By Alicia Roache, Staff Reporter
A scene from the movie 'Dawn of the Dead'
'DAWN OF the Dead' is a real scary movie. It has all the elements that define a horror flick. There is, of course, the unrealistic plot, the unexplained motivations and the really silly characters.
So if you can accept that some unknown virus, or other, has infected the inhabitants of the world and causes them to, once dead, revive with an insatiable desire to feed on human flesh, then what happens throughout the rest of the movie should also be easy to accept.
Directed by Zack Snyder, Dawn of the Dead is a remake of George Romero's 1978 classic of the same name which was the second in a trilogy of movies Night of the Living Dead, 1968 and Day of the Dead, 1985. As such, if you are big on closure, Dawn of the Dead, will not be your favourite movie. It will be, however, quite entertaining to watch.
SURVIVORS OF THE PLAGUE
The movie surrounds the activities of the survivors of the plague who try to remain alive by taking refuge in a shopping mall. Ving Rhames stars as Kenneth, a hero cop, Sarah Polley as Ana the nurse and the first of the group to figure out how the disease is communicated, Mekhi Phifer is Andre, whose pregnant girlfriend, Inna Korobkina (Luda), he will not give up on even when she becomes one of the 'undead' and gives birth to an 'undead' baby. Jake Weber (Michael), and Michael Kelly (CJ) round out the main cast.
The tagline, and the premise from which the movie is developed, "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth", sums up the idea of the script. But as one woman in the cinema quite rightly pointed out, "Whatever happened to heaven?"
WHAT WILL THEY EAT?
Additionally, the idea that once 'dead-ish', the only food they seem able to consume are live persons is absurd. When all the living persons run out what will they eat? Except for a dog, which none seemed particularly interested in having, there were no other animals in the movie even though, supposedly, the whole world had gone berserk.
Then there are the survivors who in traditional scary movie fashion leave the safety of the mall to go to some strange island, the status of which they have no information. Why they decide to do this is unclear.
Though the movie is supposed to present a grim reality it's the lighter moments that make a lot more sense. While held up in the mall, an appropriate place since it provided almost all the amenities necessary for survival, the survivors engage in all sorts of recreational activities. The most interesting was the game of shoot the celebrity, where they would spot and try to kill a selected celebrity from the undead masses lurking outside the mall.
Dawn of the Dead manages to take a small turn from the narrow confines of these kind of movies. It not only makes 'the black guy' one of the heroes, but actually allows him to live. There were, however, two black characters in the movie and one did not turn out so fortunate.
Dawn of the Dead runs for 100 minutes.
