Welcome to the End

Rating: 9/10 (20 March 2004)

"Dawn of the Dead," remake of the original 1979 film, delivers on all fronts. It starts with a bang, submitting us to some very scary and disturbing imagery (my favorite being the bus window scene). "Dawn of the Dead" continues the trend of updating the zombie for our time. Back when "Night of the Living Dead" came out, it was supposedly a parable for communist paranoia - they could be anyone, anywhere, even our neighbors, and they're OUT TO GET US! The slow, encroaching threat of the red nation... "28 Days Later" showed us zombies that were based somewhat on modern tempers going to hell. Air rage? road rage? consumer rage? There's a reason the virus was called "RAGE." A metaphor for how seemingly decent people becoming virtually feral at the drop of a hat in our society - I see this up close every day, so that hit home with me. Here, the zombies take a note from 28 D-L and are faster, smarter and more vicious than any movie before. Their speed and violence is also a perfect metaphor for terrorism in our age - it comes so suddenly, with such an amazing cost to humanity, and it seems that we just can't stop it no matter what we do. It's everywhere we go, and it's not going to go out without taking a few of us with it. The writing of the movie is tight and pulls no punches. This is a horror movie in the TRADITIONAL sense. Forget that teen-level garbage with a bunch of nubile high schoolers being chased by some idiot in a mask. This is a callback to when horror movies were written for an adult audience, and they're not out to be gentle or provide tongue in cheek humor. They go for the jugular and they don't stop until they're holding half of your throat. This is an excellent, excellent movie, one that was well crafted, well acted and genuinely scary. Intense and frightening in every sense of those words. If it suffers from anything, it's a slight lack of character development, but they got more development in than I was expecting. 9 out of 10. Twenty-first century horror has arrived, and it's not for your kids anymore.