By Michael Rechtshaffen
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - A decade after making his 1968 seminal horror film "Night of the Living Dead," director George Romero, armed with a slightly bigger budget, revisited those flesh-eating zombies with "Dawn of the Dead," which was set extensively in a suburban shopping mall.
While there was gore galore, Romero also had things to say about class distinction and society’s escalating preoccupation with mass consumption -- to the point at which it had started to consume itself.
The pumped-up, Romero-free 2004 version has no patience for such subtleties. When there’s a whole mess of zombie killing to be done, who cares about reflective writing or that time-wasting element of suspense?
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Armed with visually assured, muscular direction by Zack Snyder, a respectable cast and eardrum-blasting sound effects, the new "Dawn of the Dead" certainly makes its arrival known, but long before its departure, the empty onslaught has left the numbed viewer in a zombie-like stupor.
Of course, that likely won’t bother the targeted young male demo -- especially given that "Dawn of the Dead" has the slick, repetitive action of a video game -- who should ensure it takes a respectable bite out its opening weekend.
It still would have been nice if there had been a little more to chew on.
To its credit -- and ultimately its frustration -- the picture’s 10-minute setup is pulse-poundingly good. Drawing on his background as an award-winning commercial director, Snyder employs a gritty, stylised shorthand that efficiently propels protagonist Ana (Sarah Polley) from suburban Wisconsin wife to zombie prey.
She hooks up with a small band of survivors, including Kenneth (Ving Rhames), a stoic, Rambo-like police officer; Michael (Jake Weber), a nice-guy electronics salesman; and the streetwise Andre (Mekhi Phifer), who’s accompanied by his very pregnant Russian wife (Inna Korobkina).
They all take refuge in an abandoned upscale mall that has been commandeered by a group of security guards who are used to running things their way.
While the inevitable power struggle proceeds against the omnipresent Muzak (with thoughtfully programmed selections including "Don’t Worry, Be Happy" and "All By Myself"), the growing throngs of living dead are moving ever closer to the entrances.
As adapted by screenwriter James Gunn, who cut his teeth on Troma B movies as well as the "Scooby-Doo" pictures, "Dawn of the Dead" is big on snappy repartee at the expense of any kind of intriguing plot development.
You’d think with a mall-full of stores at their disposal the characters would at least manage to come up with something to do other than sleep in the furniture place and have breakfast in the coffee shop.
There are some moments of inspired audacity, including a sequence in which our bored heroes play a game involving blowing off the heads of those crowding zombies who loosely resemble famous people.
Behind the scenes, production designer Andrew Neskoromny does a coldly effective job in dressing a Toronto mall that had been marked for demolition and has been ideally framed by cinematographer Matthew Leonetti’s grimly grainy lenswork.
