Pretty Good Genre Movie

Rating: 8/10 (25 August 2006)

DAWN OF THE DEAD starts of as Shawn Of The Dead 2, way too comical and off the cuff. However, once characters are established, the movie quickly becomes far more involving. Camera work is used very effectively to create tension. Tension is also helped by the fact that the characters aren't asked to do too many stupid things, which always undermines the credibility and tension of the movie - you start to figure they deserve whatever they get.
The cast is excellent, from Sarah Polley (Go), to Ving Rhames, Mekhi Phiffer, the great Jake Weber ("Medium", The Cell), Micheal Kelly and a very hot Kim Poirier (and born in the eighties too, how time flies). Sarah Polley alternatingly looks like Anna Faris and, for those of us who remember the eighties, Joanne Whalley ("Edge Of Darkness").
Even though the entire Zombie theme has been done to death, there are some very real improvements made in this movie, and some incoherences too. For instance, none of the survivors have seen a zombie movie before (which is odd, as they're starring in one). Also, they are in a mall - plenty of food and water, but no gun shop? No fresh clothes? An improvement over earlier versions is the sheer number of zombies. Odds are stacked against the main characters too, because the zombies only have to wound them, while they have to shoot them in the head or decapitate them. The zombies have also gone from lumbering corpses, to being able to run at full speed. They're still telekinetic, as thousands of them seem to detect the presence of live humans and congregate on their hideouts.
Considering that the first zombie movie of the modern movie era, Night Of The Living Dead, was made in 1968 (when most of the actors were either in being born or unborn for years to come), the movie holds up pretty well, and is still a vehicle through which to examine modern society, as it was then. And of course it is impossible to watch this movie and not think of Hurricane Katrina, which struck a year after this movie was made.