*** Official DAWN OF THE DEAD Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[RobertR]

Saw it today. I don't understand why some people talk about Romero's slow zombies as if that depiction is written on stone tablets somewhere. I enjoyed the remake. Decent blend of characters, gore, and horror thrills. My fiance was hopping in her seat during the intense moments.

 

[Alex Spindler]

The only thing I could figure is that they used the crowbar to open an outside access door. But it leaves that as a potential zombie entrypoint if they busted the locking mechanism. Definitely a weakpoint.

Another goof I caught was that the entrance they made was covered in glass, but Anna was able to get through there barefoot just fine.

 

[BrandonM]

I thought the same thing the moment he first appeared on screen.

 

[Michael Allred]

Well....besides dropping a nuclear bomb...

 

[Evan Lee]

I would just like to add how much better I thought that this movie is than 28 Days Later for those who have not seen it. I rented yesterday 28 Days Later, watched it, and thought that Danny Boyle took various elements from Romero's films cobbled them together and made the zombies run as his contribution. The DOTD remake is every bit as good as 28 Days Later was supposed to be.

 

[Tino]

28 Days Later was a very good film, and it seems as though it has unfairly become the new whipping boy when being compared to this new Dawn Of The Dead.

Yes, Dawn Of The Dead is a better film imo, but not by a tremendous amount. 28 Days Later more than holds its own in the Zombie genre, even though there weren't any Zombies in the film.

Both films are great in their own way. No need to elevate one by trashing another, right?

 

[Chris Wagner]

Just came back from the theater, and was pleasently surprised. Much better than I anticipated, being a long time admirer of the original. This is a totally different movie, aside from the mall setting.

The debate of zombies (OT) vs infected (28 DL) may be a little more blurred from what I took from this "remake". Specifically during the birth sceen when the father of the baby shoots and kills the older lady the others are not concerned with her returning because she was not bitten. Also, numerous times through out the film they refer to people being bitten and thus infected.

Thoughts?

 

[Sean Bryan]

Just saw it yesterday and thought it was very good.

It's funny. I fell asleep on the couch last night watching/listening to TV no problem. But then when I woke up and moved to the bed I couldn't fall back to sleep. I think because there was nothing to listen to my mind just went back to the film and stayed there. I just kept thinking about it and couldn't relax. Finally had to resort to good old Nyquil to knock me out. No bad dreams that I can remember, but they are more likely to pop up tonight or in a couple of days as my brain processes things. Now each night before I go to sleep for a while I'll have to do the little exercise where I try to prep myself to remember that I can be "Neo" in my dreams, just in case.


About the "infecteds" of 28 Days Later and the Zombies of Dawn of the Dead: Yes, there are similarities in that it may be a virus that is the cause of the living Dead. But that is about it.

The infecteds are still alive and they would eventually die naturally by starvation if they don't eat. The Zombies in Dawn of the Dead are dead. Re-animated dead people. There's actually more similarity to Resident Evil. In RE, we clearly know that it is the T-virus that causes people to die and then brings them back. A bite transmits the virus. It would seem that DotD is using the same mechanism. But in Dawn, the story isn't about why it happens. In this story it is just happening and the focus is on the regular people trying to survive it without having any idea what is really happening or why. SO we don't really get an official explanation of why it is happening. Of course, some are smart enough to come up with the possible explanation of it being some kind of virus based on what they observed.

I have to wonder, though. If it was a virus that accidentally got out of some lab with a very short incubation period after a bite, then it would seem to be easier to contain. A viral infection with a long incubation period would allow for people to be infected and then travel and eventually infect other areas. Since this seemed to be happening on a Global scale there would have to be more to it. I guess you could theorize that it is super natural in origin (real "end of the world" orchastrated by God). But in that case God chooses to make it work the way it does (like a viral infection) for his own reasons.

If this was a viral outbreak with such a quick "infected to symptomatic" turnover but yet happened on a Global scale, maybe someone decided to deliberately spread it around like in 12 Monkeys. The poor survivors will never know either way.



If I ever made a "zombie movie" I'd actually use both fast and slow zombies. New/fresh zombies would be fast, but they would eventually slow down as the body decomposes. I think there may have been some hint of this in DotD, actually.

 

[Todd_B]

^ I read, before release day, that there were going to be a mix of the slow and the "Carl Lewis" zombies.

All through the flick I kept looking and looking, but all I saw were the hyperactive ones.

Todd B

 

[Shawn_KE]

That's my thought of how it would be as well.

 

[Jordan_E]

For me, something seemed to be missing in this version of Dawn. I really still can't put my finger on it. Maybe it was just too glossy compared to the original. And did anyone else think to themselves as she was washing her hands: HEY! What if that ends up being your only source of water later, stupid?!

 

[Shawn_KE]

What would you do if you were covered in your spouses blood? I'm sure you would want to wash it off. Me, I would have used the water fountain though

 

[Jordan_E]

If my spouse tried making a meal out of me, I'd just wipe it off on my jeans!

 

[SarahG]

I saw this last night...enjoyed it for a movie and a good time..nothing more than that. everyone in the theater kept laughing tho..so i think it took away from some of the moments that were supposed to be more intense.

i too had a few of the inconsitency questions...esp. about how they actually got into the mall

and i HATED the security gaurds. at least CJ redeemed himself at the end.

 

[Evan Lee]

Tino

Point taken, I picked the wrong place to express my dislike of 28 Days Later. I should have comment in its thread, and not this one.

However, I stand by my opinion that it was it not very good, and not the least bit scary.

I do not want anyone who shares my opinion on 28 Days Later to be stay away from Dawn of the Dead because they think the two films are similar. I maintain that they are not.

 

[Seth Paxton]

AGREED!


I love the new film, which I said in the official review thread. It's laughable to me that one of the goriest films to come out in years is criticized for not being gory enough. Give me a break and stick to defensible points about changes you didn't like, maybe slow zombies, editing pace, or shift in the number of humans involved. I won't agree with your dislike, but at least I will agree that those things were different/done that way.


The baby is funny, but I think its more from a social point of view than the film's depiction. I think we react to overtly horrible things with a sense of humor. The reality is for Mehki that he has just lost his wife and baby to the zombies and that was all he was living for. It's a pretty tragic moment actually and its easy to see why his actions changed. If your goal is not "the good of the people" but rather your family then resorting to a desperate, hopeless, unhelpful behavior seems very natural to me.

The social truth is that people do have very different agendas, interests and goals and I think the new Dawn shows that just as well as the original trilogy. I think that fundamental problem still exists in the new film for the characters.

But sitting in the audience we see it from an outsiders view of the good of the many. We want the good guys to win, so we see any action divergent of that goal as "stupid". But that doesn't make such a goal realistic. Being a hero is hard, that's why people get praised so much when they do take a heroic stand for the good of others. Mehki just seemed like a real person to me, and the zombie baby represented the bottom of the "hope" barrel. Not just for him but for the other characters too.

I think that's what drives them to want out more than anything else. The baby image represents to those characters their certain failure to survive, even if they possibly could have survived there for quite some time. At some point you'd have to ask yourself "what do I want out of life and what/when do I need to do to get it". I don't think any of them was really keen on a life within the mall forever as prisoners.


I thought the strongest social/emotional commentary came from the Johnny Cash opening song and the Cheese lounge version of the Disturbed song. Those two sequences (lyrics/images/music said quite a lot to me about the emotions of the moment and how society was affected and was reacting.

Part of the opening commetary is in Cash's lyrics, but also in the idea that a lot of the footage used was real footage that becomes "monster" footage in the editing/usage. It blurs the line between monster movie and nightly news, and I think their is some social commentary in that.

At the end I'm not sure who survives, but I took it to imply that none of them do. They have no engine after the fire so they can't speed away. They could only push off the dock. The camera shows extreme close ups of an attack and they wouldn't be attacking the abandoned camera, so the kid at least is overrun. There are also flashes of blood over what appears to be the camera lens, though it seems clear just a second later.

Maybe Ving and the girls somehow push away, but it seems unlikely. With no fuel or engine the boat is only semi-usable. They have no water because you see an empty water gallon earlier (although the lake water might be okay I guess, not sure about the Great Lakes drinkability), food is gone (thus the maggots). In short they need help on land and every place they stop is likely to be the same as where they land at the end.

Either they die right there or shortly thereafter. I vote that they are overrun right then based on how quickly they were overrun and lost people earlier in the film in similar situations. Happy, happy, joy, joy.

 

[John Geelan]

Saw it again today and the ending does look like a bummer for brave survivors. One would hope they find a place to live out their lives but it does look like the camera drops to the deck and the zombies are swarming.

The movie was not as chilling the second time since I knew all the plot devices but once again, it is a pretty good movie overall.

I would have liked 2 things if I had directed this movie...1. a scene showing the zombies at the glass doors shot from the inside at some point (the one scene where a zombie rubs up against the glass was a good fright).
2. A nighttime scene from the roof....it would have been creepy to have the survivors sit up in the roof after dark and hear the moans of the people right below them. Do the zombies stay there all day and night?

Seeing the movie a second time confirms that this event is global and it looks like the world is cooked. So the survivors really have no shot when they exit the Mall.

 

[James_Kiang]

Well, the box-office is plunging a lot faster than I thought it would on this one, but it should still be quite profitable when all is said and done. Let's talk sequel for a second.

DISCLAIMER: Since this was pretty much a re-imagining of Dawn, I'm looking for similarly fresh takes on the potential sequel. Nothing against Day, but let's try something different than what they did with that one.

1 - Another town, another mall. Please no.

2 - I mentioned the idea of Las Vegas earlier. Not sure it is different enough though.

3 - An airport? Try to get a pilot and a plane and go looking for safe spots?

General - Would you want to see something set around the same timeframe (beginning of the outbreak) or sometime in the future?

 

[John Geelan]

I would like to see a time frame right after the end of this one.

There must be other 'survivors' holed up out in the world.
It would be interesting how they deal with the problem and if they can communicate with each other.

Tough to do a proper sequel as by the end of DOTD, it looks very bleak for the world anyway. If such a plague really happened...the only chance is that it burns its self out and some survivors are immune.

 

[SteveGon]

Since we're on the subject of a DOTD sequel, I'd like to see one where the survivors are holed up on Alcatraz. There'd be some irony in there...