Now this is how remakes are done!

Rating: 8/10 (22 June 2007)

Ana (Sarah Polly) is a hard-working nurse; after countless hours of sleepless work she goes home to her normal suburban home to be with her husband. All seems well, life is great and everything is near-perfect. Randomly all of a sudden her neighbor's young daughter shows up "not as herself" and attacks her husband and before Ana knows it, her husband is a mindless being trying to kill her. She manages to escape and as she does, she witnesses total chaos as many people have become mindless flesh eaters as her husband has. As she tries to find someplace to go, she finds a police officer named Kenneth (Ving Rhames) and the two find more survivors and take refuge in a local shopping mall in "Dawn of the Dead", the 2004 remake of George A. Romero's 1978 horror classic.
I like a few remakes, but quite a few are also complete garbage. Remakes of "When a Stranger Calls" and "Black Christmas" really suck where as others like "Psycho" and "The Fog" are at least mildly respectable. Classic '80's remakes such as "The Thing", "The Fly", and "The Blob" were great ones as was the recent "King Kong" remake, which I will say is definitely better than the original. 2004's remake of "Dawn of the Dead" was a nice surprise as it seemed to have all the ingredients to make a remake good. It keeps the basic plot of the original with many little tributes to the original (such as Ken Foree of the original having a cameo restating the famous line "When there's is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth") while being a very different movie at the same time. Even George A. Romero, who did the original said he thought this would suck but admitted that he kinda liked it. The biggest difference from the original is the zombies themselves; in the original (as well as "Night of the Living Dead", "Day of the Dead", and "Land of the Dead") they were slow, brainless, and looked dead. The new zombies have normal complexion for the most part, run extremely fast, and are very aggressive. While the others are more or less "classic" zombies, these are probably scarier. Movies don't scare me but there was this one scene in a pitch-black parking garage that zombies eventually filled into was really intense. Also, there are quite a few characters in this one as opposed to the four in the first.
Acting in this film is very good for the most part especially from leads Sarah Polly and Ving Rhames. Ving's character Kennith I'm assuming is named after actor Ken Foree who's character in the original (I think) was a police officer as well. Characters for the most part are likable and it is hard to see a lot of them die, though of course there or a few putrid ones who you can't wait to see get eaten. The movie is quite gruesome as you may have imagined; the only way to kill zombies to to shut down brain activity so there are plenty of exploding heads. Aside from that there is no actual "gore" in the film but there is plenty of blood, filmmakers were very generous in that department. It's not the greatest movie in the world but aside from the fact that it's not the original film there isn't much holding it back. I was kind of disappointed with the ending though. I apologize if you may consider this a spoiler but the endings of both versions of "Night of the Living Dead" and the original "Dawn of the Dead" had sad endings but basically said that humanity will overcome this ordeal and this version ended like "Day of the Dead" saying that we're all screwed. I herd that Day of the Dead was depressing long before I saw it and it didn't ruin the movie for me so that is why I mention that. Both the original "Day of the Dead" and this remake of "Dawn of the Dead" are still very good movies so I suggest you check them out.
*Note that the only version of the film I saw was the Unrated Directors Cut, which has more gore and character development as the director says in the introduction on the DVD so I recommend that that is the version you see.
The Breakdown:
PROS: Excellent gore and special effects, plenty of bloodshed, good acting, a pretty creepy film, lots of depth in characters, cameos from a few members of the cast of the original "Dawn of the Dead", and is one of the better remakes out there.
CONS: Zombies are complete opposites (fast, aggressive) from their Romero counterparts (slow, dumb) (this can be a pro or a con), a depressing conclusion, not quite as good as the 1978 original classic.
OVERALL: The 2004's "Dawn of the Dead" is very well done as far as remakes go. It is a fairly creepy and very thrilling movie. If you can stomach the violence you should definitely check this out. It may not be the original but it has everything a good remake should have. I didn't expect to like it that much but I was very surprised.
Unrated: Graphic Violence/Gore, Languege, an Sexuality; Runtime: 110 minutes; Score: 8/10