Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead serves not only as an improvement over the original, but also as one of the greatest undead films of the 21st century.

Rating: 8/10 (22 February 2009)

A worldwide plague, of which there seems to be no cure and questionable origins, brings humanity to it's knees. Symptoms include death, depravity,bloodshed, insanity. Amidst the chaos, a group of survivors take shelter in a local mall, and it is here they search for the hope of a 'normal' life once again. However, the dead never cease to knock on their doors...
Call it blasphemy, but I am not the biggest fan of George A. Romero's original Dawn of the Dead. It ran too long, the zombies where to blue, and the tone was to tipsy. Now it is a great zombie film, however, needless to say I did not protested the announcement of this film, an updated, action packed, character orientated zombie film which, pardon the pun, breathes life into a dying genre.
The original Dawn of the Dead began in the midst of the outbreak, with characters aware that something wrong was happening and their world was falling apart around them. This new dawn begins much more innocently: Our heroine, a young nurse by the name of Ana, played by the very pretty Sarah Polley, is completely unaware anything is amiss until the problem shows up on her front door- and then through the door and tearing into her bedroom. The first 20 minutes of this film are pure chaos, as this young women sees her world crashing, burning, and screaming all around her.
Dawn of the Dead is a thrill ride, a real roller coaster of a movie. It is at times genuinely suspenseful, at times gory, at times oddly humorous, and at other times, quite tragic and touching. Sarah Polley does a great job as the lead, she handles herself well and is a blast to watch, while Ving Rhymes macho, no nonsense attitude and his dominating presence absolutely bleeds through the screen onto the audience's lap. The cast does a good job of working with various emotions, and the actors (and characters) in this show are as convincing to the audience when they bond and struggle to maintain a sense of hope, as when they struggle and war against the masses of the undead.
And speaking of the undead, Dawn of the Dead has plenty of them, and these ain't your daddy's zombies. The slow, lurching zombies of Romero's film are no where in sight; instead we are treated to an onslaught of faster, deadlier, but just as hungry, undead. Now the debate of 'fast zombies vs slow zombies' rages to this day, and though I do prefer the 'classic' zombie, mostly for their rustic charm, these running zombies fit the action orientated tone of the film to an undead T. And though this film is not the first to feature these quick moving killers (1985's Return of the Living Dead comes immediately to mind, and even the original Dawn of the Dead featured one scene with running zombies), it defiantly employs them unlike any other.
Now I do have some faults with this horror show: The middle of the film had quite a safe feel, and though this was probably intentional to up the climax, it didn't quite groove with me. The very end of the film was some what of a let down; it almost seemed like a lot of build up to nothing.
Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead serves not only as an improvement over the original, but also as one of the greatest undead films of the 21st century. What Snyder and James Gunn, the writer, is enrich an already fertile source material, and we might not see a zombie film quite like this and of this quality in some time.
8/10