Film School Re-hash of Zombie Clichés - but zombie action is eventually SUPOIB!

Rating: Null/10 (25 June 2004)

(spoilers)
I don't think this did anything to augment the genre - that's my main problem with it. I just started to feel very familiar watching it. Maybe because i've just seen Night of the Living Dead and 28 Days Later... recently,
And maybe it was because I came in after the first ten minutes, by the time Sarah Polley was in the bathroom, i'd missed the shock effect of the (what i hear) exciting first scene. So everything after the first five just sort of washed over me. I was very excited before I saw it, too... maybe i'd built it up too much. Too much plot, not enough zombie action for me. Maybe I just expected a zombie-a-minute roller-coaster, but instead got a sort of traditionally photographed too-modern looking character piece. Who gives a rat's dropping about the characters - I wanna see some zombies!
Oh, and the other thing I felt while watching it: every new contemporary director gets their assignment, and its like "Return of the Evil Vampire Lesbians," but they inject all these unnecessary camera movements and pretentious film-school devices in there - its like they think its Return of Citizen Kane. I particularly noticed this while watching the Italian Job remake. I squirmed listening to the director on the special features (not my decision, Mrs Clifford was controlling the remote) talking his movie up Tarantino-style. It just makes me feel like watching The Toxic Avenger and exorcising my rage at film-school grads who take themselves too seriously.
I don't mind art movies - love them, in fact, but if I go to see a self-conscious movie for artistic value, I expect it to be about something original, unique, and perhaps weighty. The last place I want to find art is in a movie called "Dawn of the Dead".
Basically, I went into Dawn of the Dead expecting a slash-and-burn zombie flick, like Night of the Living Dead - I expected to have fun! But what i got was too many traditional dialogue scenes, a director who tried to take zombies seriously (as evidence I use the bathroom scene where Ving Rhames and that other guy try desperately to relate a plague of zombies to what they learned at Sunday school: is this the end of the world, what does it all mean, what's the meaning of life... you catch the drift... pretentious fooey!).
The one beacon of light in all this seriousness was the scene where Ving Rhames and Andy play chess across the street from each other, and the "pick a zombie who looks like a famous person and sniper him" scene. But this I think was bad for a different reason: we want to have fun at the zombie movie, but we don't necessarily want to make it seem like humans might have FUN killing zombies... because these zombies look quite a lot like humans... and it comes across very badly, considering the seriousness of everything preceding it. Especially in light of the recent Washington sniper, and videogames like Carmageddon which suggest children get points for running over pedestrians - after Bowling for Columbine, I think movies like this should be careful in making shooting things, no matter in what fictional situation, seem fun.
Clifford's Tips:
If you're of suitable age (definitely no youngsters - mums and dads, the violence is pretty hardcore), remember to stay during the credits.
I'd still recommend you see the movie, purely for the mass-crowd zombie scenes: this is the advantage of a big Hollywood budget. When it comes, the zombie action is very good. They just didn't have the resources for this in 68'. I don't know how they did it, but they've got very convincing footage of trucks slamming into several zombies (which made my skin crawl a little for the same reasons as the sniper scene) - and scenes with a sea of zombies. You're unlikely to see such good scenes of zombies in any other zombie flick (or zombie FILM, as this director would have you believe).