The Coming Dawn

Rating: 8/10 (19 November 2004)

I went into this thinking it was gonna suck. I love the original Dawn of the Dead, and I thought that having James Gunn (of Scooby Doo fame) writing it was going to ensure its place in the bad remakes of history... Right next to the Psycho remake. I mean, when you have a great piece of material, why remake it? Only remake movies that stunk in the first place. Don't remake the classics. That was my attitude. But this movie surprised me. The filmmakers successfully took George Romero's dystopic view of modern society and reinvented it for a new generation. My main question is, did this really need to be a remake? I mean, clearly it shared some things conceptually with Romero's (like the mall, and some of the moments) but this also felt like a pretty complete reboot. I wonder if they could have created this movie as a stand alone zombie flick? Perhaps there is value in the title "Dawn of the Dead". Who knows what drives those studio execs? In the end, this was a successful, fun zombie movie. The characters were a little flat and some of the action was predictable, but the overall effect was good enough for me to give this movie 7 out of 10 stars. Teamed with "28 Days Later", I think these two films have brought about a nice zombie rebirth. Unfortunately, that also gives you the B versions like "Corpses are Forever" and "Bloody Bill", but I still think a resurgence of the zombie genre is a good thing.