the original out as a masterpiece are completely absent here and nothing is added to replace them.