A New Dawn

Rating: Null/10 (21 March 2004)

****MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS****
I went to the theater with a lot of anticipation and was not disappointed. Well maybe a little, but these are my pet peeves and on a whole are not meant to diminish what I felt to be a future classic remake of a classic.
With all of the "Dead" movies you find that you instantly put yourself in the character's place and while there are going to be differences in thought and action, I felt there were "General" concerns/emotions not being addressed by the ensemble cast that were addressed in the first one(s).
It's like they accepted this plight without enough question and just rolled with staying alive, So that there was an underlying frustration/chaos throughout.
As a result I felt this affected character development to a large degree. Where were the individual "war" stories discussed between the survivors regarding what they saw, heard and went through before linking up?
The news coverage was disjointed, frenzied and lacking. It would have been slicker to have at least one station still reporting with more information as the movie went along.
Reporter: Q: " Are These Things Dead? "
Government(?)Speaker: A: (With sweaty exasperation) "....We just Don't know..."
In essence, this set the tone of the movie...a hopeless, frustrating, swift and almost total armageddon! And yes, it's obvious that this was intended.
I recall now at the start of the flick the character of Sarah simply clicking past the news on her car radio while looking for her easy listening station that sounded like "....Reports are still sketchy..."CLICK..."This just in..."CLICK..."At this time there is no explina..." CLICK. I don't know about you, but even after doing a double shift, bites like THAT (pun INTENDED) catch my attention. Also, there was the missing of the Special Report bulletin while in the shower with her husband.
Another thing I wasn't feeling was "How" the dead were able to come back.
A proper tweak here, an added 15 to 20 minutes there (I believe the running time was close to an hour and a half) and you would have had a flawless thriller!!
I'd say the scariest thing about the movie (other than the grizzly, bloody, sprinting dead chasing you) was, again, the almost mindless, unquestioning acceptance of their situation.
The original Dawn was lauded for it's social satire and commercialism.
This comes into play in the remake for our current times as well. After all, when your government can effectively compromise one of it's 50 state's (FL) Presidential ballot and then pull a "You didn't see that" after a couple of "Hurumpfs" from the people and lull the masses back to sleep with business as usaul.....Survivor/Making Of The Band/The Internet/New Games/New Videos/New Music/New Controversy/New and better commercials to sell all of this and more PLUS The Rat Race in general....
Why question "Why" the dead coming back to life?