Continuing our horror-theme for October the latest “Scenes I Love” entry comes from one of those hated remakes that was actually better than expected (and for some better than the original…yes, heresy). It’s from the excellent extended opening sequence for Zack Snyder’s remake of George A. Romero’s horror classic, Dawn of the Dead.
In most zombie films we never truly get to see the early hours of the zombie apocalypse from the ground. We always hear about it second-hand after it has already occurred. In Snyder’s remake we get to see it first-hand just as it’s flaring up to uncontrollable levels.
I’m a traditional Romero-type zombie enthusiast myself, but I must admit that Snyder’s choice to make the zombies in this remake runners does add a sense of the end-times as we see zombies after zombies running and gunning after neighbors who either don’t know what the hell just dropped in their neighborhood or just too slow to get away. Love how this sequence even has a shout-out to the original version with the traffic helicopter that flies in to give a bird’s-eye view of the whole apocalypse coming down on everyone.
Through the Shattered Lens 
Just realized on watching this how early Snyder gets in an exploding gas pump/station. Nice.
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That exploding gas station is also a nice shout out to a scene never filmed for Night of the Living Dead.
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I’ve never bothered with the remake, but if you like it better than the original, I wouldn’t yell “blasphemy”, as George A. Romero’s original would have to be one of the most overrated movies of all-time.
There’s only so many zombie movies that one can take these days. They all tend to be about blowing up things and blood and gore and what have you. Films such as “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, “The Last Man on Earth”, “The Omega Man”, “The Stepford Wives”, these were something more than your standard zombie film. They had subtext, or if you didn’t “get” the subtext, at least were genuinely suspenseful (and anybody who declares that “Stepford” doesn’t count as a zombie film has a pretty narrow scope as to what constitutes such a film).
I must confess, I do fancy Lucio Fulci’s “Zombie”, chiefly because of Auretta Gay, plus that soundtrack music is tremendously catchy, and it does manage some feeling of tension amidst the gratuitous gore.
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You’re not the first to call the original as being overrated and its there where we’d disagree.
Too many who seem to dislike or not give the original DAWN it’s due always point out how little subtlety and complexities it has as a film. It’s quite the opposite. I’m not even talking about the very obvious commentary on the American mass consumerism the film pokes at.
The film also worked as a major Brecht-influenced narrative that engaged the viewer beyond just reveling in the film’s EC Comics inspired violence and gore. Whether one thinks the film overrated or not it does stand as the zombie film which helped establish the foundation of what has become the modern-eras take on this particular monster.
There’s a reason why the genre had succeeded even after the countless bad examples that gets released year in and year out. There’s the gore factor but there’s also the freedom the genre gives storytellers.
Romero has touched upon this many times when trying to describe why his zombie films have always remained both a favorite of the mass audience and cineaste alike. With DAWN he went beyond using the zombies as just a horror plot device but as stand-ins for whatever cultural, political and sociological point one needed to make and/or interpret from the film.
There’s a saying from horror critic Mike Bracken about whether the original Dawn of the Dead was one of the best horror films ever made. His answer was that it wasn’t since it limited the film’s scope and influence. He saw the original as one of the best films ever made. While I won’t go as far as agree with that assessment I do agree that the film goes beyond the horror and gore and something more culturally important for some to even contemplate such a thought.
You may not agree and may even loudly shoot down such an idea, but then again those who keep hearing that the film is one of the most overrated film of all-time usually react just as loudly. I look at the original film as the standard-bearer that some have surpassed but in the end it’s still the one every filmmaker looking to make a zombie film hope their film can stand up to.
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Considering the glut of zombie films, there is a surprising and frustrating paucity of good ones.
I consider Snyder’s remake one of the few that justifies its existence by not only holding its own with the original, but improving upon it. The remake is faster-paced, better-acted, and more entertaining. It focuses less on the consumerism metaphor, to no ill effect, and adds plenty of cool story lines and scenes that help improve it over the original. The film is, for better or worse, depending on your motivations for watching a zombie film, less gory than Romero’s original, but is more exciting.
Honestly, I was somewhat disappointed when I watched the original. Granted, I saw it many years after it had been released, so I had been conditioned by, and perhaps inured to, the many subsequent films I had seen. Art should be assed in the context of the time in which it was created. Still, I found Romero’s “Dawn” kind of boring, insufficiently tense, and not particularly frightening. It starts well, but loses steam, somehow. It seemed clunky, at times. There is an “offal” pay-off for gore hounds near the end, but that is a long time coming, and provides shock value (especially by late 70’s standards), but little else.
I don’t think Romero’s effort was completely successful, certainly not as a horror film. As social satire, it was rather odd. I suppose it was commentary, as opposed to a call to action. I think Romero’s best zombie film is “Night of the Living Dead”, hands-down. Limited budget and special effects notwithstanding, viewed now, let alone considered in the context of its time, it is a more disturbing, tense, and effective film, with a more important social commentary of its own. But I digress.
To be fair, though, as always – there would be no remake without the original. “Dawn”, as with all of Romero’s post “Night” zombie films, doesn’t quite work. But it was a cool idea, with some memorable scenes.
I really like Snyder’s film. I’ve seen it twice, and after your post, I will watch it again soon. Thanks for bringing it to mind.
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I would somewhat agree with you that Dawn is not as scary in the traditional sense as the remake. Then again the horror of the original is more of the apocalyptic sense. It’s an almost existential horror being played out on the screen. The film is actually quite campy in how it treats the zombie apocalypse which for some just evokes a certain level of horror that’s less primal and more intellectual. It’s no wonder some call the original less a horror film and more a satire as you have called it. As for the commentary on the consumerism in America that part of the narrative is quite overt. There are more complex, subtle themes being played out throughout the film that takes countless viewings or just one (depending on how observant one wants to be).
For me the scariest is Night with Dawn the most epic and intellectual. The most nihilistic of the original trio being Day which I still say is the most under-appreciated (don’t like to use the under/over rated term since it’s too simplistic and bias of a term) of the bunch. Day is like the Eisenhower fear of the military-industrial complex done with pot-growing in the front yard and cannibalistic corpses knocking at the backdoor.
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A lot of good, incisive analysis there. Your “less primal and more intellectual” observation about the genre is dead-on (so to speak).
I agree with you about “Day”. It doesn’t really even attmpt to be scary, though it does deliver another nasty (some consider it classic) devouring scene near the end. I thought the situation depicted in the film made sense as a logical development of the apocalypse, and the manner and extent to which “the authorities” had managed to control it. That’s a great line about the military-industrial complex theme.
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Seldom in my conversations with people do I hear Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” mentioned as “overrated”. People positively wet themselves over “Dawn of the Dead” (where I live). We’re talking “Dark Knight” levels of overratedness here.
The consumerist angle was done far better in “They Live”. In fact, the alien creatures in “They Live” are very much like Madison Avenue zombies (albeit from another world), and the humans who are seduced by the subliminals in television programmes and printed text similarly become “zombified” (without really acting or appearing differently from regular people). Also, “The Stepford Wives” was really, when you think about it, another horror film about consumerism (not its only theme, but one of its main themes). The Stepford women drone on about the latest domestic products and ultimately sound like waking, talking television commercials.
What really baffled me about “Dawn of the Dead” was that it ran for 126 minutes. Talk about belabouring a point, plus the acting, “scares” and what have you, nothing really special. I recall those “Twilight Zone” episodes from my childhood that could tell a damn great scary story in eight minutes. Romero tends to lead you around in circles for a little bit too long. And to think that a 140-minute print of Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” actually exists.
It’s fine to try to make points about certain topics in a film, but you need to dress it up, otherwise you might as well be listening to a college lecturer reading from a textbook. The great thing about movies is that they can be intellectual and touch upon social, philosophical and political themes, all the while being blissfully entertaining and displaying real showmanship. I don’t believe that Romero does that anywhere nearly as well as a large number of other directors.
I guess that I just find it obscene that the original “Dawn of the Dead” hit cinemas in 1978, the same year as Philip Kaufman’s mind-blowingly superior “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, yet receives precious little respect from horror movie fans.
But no big deal, because “Invasion” is probably the sort of film that gets more attention from a somewhat different audience. I think that people who fancy “IOTBS” probably enjoy a wider scope of films in general, whereas Romero tends to be for teens and gore freaks.
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I actually like Kaufmann’s Invasion. I think it’s one of the better scifi and psychological horror film ever made. But then I could be seen as being bias since part of my enjoyment of the film stems from the fact that it was filmed entirely in San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area. Every outdoor scene I knew and recognized. That’s thing about about what you just said though does one film not getting the respect you think it should get mean another film be considered overrated.
I mean you say that you don’t hear much respect given to Kaufmann’s Invasion but people I know who enjoy the same films as I do think the same as I about it. We don’t even try to compare it to the original since the two operate on so many different wavelengths despite using the same basic idea.
I will agree that the original Dawn is not as scary as some would lead others to believe, but then again I don’t think Romero was going for that. While he was with the original Night I think he went a different route with the sequel. As someone who had grown up reading the horror comics EC Comics released he took inspiration from those and made himself something in the same vein. A fun, bloody romp that also happened to have complex themes that made intellectuals think about what they were watching even if those very same themes flew above the heads of the teens and gore freaks you say the film was intended for.
I also agree with you on that They Live did a better job with the consumerism angle, but it Carpenter’s way was also even more heavy-handed than Romero. That doesn’t mean The Live’s handling of that particular idea wasn’t great, but different filmmakers so different style. Again, I don’t think this theme in Dawn was the only one. I always thought that Dawn of the Dead was a film born from the slow but violent death of the Flower Generation and Peace Movement of the 60’s. Dawn, like films of the same era like Craven’s The Last House on the Left and right up to Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, all arrived after the events at Altamont in 1969. On another level it was also a film that continued Romero’s critique of human society for self-destruction in the face of an overwhelming external crisis. Dawn continued the theme from Night that humans by their very violent and mistrusting nature will never escape extinction because their very individualism is counter-intuitive to putting every head together to find a solution to a pressing problem.
Hell, I can go further and say that Dawn was Romero exploring the war between the ideology that was the main cause of concern for people around the world during that era: Democracy vs Communism/Socialism. the zombies as Romero had changed them into are the ultimately symbol for communism. All individualism has been removed from each and everyone. They all work together towards the same goal (eating the living). Their power comes from their number. The same is opposite for those still alive.
I know that what I just said is similar to the themes and ideas in Invasion of the Body Snatcher and others films of the 50’s through the 60’s. What’s good for one film shouldn’t preclude it being used by another for their own. Romero just happened to change things from invading alien culture to cannibalistic (though I use that term loosely since zombies don’t each other) revived corpses.
I won’t be the first to say that Romero is a great filmmaker since his body of work tend to be very uneven. For every Night and Dawn and Martin we get something like Monkey Shines, Dark Half and Survival of the Dead. He is, in my opinion, one of the most influential horror filmmakers out there whose first film gave birth to a new subgenre of horror that continues to be one of the most popular and utilized one in the field.
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“I guess that I just find it obscene that the original “Dawn of the Dead” hit cinemas in 1978, the same year as Philip Kaufman’s mind-blowingly superior “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, yet receives precious little respect from horror movie fans…”
That should read “yet the latter receives precious little respect etc.”
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