Damn good fun

Rating: Null/10 (9 June 2004)

DAWN OF THE DEAD
Warning: In case you can't tell from the title, this is a ZOMBIE HORROR FLICK.
The story is SILLY. The dead live again to kill the living. It's a silly story.
SILLY.
Right. Now that's out of the way, any more declarations that this is a silly film are hereby forbidden.
Remember the classic slasher flicks of the 80s? The initial cause of the horror was always unknown. And happy endings were rare. Nothing was explained, nothing was resolved, and it didn't matter. What mattered was being scared. Watching our on-screen friends drop one by one in a satisfyingly politically-incorrect way. Enough to make us scream. It's all about adrenaline. Why do we like to be scared? It's another quirk of human nature. However, getting all philosphical would be missing the point. The point is having FUN.
And Dawn of the Dead is damn good fun! The kind of fun where the individual members of the audience become one, clapping and cheering at various intervals. A telling sign of this movie's satisfying and entertaining nature. And this is how it should be. It's silly (oops, I said it again), it's morally questionable, it's something we couldn't stand in real life. But up on the big screen it's a guilty pleasure.
This film is a much-needed throwback to the original classic 80s horror films that were more about the horrific moment than any pretentious nonsense either side of it. It's an 80s flick at heart but refined with the technology of now. An exciting prospect when you think of it. Directors of the classics were restricted by the FX of their day, but this is no longer an issue. Unfortunately, many of today's directors have embraced the technology but forgotten about suspense, drama and what makes a movie fun. While perhaps not quite as pure and abstract as it's early cousins, Dawn of the Dead is fairly close and definitely one of the better horror films of recent times.
It does slow a little too much in the middle and there could've been more relentless chasing and terror (rather than horror), and there was one bollocks Security Guy who annoyed me, but these are minor qualms. You must remember that to make a shocking bit more shocking, you stick a quiet bit in front of it. The film opens in a hospital with a single case of the unexplainable 'virus', and then it's right into it. The disaster is given a decent scale but focuses on a small group who barricade themselves inside a shopping mall to consider their next move while building numbers of zombies intent on feeding on their flesh continually pound on the doors.
Besides Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction) the players are mainly unknowns (though former Max Headroom star Matt Frewer makes a distracting but enjoyable appearance), but this only serves to add credence to the story. I've always been a fan of unknown actors as their unfamiliarity strengthens the portrayal of their character. When I see Tom Hanks on the screen, I see Tom Hanks, not his character, and this does nothing to immerse me.
This is a remake of a classic by early horror master George Romero. I haven't seen the original, but this film certainly pays homage to the genre as it used to be before Scream came along and stuck it in front of a mirror.
Dawn of the Dead knows what it is and that's important, and for the most part, it stays wonderfully focussed. The opening and closing credits are just awesome, as is the sound design which is satisfyingly meaty and loud. The story actually ends DURING the end credits, so stay seated!
For the first time in a long time, I left the cinema with huge gaping grin and an exclamation: "that rocked!".