Was it a virus, or did Hell really fill up??

Rating: Null/10 (1 February 2005)

I didn't see the original 'Dawn of the Dead', so I cannot compare the two. Taken for what it is, a horror movie that defies belief, it is pretty enjoyable. Not really a good movie by most standards, it was fun to see, knowing full well that something like this couldn't really happen. The DVD has a few nice extras, including a video made by the man trapped in his gun store without food for the month that elapses during the movie.
SPOILERS FOLLOW. Milwaukee, normal neighborhood, Ana (Sarah Polley) and her husband wake to find the little girl in the hallway. As she charges towards them, we see a disfigured and bloody mouth, she jumps and bites Ana's husband, severing an artery in his neck, and although she, a nurse, tries to save him, he dies. But then he gets up, and attacks her. She manages to get out a bathroom window, bloody, and drives away. In the overhead camera shot we can see much turmoil, buildings burning, cars wrecking. And a televangelist explaining this is what happens with too much decadence on Earth, Hell fills up and now the dead invade us. In another telecast a government official says they have no idea what is happening or how it is being spread. It appears to be a virus, as people who are bitten by an 'undead' then die shortly and become one of them.
A small band of good guys including Ana, Kenneth (Ving Rhames), Michael (Jake Weber), and Andre (Mekhi Phifer) and his pregnant wife make it over to an almost vacant mall and barricade themselves inside. Security force already there don't want to share their space, but eventually are overcome and "jailed." The crowd finds sleeping quarters in the department stores, and plenty of food. They see the 'undead' crowd getting larger each day, and spot a man on the roof of his gun shop a block away. By binoculars and signs they communicate, they play chess, they play a game where they describe a famous person (e.g. Burt Reynolds) and the gun store owner, an expert shot, shoots that undead person through the head. That they figure out, only by putting a bullet or other object through the head of these 'undead' could they be stopped.
They eventually hatch a plan to make a run for it, try to get to the lake and take a boat to an island where they hope to be safe, not knowing what would happen or how long this "phenomenon" would go on. They fortified two mall buses, they made propane cylinder bombs, they fought their way through, some of them died, but in the end a small few of them were motoring towards the island. A DVD extra showed a telecast which showed the problem spreading all over the USA, starting in the largest cities first, so it was not confined to Milwaukee.