A great zombie movie

Rating: 9/10 (20 March 2004)

I'm a very avid fan of zombie movies, and like any huge fan I am very familiar with the original Dawn of the Dead. It set the bar for apocalyptic zombie fests and contained a brain inside its gory exterior. The new Dawn doesn't have that. In fact, the new Dawn doesn't have anything that made the original so great... aside from the mall, of course. That doesn't make it a bad movie. If this movie were named something else, I wouldn't have a single complaint... I would be raving about how fantastic of a zombie movie this was. But they decided to have this as a remake of a Romero classic, and they ripped out everything that made the original so... original. The new Dawn is scary, visceral and fast paced. If they would have slowed it down, and stepped it back a bit so the viewers could get a chance to know the characters, and see the characters reaction to their situation it would have paid better homage to the original. They're different movies, and they are both great in their own right. The new Dawn is excellent in its own way, and in itself sets a new standard for zombie movies. Hopefully the zombie movie will stay around for a while. I would like to see how this sub-genre fleshes out. Only time will tell.