Some folks might remember the remake of Night Of The Living Dead that appeared way back in the 1990 or 1991 or some such, and how it was reasonably alright mainly on account of the highly imaginative zombie designs, and also because it had Candyman in it. You may remember that whilst it was hardly a patch on the Romero original, it was still a fun hour and a half, and a hell of a lot more desirable than the ghastly 30th Anniversary Edition of NOTLD, when the blokes that made tea on the original set decided that what Romero meant to do was to film a bunch of useless superfluous shite and throw it into the original film at grossly inappropriate moments.
Even when the powers that be decided that no one would want to watch the film unless it was colourised, at least they had the sense to leave it alone, apart from, y'know, making folks a weird green colour.
But anyway, the thing about the remake is that now they've gone ahead and made a remake of the sequel, Dawn Of The Dead, but they ignored Candyman's antics altogether, and so start the story fresh, as it were.
This is a bad idea, but thankfully, it's one of fairly few bad ideas herein.
Dawn 2004, or D2K4 as some folks might call it now and again, plays less like a horror film than a peculiarly small-scale Roland Emmerich disaster movie affair. The opening feels like the first half hour of Independence Day, with an eerie calm settled over everything, so much so that you expect a Mothership to be hovering above the city, just waiting for Will Smith to look up and do his "What...the...hell??" face. There's an unsettling tranquillity, people are just too content, and we all know that something horrible is going to happen, be it a volcano exploding or the dead starting to dawn. We can assume that it's the latter, since the title of the movie is Dawn Of The Dead, and not, y'know, The Exploding Volcano.
Sure enough, it all comes to a maggot-riddled head, when a young girl enters her parent's bedroom and proceeds to tear chunks out of her father's neck. Personally, I blame Marilyn Manson, but the folks concerned assume it to be on account of some zombie virus carry-on.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Thanks Duke, you've been doing a great job. I really appreciate all of this super input.
2 - Rob
The originals scared and thrilled me, and still do, so of course I will watch this, but it probably won't be as good. Still the Zombie genre is a great one, and as long as it is scary enough, I got my money's worth.
3 - Bill Sherman
I yawned through the color Night remake, so I wasn't holding out much hopes for this 'un. But continued positive pieces like this 'un have convinced me to shell out the ticket money.
4 - Jonathan
I'm sad that Andy died. He was the most entertaining part of the movie.
Kenneth's evolution was boring and crappy.. first he is this police officer that cares about none of the others..but yet still hangs around with them.. and slowly grows a heart?
5 - Mark Louis Baumgart
What can I say? I saw the original originally in the theatres way back when. Several times. I had no life. The first third was great, the second third was boring, it put half the audience to sleep, the third part, with the motorcyclists was just dumb, great make-up here though. Saw it again, doesn't hold up. This remake was fun, Romero ain't ghod, and nobody has crapped on his bible, get over it. The remake is a better, more cohesive whole.