Headshots & Chainsaws...necessary.

Rating: 10/10 (21 March 2004)

Just after seeing Dawn of the Dead, I was left in shock and giddy postcoital glee. Man, I had SEEN a zombie movie. You know what, I had seen a damn good movie.
After 5 minutes of establishing the normalcy of the Wisconsin suburbs, we get the initial attack, which starts out with a scene more akin to the original zombie film Night of the Living Dead, then goes into mass destructionland via the last string of disaster movies.
The opening credits are the most powerful set of titles I've ever seen in a film. Scored to Johnny Cash's "When the Man Comes Around", they evoke feelings of genuine megadeth and apocalypse. I was reminded of watching the planes crashing into the WTC on 9-11. In fact, this is one of the first films that you will actually want to watch every second.
The plot picks up from there with the heroine escaping/meeting a weird cross-section of Americans en route to the refuge of the mall. Here, they escape the devastation momentarily through the trappings of the mall. These genuinely comic scenes alleviate the near-constant tension in DOTD. The plot picks up and gets more horrific, in a similar fashion to the original. Blah, blah--you know this part, so I'll skip it. I will say that the people in this movie are more sensible than in other zombie movies where they run around helpless to get eaten. The survivors, more or less, have survived for a reason--the ability to turn off their emotions and kill coldly.
The film as a whole was shatteringly powerful. The ricketing force of the whole package was overwhelming. This is the first horror film to update the genre to the level of style of other serious films from the 2000's. Forget that it is a remake; the plot is lifted, but the tone and visual style are totally original. In fact, this may be the most original film I've seen since Being John Malkovich. It seemed that, after the Texas Chainsaw remake and a slew of cruddy gore films with heavy metal soundtracks, the whole Gen X (or Y or whatever) attitude would never translate successfully into anyone's films beside Quentin Tarantino. Then, blam, here it is.

The handheld camera effects, believable characterizations, MTV editing, and overwhelming tone of nihilistic humor actually come together in this film. Gone are the 4th-barrier breaking self-references of the Scream generation, thank God. I was starting to think that the next trend in horror movies would be a lá The Ring: a revisionism of the golden era of horror cinema that would be serious and slow-paced. I'm glad I was wrong. Here, the director uses all the latest tricks to actually further the impact of the material. He also mocks his characters with the playful smile of doom. Nevertheless, the tension pervades the attitude; we care about these people because they seem real. In a word: ensnaring.
Say goodbye to the schlock of yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, we have evolved.