Blame Hollywood

Rating: 4/10 (8 February 2008)

Let's get something out of the way first and that is as a director George A Romero is way down there with Ed Wood . The technical aspects like editing and sound are awful while his cast are so wooden you'll get splinters from picking up a DVD of one of his films .
But as both a producer and screenwriter he credits his audience with great respect and his films are unusually sophisticated and intelligent with DAWN OF THE DEAD being his masterwork . It's a film that pre-dates gore fests from the 1980s while at the same time mirroring the haunting novels of 1950s British apocalypse writers like John Wyndham and John Christopher and this level of sophistication I remember the original film for .
It's difficult to know who to blame for this farce entitled DAWN OF THE DEAD . Romero doesn't have a producer credit and it shows . Zack Snyder later went on to direct 300 , one of the most aesthetically pleasing and remarkable films of recent years . But there's little here that is pleasing . A lot people have suggested 28 DAYS LATER rips off Romero but I wonder what these critics will say when they realise the zombies in this film are able to run like an Olympic runner ? Something along the lines of " Well it was filmed in Canada so as a tribute to the Canadians they're a homage to Ben Johnson hence their rapid running ability " . Don't patronise me because the zombies here are a homage to Danny Boyle rather than Romero
Unfortunately Hollywood being Hollywood everything is about money so it's not difficult to see the motives behind remaking this horror classic . The technical term for this is " Making a fast buck " , also known as " Making a bad film but it doesn't really matter because schmucks will buy their tickets before word of mouth causes the movie to disappear from the box office " , so don't blame Canada - blame Hollywood