Dawn of the Dead (2004 film)

Dawn of the Dead
Promotional poster
Directed by	Zack Snyder
Produced by	Richard P. Rubinstein Marc Abraham Eric Newman Thomas Bliss
Written by	James Gunn Scott Frank (uncredited) Michael Tolkin (uncredited) George A. Romero (1978 screenplay)
Starring	Sarah Polley Ving Rhames Jake Weber Mekhi Phifer
Music by	Tyler Bates
Cinematography	Matthew F. Leonetti
Editing by	Niven Howie
Studio	Strike Entertainment
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	March 19, 2004
Running time	100 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$28 million
Gross revenue	$102,356,381

Dawn of the Dead is a 2004 American horror remake of George A. Romero's 1978 film of the same name. The remake and original both depict a handful of human survivors living in a shopping mall surrounded by swarms of zombies, but the details differ significantly. Directed by Zack Snyder and his directorial debut, the film was produced by Strike Entertainment in association with New Amsterdam Entertainment, released by Universal Pictures and stars Ving Rhames, Sarah Polley and Jake Weber with cameos from original cast members Ken Foree, Scott Reiniger and Tom Savini, this is to date the only film by Zack Snyder not to be distributed by Warner Bros.

Plot

After finishing a long shift as a nurse, Ana (Sarah Polley), returns to her suburban Milwaukee neighborhood and her husband, Luis. Caught up in a scheduled date night, the two miss an emergency news bulletin on television. The next morning, a neighborhood child enters their bedroom and kills Luis, who immediately reanimates as a zombie and attacks Ana. She flees in her car, witnessing scenes of chaos and panic along the way as her neighborhood is consumed by zombies. She eventually crashes and passes out. A montage of news footage depicts zombies overwhelming civilization around the world.

Upon waking, Ana joins with Police Sergeant Kenneth Hall (Ving Rhames) and jack-of-all-trades Michael (Jake Weber), as well as petty criminal Andre (Mekhi Phifer) and his pregnant wife, Luda (Inna Korobkina). The group breaks into a nearby mall where a zombified security guard attacks and bites Luda. They are also confronted by three living guards — Bart (Michael Barry) and Terry (Kevin Zegers) led by C.J. (Michael Kelly) — who make them surrender their weapons in exchange for refuge. Wary of challenges to his leadership, C.J. reluctantly agrees with Michael's suggestions that they should mount an effort to lock down the mall and paint a plea for help on the roof. The group secures the doors, then heads to the roof with paint, where they see that another survivor, Andy (Bruce Bohne), is stranded nearby in his gun store, across the zombie-infested parking lot.

C.J. has everyone but Bart and Terry imprisoned in one of the stores overnight to keep them under control. Meanwhile, the TV channels finally go off the air, and the survivors hear very little news from the outside after this point.

The next day, a delivery truck carrying more survivors enters the lot, with zombies in close pursuit. C.J. wants to turn them away, but Terry objects to this. During the resulting confrontation, Michael and Kenneth disarm C.J. and Bart. The newcomers come inside: Norma (Jayne Eastwood), selfish and cynical Steve Marcus (Ty Burrell), Tucker (Boyd Banks), Monica (Kim Poirier), and Glen (R.D. Reid), as well as Frank (Matt Frewer) and his daughter, Nicole (Lindy Booth). Another woman (Ermes Blarasin) is severely bloated and too ill to walk; she is wheeled inside via wheelbarrow only to die and reanimate soon after. After she is killed, the group determines that the disease is passed by bites. Andre leaves to see Luda and the group realizes that Frank, who has been bitten, is a potential threat. After some debate, Frank elects to be isolated. When he dies and turns, Kenneth shoots him.

Another montage shows the survivors passing time in the mall and various relationships developing, including Kenneth and Andy starting a friendship by way of messages written on a whiteboard, and Terry and Nicole falling in love and apparently dating. The group is bonding over dinner when the power goes out. C.J., Bart, Michael, and Kenneth head to the parking garage to activate the emergency generator. They find a friendly dog but are attacked by zombies, who kill Bart. The remaining men are trapped in the generator compartment until they douse the zombies with gasoline and set them ablaze.

Meanwhile, Luda, in the advanced stages of infection and tied up by Andre, dies in labor and reanimates, while Andre fixates on delivering her baby. Norma checks on the couple, and, seeing Luda is a zombie, shoots her. Andre fires at Norma, and both die in an exchange of gunfire. The rest of the group arrives to find a zombie baby which they immediately kill. As the remaining survivors discuss how to change their situation, C.J. appears to have accepted Michael's de facto leadership. They decide to fight their way to the local marina, and travel on Steve's yacht to an island on Lake Michigan. They begin retrofitting and reinforcing two shuttle buses from the parking garage for their escape. Ana and Michael begin a tentative romance.

Andy is dying of starvation, so the group straps a pack of food and a walkie-talkie onto the dog, Chips, and lower him into the parking lot. Andy calls for Chips, who is of no interest to the zombies, but one gets in the door of the store before Andy can close it and he is bitten. Nicole, worried about Chips, takes the delivery truck and crashes into the gun store, where she is trapped by a zombified Andy. Kenneth, Michael, Tucker, Terry and C.J. head through the sewers to mount a rescue. They reach the gun store, saving Nicole by shooting Andy. They grab weapons and ammunition and go back to the mall; along the way, Tucker is killed. The rescue team is trapped in a stairwell because Steve has abandoned his post, leaving their reentry door sealed. Ana lets them inside. But, with the delay, a horde of zombies has caught up with them and they are unable to lock the door, forcing an evacuation.

Everyone piles into the buses and they navigate through the city of Milwaukee. Glen loses control of a chainsaw, accidentally killing himself and Monica; blood splatters on the windshield causing Kenneth to crash the bus. A zombie attacks Steve as he tries to escape. C.J. exits the first van to look for crash survivors with Kenneth and Terry. They encounter the undead Steve but Ana kills him. She retrieves his boat keys, and they take the remaining bus to the marina. There, C.J sacrifices himself so the rest of the group can escape. Michael reveals he was bitten and Ana watches him kill himself, leaving Ana, Kenneth, Nicole, Terry and Chips as the only survivors.

A montage of footage from a camcorder found on the boat begins with Steve's escapades before the outbreak, and concludes with the group running out of supplies and gasoline before finally arriving at an island. They disembark and are attacked by another swarm of zombies. The film ends with the dropped camcorder recording dozens of zombies chasing them, leaving their fate unknown.

Cast

• Sarah Polley as Ana
• Ving Rhames as Kenneth
• Jake Weber as Michael
• Mekhi Phifer as Andre
• Ty Burrell as Steve
• Michael Kelly as CJ
• Kevin Zegers as Terry
• Michael Barry as Bart
• Lindy Booth as Nicole
• Jayne Eastwood as Norma
• Boyd Banks as Tucker
• Inna Korobkina as Luda
• R.D. Reid as Glen
• Kim Poirier as Monica
• Matt Frewer as Frank
• Justin Louis as Luis
• Hannah Lochner as Vivian
• Bruce Bohne as Andy
• Tom Savini as Sheriff Cahill (cameo)
• Scott H. Reiniger as The General (cameo)
• Ken Foree as The Televangelist (cameo)
• Zack Snyder as Commando at White House (cameo)

Production

James Gunn is only partially responsible for the screenplay, despite receiving solo writing credit. After he left the project to concentrate on Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, both Michael Tolkin and Scott Frank were brought in for rewrites. In a commentary track on the Ultimate Edition DVD for the original George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead, Richard P. Rubinstein, producer of both the original and the remake, explained that Tolkin further developed the characters, while Frank provided some of the bigger and upbeat action sequences.

The mall scenes of the film as well as the rooftop scenes were shot in the Thornhill Square Shopping Center in Thornhill, Ontario and the rest of the scenes were shot in the Aileen-Willowbrook Neighborhood of Thornhill, Ontario. The set for Ana and Louis's bedroom was constructed in a backroom of the mall.^[1] The mall was defunct, which is the reason the production used it; the movie crew completely renovated the structure, and stocked it with fictitious stores after Starbucks and numerous other corporations refused to let their names be used^[1] (two exceptions to this are Roots and Panasonic). Most of the mall was demolished shortly after the film was shot. The fictitious stores include a coffee shop called Hallowed Grounds (a lyric from Johnny Cash's song "The Man Comes Around," which was used over the opening credits), and an upscale department store called Gaylen Ross (an in-joke reference to one of the stars of the original 1978 movie).

The first half of the film was shot almost entirely in chronological order,^[1] while the final sequences on the boat and island were shot much later and at a different location (Universal Studios Hollywood) than the rest of the movie, after preview audiences objected to the sudden ending of the original print.^[1]

Deleted scenes

Scenes cut from the film's original theatrical release were added back for the "Unrated Director's Cut" DVD edition. Along with gore effects removed to obtain an "R-rating",^[2] they include a clearer depiction of how the survivors originally break into the mall, and a short scene where the character of Glen "tortures" the imprisoned C.J. and Bart with his reminiscing about his homosexual coming-of-age. The DVD also offers, as a bonus feature, several more scenes which were not included in any version of the film, including an expanded version of the fictional live broadcasts shown in the mall's televisions, which chronicles the worldwide effects of the zombie plague.

Reception

In the UK, both this film and Shaun of the Dead were originally scheduled to be released the same week, but due to the similarity in the names of the two films and plot outline, UIP opted to push back Shaun's release by two weeks. It was screened out of competition at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.^[3]

The film has received generally positive reviews from both moviegoers and critics. It holds a rating of 76% on Rotten Tomatoes.^[4] Roger Ebert said the film "works and it delivers just about what you expect when you buy your ticket" but felt that it "lacks the mordant humor of the Romero version" and the "plot flatlines compared to the 1978 version, which was trickier, wittier and smarter".^[5] George A. Romero is quoted as saying of the film, "It was better than I expected. ... The first 15, 20 minutes were terrific, but it sort of lost its reason for being. It was more of a video game. I'm not terrified of things running at me; it's like Space Invaders. There was nothing going on underneath."^[6] Bloody Disgusting ranked the film eighth in their list of the 'Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade', with the article saying "Truly, you can analogize the two films [original and remake] based on their zombies alone – where Romero’s lumbered and took their time (in a good way), Snyder’s came at us, fast, with teeth bared like rabid dogs."^[7]

Box office

The film grossed over $59 million at the box office,^[8] (over $102 million worldwide^[9]) and is one of the few zombie films to make over $100 million at international box-office.^[10] Its success also launched the career of director Zack Snyder, who would go on to direct 300 and Watchmen.

Comparisons to the original

In the original film, the zombies moved very slowly and were most menacing when they collected in large groups. In the remake the zombies are fast and agile, and are, on the whole, closer to the quick-moving, psychotically violent victims of the 'Rage' virus in the 2002 British horror film 28 Days Later and the zombies of 1985's Return of the Living Dead than the traditional shambling Zombie archetype. Many admirers of the original, as well as Romero himself, protested this change, feeling that it limited the impact of the undead.^[11] This is somewhat borne out by the fact that the remake has almost no close up shots of zombies that last more than a second or two. Snyder mentions this in the commentary track of the remake's DVD, pointing out that they seem too human when the camera lingers upon them for longer.

In the original George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead, as in Night of the Living Dead, all 'recently dead' are reanimated by an unidentified source. Zombie bites seem to somehow induce rapid death, and subsequent reanimation, even though death by any manner will result in reanimation of the dead as well. The cause is never fully elaborated upon, but news reports in the first film imply that the cause is radiation from a space probe to Venus that was destroyed and landed back on Earth. In the remake, it springs up worldwide overnight, and is most likely a blood or saliva-borne infection, relying on zombie bites for transmission (like rabies). On the back of the DVD cover, a brief summary states that a virus turned the humans into zombies but Snyder denies that and says that the zombie bite is supernatural like a vampire bite. In the original, anyone who dies for any reason returns after several minutes (so long as their brain is intact). In the remake, only those bitten return and after a period of less than a minute after death.

The original had a smaller cast than the remake, allowing more screen time for each character. Many fans and critics criticized the resulting loss of character development.^[12]

In the original version the story unfolds over several months, indicated by the advancing stages of Fran's pregnancy. In the remake the events transpire within approximately 1 month, as evidenced by the supplemental feature The Lost Tape: Andy's Terrifying Last Days Revealed, located on the DVD in the special features section.

Three actors from the original film have cameos in the remake, appearing on the televisions the survivors watch: Ken Foree, who played Peter from the original, plays an evangelist who asserts that God is punishing mankind; Scott H. Reiniger, who played Roger in the original, plays an army general telling everyone to stay at home for safety and Tom Savini, who did the special effects for many of Romero's movies and played the motorcycle gang member Blades in the original Dawn of the Dead, plays the Monroeville Sheriff explaining the only way to kill the zombies is to "shoot 'em in the head." Monroeville is also the location of the mall used in the 1978 film. In addition, a store shown in the mall is called "Gaylen Ross," an obvious nod to actress Gaylen Ross, who played Fran in the original film.

Additional references to Romero's original Living Dead movies include: A sign for "Wooley's Diner" can be seen, a nod to the character of "Wooley" in the 1978 version. The character Tucker's name is a reference to Roy Tucker, one of the SWAT team members in the original. A truck from the BP corporation is seen, the same company as in the original. The WGON helicopter from the first film is seen flying into the frame in one early sequence. The film's tagline, "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth", is the same one from the first film, and is delivered in both films by actor Ken Foree. Both films have a similar line concerning the concept that zombies were returning to the mall out of instinct for repeating activities from their previous lives. An obese and infected woman is brought into and transported through the mall in a wheelbarrow. This is homage to the wheelbarrow used to carry goods and to transport Roger in the original. The mall-dwellers' ultimate escape plan echoes a similar attempt by a group of ex-policemen at the start of the original Dawn, while the remake's opening sequences contain at least two possible references to the original Night of the Living Dead film: a car crashes into a gas station and explodes, and the female lead crashes her car into a tree.

Referenced in popular culture

In The 40-Year-Old Virgin SmartTech employee Jay (Romany Malco) is watching the movie on multiple demo TVs in the store before and during a conversation with Andy Stitzer (Steve Carell). Jay cuts Andy off mid-sentence twice in reaction to two scenes from the film (when zombie Vivian bites Luis' neck and when the reanimated zombie Luis smashes through the bathroom door trying to kill Ana).

In Episode 6, titled Bite Me, of the sixth season of television show Medium, Bridgette DuBois informs her parents that there is a zombie movie marathon on television. Her father, Joe DuBois, played by Jake Weber from the 2004 Dawn of the Dead film, responds by saying "They're not running the one where everyone gets trapped in the mall, are they?".

See also

• List of zombie films

References

External links

• Official website
• Dawn of the Dead at the Internet Movie Database
• Dawn of the Dead at Allmovie
• Dawn of the Dead at Rotten Tomatoes
• Dawn of the Dead at Metacritic
• Dawn of the Dead at Box Office Mojo
• April 24, 2003 draft screenplay