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Dawn Of The Dead
(2004)
Dir: Zack Snyder
The zombies in the original Dawn of the Dead (1978), move at an almost excruciatingly slow pace. This makes them comical from a distance, but truly horrifying as they close in on their victims, shuffling, and drooling blood out of slack jaws, jutting out from under vacant eyes. When accepting zombies as a metaphor for mindless consumerism, the lethargic gait and indiscriminant, gnawing tendencies that director George A. Romero infused his monsters with, really gave an apt face to the epidemic of guzzling just to guzzle. What’s really ironic about this remake, and 28 Days Later before it, is that the zombies now move at an highly athletic pace, something more and more consumers have become incapable of doing. The speedier zombies are more a reflection of the increased pace of consuming, than a caricature of the modern consumer’s jaded behaviorisms. Thanks to the world wide web, buying shit has become so automated, and brought so close to the stagnant fingertip, that a whole capitalist persona, replete with all the staples (an automobile, dazzling furniture, kitchenette set, CD’s, a stereo, and the ever-crucial television), can be bought with buns glued tight to a swivel chair. And whatever must be picked up, can be done behind the wheel of your new car. In case you haven’t noticed this (coupled with our atrocious eating habits) is making westerners stagnacious, lardy metaphors for malleability. The multi-national corporations feeding us all of this garbage are having their way with us, and beyond looking aloof, we are now looking supremely ineffectual. Because the target audience for this movie has spent most if their days being practically injected with high-speed consumer tendencies, the original film’s sprawling sense of symbolism has been cooked down into a tidy, thirty-second montage. The movie that surrounds it is more like a doomsday video-game, than socio-political commentary, but that doesn‘t mean it‘s not without its charms. It is rambunctious and scary, and although most of the characters are shipshape little stereotypes, they still manage to be engaging, thanks in part to Sarah Polley as a the resilient female, and Ving Rhames as the cuddly, black grizzly bear. The movie’s most redeeming aspect, other than it’s killer opening and closing credits, is it’s unwavering bleakness. Someone involved in this project (I’m wary of blindly crediting Snyder) managed to yank that portion of Romero’s vision somewhat intact. But where Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, left viewer’s with some sense of hope, Snyder and crew see fit to dash the head of humanity against the cold brick wall of apocalypse, until there‘s nothing left but a burning red stain. I don’t know that they did it on purpose, but their film serves up an awfully acidic slice of deathbed, comfort food for a planet full of ravenous monkeys with bottomless stomachs, and a severely retarded sense of historical perspective (read: we‘re fucked).
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