A good zombi movie

Rating: Null/10 (16 November 2004)

This is the second coming in the new trend of remaking great genre movies of the past: the first is THE Texas CHAINSAW MASSACRE by Nispel. The changements here were more extreme than what happened in the remake of the movie by Tobe Hooper, since no- one of the original character appears and even the zombies are different: as the infected in 28 DAYS LATER, this new version of living dead are hypercinetics. The same happens with the atmosphere: in the '78 version by Romero, the survivors see the mall as a refuge where they could hide for a long time (basically, a somekind of home), in this remake they look at it as a temporary solution and not a very safe one. So the entire movie is dominated by the idea of escaping. As many remakes, it's obvious that it can't be compared to the original, especially if this one is a masterpiece as DAWN OF THE DEAD by Romero, one of the greatest horror movies of all time. But I've to say that this one works quiet well and has some good ideas, like the zombies that decompose as time passes. There is splatter, but is what I call "wet but clean", since what you see is basically a lot of coloured blood and even if some heads do explode, you don't see all the gray matter and the guts you were seeing in the original: I think this was a compulsory sacrifice to get the movie made. But they didn't sacrifice the elements of the zombi myth (as RESIDENT EVIL does instead): the ghouls eat the living, and you can see it quiet clearly. I like Snyder style but I can't say the same for the cinematography, with those colours out of a videoclip or a Nike- spot: their marriage with the dirty zombies just doesn't work. At the end, this DAWN OF THE DEAD 2004 is a good zombi- movie that don't even try to surpass the original (which is THE zombi - movie).