Almost as good as the original!

Rating: 8/10 (28 December 2005)

Young director Zack Snyder risked everything he had with this remake of George Romero's classic zombie movie, and he hit the jackpot. Snyder not only makes a movie that is as good as the original, he develops the story in a different direction and makes a movie that will be remembered as a classic on its own merit.
The basic premise of Romero's original screenplay is here, a group of people uses a mall as a fortress during the outbreak of the zombie epidemic; nevertheless, Snyder takes a more action-oriented approach to the story focusing in the fight for survival, instead of the social cometary Romero always gives.
While purists may call this a cheap change to make the movie more appealing, I believe that Snyder's work is really a good rework of the story. Sure, it is true that the fast action that the movie delivers gives few room to explore the characters the way Romero used to do, Snyder makes the whole trouble a bit more realistic, by pushing the claustrophobic tension to the limit.
The acting is for the most part very good, and while the characters are not really very well developed, the performances of the cast really make up for it.
A single expression of Ving Rhames says more than a thousand lines of script. He is truly an underrated actor. Sarah Polley and Jake Weber are very convincing as unlikely survivors of this apocalypse and while not as good as Rhames, both of them have very good chemistry.
The SFX are very good, frightening and convincing, and to add my two cents to the famous debate about the "running zombies", I think that they work very good in the context of the movie and serve the purpose that Snyder had in mind.
Sadly, not everything is perfect, as certain subplots are somewhat absurd and out of place in the movie, also, the lack of development of the characters at times hurts the film, in the sense that one would like to know more about the characters and their motivations; nevertheless, it is fair to point out that there is more good than bad, and that the feeling after the movie is the one of entire satisfaction.
The dawn of the Dead remake is a movie that lives up to the expectation, and respectfully follows the path of the original in its transformation into a genre classic by its own merit.
8/10. Awesome debut for Snyder.