Dawn of the Dead

"When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth."

It doesn't say anything about them running though.

This remake was based on George A. Romero's very scary 1978 movie by the same name. As well as Day of the Dead and Night of the Living Dead. All three of those Oldies but Goodies scared the crap out of me then, and they still do now. I cannot sit and watch every minute of the screen in any one of those. I can't help but cringe, look away, duck, squint my eyes, or wait for an intense scene to be over. This movie has none of those.

In our household Robert is the intense horror movie fan. I have gone along to see them all - for him. Everything from Fright Night, Night of the Living Dead, every Freddy and Jason thriller, to Blood Beach - we've seen them all. And usually I brace myself before I go, prepare to look the other way, even plug my ears sometimes. Generally I find them to be interesting, and I have learned to like the genre, but some are too intense for me. THIS MOVIE was not too intense, not too gross, not very realistic, and our overall question is Why did they do this remake?? (I watched every second and never even tensed up once)

In the original movies, the zombies came back to life and stalked humans. They fed off them - wanted their brains. They moved slowly, steadily and nothing stopped them. They truly looked and sounded and seemed like the walking dead and they were SCARY! In this one they run like Olympic athletes. Not as scary.

**Warning - even though it wasn't very scary to *us*, don't take kids to this movie. It was FULL of blood and is really too violent for any kids - even young teens. **


The zombies chase our group of survivors to the local mall - a pretty common theme in horror tales. There is a great scene when they first arrive at the mall, scared silly, with zombies nipping at their heels, and they walk into the deserted mall with "Don't Worry - Be Happy" playing on the mall loudspeakers. Nice touch. :)

There are lots of funny lines and situations during the mall time. We laughed many times and enjoyed that, but Hey, there are thousands of dead zombies just outside!

In the movie "Eight Legged Freaks" they also barricaded themselves in the mall. But even with the tongue in cheek style it was a much more entertaining movie, had a better story line and had much more imaginative characters and scarier enemies.

There are quite a lot of computer generated graphics - fire and crashes - one really good car crash. They were much more real and worth seeing than the makeup on the zombies.

Ving Rhames is the real reason to watch this movie - he is always fun to watch. He deadpans some pretty lame lines with great professionalism. You have seen and enjoyed him in Undisputed, Bringing out the Dead, he was on ER for a short bit, Con Air, I think the first time I noticed him and really liked his presence was in Dave with Kevin Kline.

Mekhi Pfifer is also in this. He is another ER alumni. He's recently been in Honey, 8 Mile, Other Brother. He does a decent job in this one but left us scratching our heads about his character. They didn't really make us care about any of them, a key ingredient in a good horror movie, because when one of them gets eaten you want the audience to go "OH NO" but in this one we (and those around us) seemed very indifferent. (Overheard leaving the theater - "That wasn't even scary at all")

An interesting actor to show up in this one is Max Frewer - you may remember as Max Headroom. He did a good job and was convincing in his small part. We haven't seen him in quite awhile.

Bruce Bohne has probably the most interesting part for most of this movie - he doesn't have alot of lines but we liked him as the character Andy. I don't remember ever seeing him before but his credits say he was in Fargo.

The action begins almost the moment the movie does, so don't be late if you're going to see this one. The opening credits roll after some really intense scenes. And be sure to stay in your seat after the final credits roll, because interspersed with them is the "rest of the story" told very cleverly in video snippets.

Pueblo Tinseltown was the theater - they had problems with the sound - at first it was so loud it was seriously painful. They turned it down WAY too much so it was barely audible and finally found a happy medium. We'd like to have a conversation with the theater manager and ask why many movies are so far off - painfully loud or way too quiet. Don't they have some white out they could paint on the knob and tell the guy "Turn the sound up to *here* when the movie starts" or something?

The popcorn was very good!

Overall score - 2.5 It was Fun - not miserable - parts were funny - but it was not one to stick around in your head for more than a few moments after you leave the theater. If you're looking for a horror movie go rent Night of the Living Dead!