Dawn Of The Dead Review

DOD belongs to the genre of horror that confines itself to funny faces. It speaks of zombies moving about doing nothing besides. We know some people like that. All of them have got speaking parts in this movie. So, they are all moving about, doing nothing besides.

DOD opens with a quick introduction to good nurse Ana (Sarah Polley), and, almost immediately afterwards, it careens into apocalypse-mode. There is some kind of epidemic going around which kills people and makes zombies outta them. The infected zombies bite other people and make zombies outta them. These zombies bite other people and make zombies outta them. Now these zombies bite other people and make zombies of them. Now these zombies... ah, you get the drift.

There's a lotta biting going around, but the movie just doesn't have the bite. Ana and a bunch of other survivors seek refuge in a mall. Tough cop (Ving Rhames) and sensitive guy (Jake Webber) become Ana's trusted allies, and more survivors come in. A dude stranded on the roof of a gun store provides comic relief in a bizarre, macabre sort of way as he shoots zombies' heads off as a means to kill (pardon the choice of expression) time.

The epidemic and the movie race at an alarming speed. A lot of the cast is eventually put out of its misery, but the audience has to wait out the one hour forty. It seems sudden when a dare-devil getaway plan is made. The (reinforced) truck containing the survivors crawls its way across the sea of swarming, milling dead men walking. A lot of gruesome chain-saw limb-chopping, shotgun head-blowing and zombie-mowing happens.

This movie may well have been called Dawn Of The Dud for all the BOO! moments it has. It is devoid of the conscience of the original in that it fails to generate any involvement whatsoever. But it is a truly gore-gasmic affair, replete with caked blood, distorted/discolored teeth and ceaseless assaults on the ear-drum. In sum, meant only for the gore-hounds. For everyone else, it's just all kinds of silly.