It's a weird, weird time when a remake of a horror classic is getting better reviews than the new Tom Hanks movie.

Rating: 9/10 (10 May 2004)

Zack Snyder, who at the time of this writing is such a new director that his photo is not even posted on the great IMDb, has started off his career by reminding the world that the horror genre is not quite dead yet, that it is not doomed to spout endless crap like I Know What You Did Last Summer, Jeepers Creepers I and II, House of the Dead, Cabin Fever, etc. Rob Zombie did a wonderful job of jumpstarting the horror genre with his wonderfully unapologetic House of 1000 Corpses, and I have to say that I was endlessly thrilled to see this remake of a horror classic come off so successfully, especially since modernizations of classics generally tend to strike me as little more than cashing in on past successes due to a current lack of ideas.
The revised Dawn of the Dead comes at a time when the cineplexes are saturated with bad horror escapades, not the least of which are mentioned above, with others including Resident Evil, 28 Days Later, Gothika, etc. All of the standard remake things are there, the famous actors, the enhanced comic relief, bigger special effects (and, much less common, also better), and also in this case, importantly clarified plot points. It was nice to see the characters act more logically than was displayed in the original, the ridiculous biker gang was scrapped in favor of better zombies, a group of touristy people who show up in their motor home, a guy on the roof across the parking lot (tempting the cast and the viewers with the fact that he is heavily armed because he's on top of a gun shop) and one of several mall security guards, constantly demanding authority.
Ving Rhames takes on the lead role in the film, leading the cast because he's a law enforcement officer, but also challenged by the jerk security guard mentioned above, determined to be obeyed to the point that it endangers all of them. He's the only really irritating character, wanting to basically imprison everyone except himself because he is so distrustful, which is strange since they are hiding from the walking dead who are all instantly recognizable. These people are all struggling for their very lives, what does he think they're going to do, steal from The Sunglass Hut?

The zombies themselves have been upgraded as well. In the first film (as well as the original Dawn of the Dead), they are slow, loping creatures similar to the killers in slasher movies. They're extremely slow-moving but scary because they're so relentless. In this movie, not only do the zombies move fast, they run and even jump. In the original Dawn, they wouldn't even duck down to get past an obstacle. They were so mentally absent that they would simply keep walking into an obstruction over and over, like one of those little robots from Stephen King's The Waste Lands.

(spoilers) Much of the plot has been changed for the remake. There is no snide content about the innate need to shop that was mentioned in the original film (maybe this has become so deeply ingrained that they were afraid the audience would be genuinely offended this time?), there is no biker gang, there is much more worry about what is going on in the rest of the world (concentrating on a particular rescue post that they are desperately trying to come up with a way to get to), and the final escape attempt is made in a boat rather than a helicopter. Today's audience is too impatient to watch these people struggle for their lives in this mall while they had a helicopter on the roof.

Also, the zombies are no longer the bad guys, just the walking dead who have no control over their actions. The idiot who kept hooting and hollering until he was attacked several times by the zombies in the original Dawn once referred to them as `bastards,' in this movie the characters are simply trying to escape from them. Their confused wandering as seen from the rooftops in this movie may even be an attempt to create sympathy for the people that these creatures once were. Unfortunately, in the absence of a real antagonist they decided instead to have this one security guard act like a complete jerk to everyone until they have to lock him up in the mall's holding cell, until he miraculously has a change of heart late in the film so that his anger doesn't render him a loose end.
One of the things that I liked about the movie was that the black guy was one of the powerful characters. This is to be expected from Ving Rhames, but unfortunately there was another black guy whose portrayal is not as easily deciphered. Mekhi Phifer plays Andre, the guy with the very pregnant wife. I liked that he is portrayed as more interested in saving the life of his wife and baby than in his own well being, but then when his wife and baby are both turned into zombies, one of the other characters runs into the room, sees the zombie tied to the bed (where she gave birth to the zombie baby) and shoots her. Andre, still foolishly thinking that the zombie was his wife, accuses the woman of killing his family, and so pulls out a gun and shoots her as she shoots him. Yes, the black guy was the strong character in the movie, but does the other black guy have to get shot by the woman that he's shooting?
That being said, I guess I have to admit that it is one of several clever scenes that were invented for the remake. Nothing even remotely like this appeared in the original film, especially with the baby zombie. Oddly enough, the baby zombie was one of the funniest moments in the film, a reaction about which I'm not sure I should be amused or repulsed. But hey, I thought it was funny, too, so I guess I shouldn't say anything. I think that a pretty big point of a movie like this is that it is meant to be funny (hence the success of such scenes as the one where Rhames holds up a sign for the guy across the way to pick out and shoot people in the wandering zombie crowd who look like celebrities.
There are some great additions to this version in the escape as well, one of which surprisingly utilizes the cute dog in the movie. The characters find a couple of vans in the mall basement and turn them into heavily armored transport vehicles, with the intended purpose of taking them to the dock, where one of the characters has a boat that they may all use to escape the horror of the mainland. Interesting ideas are hatched as far as keeping the zombies from climbing onto the outside of the vans. There are some genuinely creepy scenes in the opening of the film, one of which involves a little roller-blading girl, also invented for this version of the movie.
I think that really the only way that the movie slips up is that it has sort of thinned the depth of its plot, although this is done in favor of one that makes more sense. The zombies are faster and smarter, living humans do not fight other living humans beyond the struggle with the one security guard (a conflict which pales in comparison to the trigger happy biker gang in the original film), and they still try to escape even though it seems clear that the zombies would eventually starve in whatever way they starve, since they have turned so many people into zombies that they have successful eradicated all of their food. Kind of like what would have happened in Blade had the vampires succeeded in the mass domination scheme which was their self-terminating goal. I would think that one good reason to wait until the zombies started to run out of gas is the little fact that they happen to be in a shopping mall, in which they could conceivably find enough sustenance to survive for weeks.
Luckily, in this installment, the rescue post that has reportedly become an outpost for the few remaining survivors of the human race is a pretty tempting destination. I have to admit that I would not be that anxious to sit around for weeks waiting for the zombies to die if I knew that the only survivors on the outside may have become zombies themselves by then.

Oddly enough, despite being a bigger and better version of a 1978 movie that fell flat largely because it was bigger than it's predecessor, the Dawn of the Dead remake also redeems itself by ironically maintaining some of the series' original simplicity. The special effects, budget, actors/acting, and story are heavily improved, but the movie smartly avoids one of the pitfalls of many recent horror films, which is to have a trendy soundtrack to sell. There are two versions of a wildly popular Disturbed song, but other than that mostly the only music on the soundtrack is the tinny, boring mall music which, at a few points, is the only sound onscreen at all, which is a great effect which alludes back to the simplicity of the original Night of the Living Dead. Evidently this clever mix of high-technology and low-budget filmmaking makes for a good combination for modern horror. Now can other filmmakers actually notice this time?