Zombies- 1 Story/plot/characters- 0

Rating: 5/10 (12 September 2012)

Zack Snyder's directorial debut tackles the remake of George A. Romero's 1978 zombie classic, Dawn of the Dead. While Romero's original was a slow moving suspense filled gore fest, Snyder's version is just a gore fest. In this remake the zombies no longer shuffle about aimlessly. Now, they are feral creatures that will run at you as fast as they can, snarling horrendously the whole time. The film follows a group of people, including a nurse and a cop, as they make their way to a mall where they plan to hold up until this apocalypse blows over, or something like that. Of course, the calm and peace is short lived before hordes of the undead start making their way to the mall, forcing the survivors to find a way to escape this hellish nightmare.
Zack Snyder is honestly the only thing that makes this film watchable. If not for his wicked visual stylization we would be left with an utterly silly film full of characters we can't wait to watch die. This is a plot hole ridden film where the characters actions don't seem to be backed by any logic or reasoning. These moments of total stupidity range from laughably bad to frustratingly moronic that you just want to punch something. Needless to say, we would all be screwed if we wound up with these people during the zombie apocalypse.
That being said, if you like zombies and you like copious and almost over-the-top amounts of gore then it's hard not to enjoy Dawn of the Dead. It's so intense, so brutal, and so non stop that you really sort of become enthralled in the graphic events unfolding before your eyes. If you watched Dawn of the Dead when it first came out in 2004, chances are you suspected this Zack Snyder guy to be someone worth keeping up with. And of course, he was worth keeping up with because everything he has done since this debut has been an improvement of his style and eye for sick visuals.
With a story that actually made sense all the way through and characters that we could actually sympathize with, Dawn of the Dead actually could have been really good. But its plot really drags it down tirelessly, and all we are left with is cool zombie action, and that isn't quite enough to save this film from being pretty bad.