Enjoyable But Predictable And Undistinguished Remake Of Zombie Horror Classic

Rating: 5/10 (30 January 2007)

Ana is a nurse who wakes up one morning to find the world has been overrun by an apocalypse; an infection communicated by bite has turned almost everyone into crazed cannibals. She hooks up with a group of uninfected people at a local shopping mall. Can they survive, and what does the future hold ?
This remake of George A. Romero's classic 1979 low-budget zombie epic has good points and bad points, but overall is marred by poor direction. The cast are good - Polley, Rhames, Weber and Kelly particularly - the sets and makeup effects are great, the locations are good (Toronto doubles for Milwaukee) and there are some scary, effective scenes, notably the creepy birth sequence and the early shots of Ana driving through the madness. But the movie falls down badly in two areas for me. Firstly, James Gunn's script doesn't take the material anywhere new - it's essentially the original movie without the social commentary or the interesting, slow-paced, character-based, middle third. It alters the classic zombie mythology (the undead can run and jump, and anyone who dies naturally isn't reanimated) which is okay, but it doesn't go anywhere with the new ideas. It's chief sin however is that for a movie filled with action, the choreography and editing is poor. For an action scene to work we need to know where the characters are in relation to each other, how fast they are moving and what the physical space they are in is like. There are moments here (like the flight from the gun store to the sewer) where the coverage and the cutting is so lame we have no idea what's going on, and so there's no tension or suspense. Despite having the great cinematographer Matthew F. Leonetti (who shot Poltergeist, Johnny Handsome and many other great flicks), Zack makes the classic MTV-director mistake of thinking that if he just cuts his scenes fast enough, with plenty of off-putting slow-motion shots thrown in that somehow that will make his movie exciting. He should go back and watch the biker gang attack sequence from the original movie and really look at how it's put together. I don't want to criticise this flick too much though - it's still a lot of fun, it's an updating of a great classic that everyone should see, and it has enough gore and scares to satisfy the gourmet horror fan. It does however have the most annoying end-title sequence I think I've ever seen in any movie. Co-produced by Romero's old business partner, Richard P. Rubinstein, and featuring cameos by original cast members Reiniger, Savini and Foree. Worth catching, but for those of us with more than a two-second attention span, check out Romero's superb new zombie flick instead - Land Of The Dead.