After the beginning of the resurgence of the zombie genre with 28 Days Later and the first Resident Evil, producers Eric Newman and Marc Abraham wanted to help blow the doors wide open for the genre into modern times. I can definitely say that they were largely successful with that. Dawn of the Dead 2004 was written by James Gunn and directed by Zack Snyder. At the time, the pair were rather unknown names. Well I guess you could say that James Gunn wasn't that unknown, he had written the live action Scooby Doo zombies by then. Looking back, it was pretty fantastic to see how they would go on in their careers to become such large names in horror and the superhero genre.
Dawn of the Dead 2004 was a remake of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978). For the most part, it does everything that a remake could do rather successfully. One of the biggest reasons why this film worked so well is its casting. Sarah Polley, Ty Burrell, Ving Rhames, Michael Kelly, and Mehki Phifer are all the big names. There are a lot of other now well known actors and actresses that also pop up in the film. This ensemble is incredible. Everyone plays off one another so wonderfully. And even the great Ken Foree returns in a cameo as a Priest on Televsion and delivers his iconic line from the original 'When There's No Room in Hell, The Dead Shall Walk The Earth'.
Another success for this film is that it's not a retelling of the original story. Yeah, we have the basic foundation of survivors living out in a shopping mall. That's about as much of a connection to the original as we are going to get. And that's is 100 percent okay. It allows this to be more of a reimagining than a remake. And that is exactly what it needed to be. It allowed so much freedom to unshackle themselves from being a straight up remake. It allowed us to grow with these new characters and establish connections with them. And when some of them start falling, boy does it hurt.
If Night of the Living Dead 1990 had a little gore, Dawn of the Dead 2004 brings the gore in with a firehose. The blood flows swift and free when everything hits the fans. It's honestly pretty fantastic. Then there are the zombies. And yeah, this film straight up calls them zombies. This was the first of the new generation of zombie films that called them what they were. It definitely set the tone by doing that. These zombies are also securely not in the Romero mold. They broke the mold completely. They are fast. They are swift. If you aren't careful and blink, you'll be overcome rather quickly. These updated zombies are fantastic and scary as all hell. I mean in the opening moments of the film, we are treated to the neighbor girl sprinting so fast down the hallway towards Sarah Polley. I remember seeing this in the theater opening day. This moment had such a powerful impact as it still is so terrifying to this day. It brilliantly establishes what to expect from the film.
Dawn of the Dead 2004 holds up so well to this day. It's a brilliant example of what a remake should be. Honestly as we will see with some of the other remakes in this franchise, they didn't learn from this example. The fantastic thing is that Dawn of the Dead 2004 makes a brilliant double feature with Night of the Living Dead 1990. I wish we could say that Day of the Dead received similar treatment.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
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