"When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth."
Dawn of the Dead (1978) (also known as Zombi) is the sequel to Night of the Living Dead (1968), this one is also written and directed by George A. Romero. This film also spawned it's own set of unofficial sequels with the "Zombi" films.
Unlike Night of the Living Dead which takes place during and immediately after the mysterious zombie outbreak, Dawn starts a couple days later. This film involves a group of survivors who decide to hold up in a large shopping mall and all the troubles that come with that.
[This review is based on the 127 minute "Directors Cut"]
Unlike Night, which had pretty hit or miss acting, the acting here is all around pretty solid. I like all of our leads here but the big stand out is Ken Foree there's a reason his career has taken off more than the rest, he's got the best performance in this film and you feel for his character more than the rest.
Despite this film being riddled with gore and violence, you could actually argue that this film is pretty clever about its use of gore. There's plenty of very creative zombie deaths and the use of amputees and similar tricks really is quite smart. Most of this credit goes to Mr. Tom Savini, whose career as a makeup/special effects guru fortunately really took off after this film.
The biggest issue with this film is there's not technically any villains. There's the zombies yes, but even they are barely vilified and are more of just a constant caution for our characters. And the biker marauders only come in in the final act. So much of this film doesn't have a over-arching threat. And while this makes for an interesting mood for much of the film it makes a lot of the movie kind of boring. Even the structure is kind of weak when you compare it to Night of the Living Dead, in Night the characters believed (and the film told you) it would be over by the morning and that they just had to survive in the farm house through the night. This film the characters don't question if anyone is coming to help them, or if there's some kind of cure they just assume it's the end of the world and they need to hide out somewhere and make the best of it. This does however tie into this film's "theory" of why the dead have come back to life, interestingly enough [see quote above]. Like I said, this creates a unique and interesting mood, but doesn't make the most interesting film to watch.
There's a huge part of this movie that seems very dated when watched today. Don't get me wrong, when I watched this when I was younger I thought this was the SMARTEST movie I had ever seen. But today I can see that time hasn't been the kindest to this film. Just all the scenes of shopping or "the latest inventions" the mall provides, and definitely the biker gang marauders kind of date the film, that and the soundtrack doesn't help either.
I'm not a fan of the soundtrack for Dawn of the Dead. I like the Goblin tracks cause they're kind of eerie in a very 70s' way. But all of the rest of the in-between mall music is pretty atrocious. It's some kind of weird horrible cross between polka and elevator music. Fortunately for the film, when viewed today (much like the marauders) it does add some extra humor. You just may walk away from the film with one of the really annoying melodies stuck in your head.
One great thing this film does that most other zombie films can't seem to do is show the zombies in an empathetic light. The end of the first sequence with the swat guys having to kill the zombies kept in the basement of the building does this masterfully. You can tell from the looks on the characters' faces that it's not something they're happy about doing, they know that these used to be humans like themselves but they also know that they need to put them down. Even when clearing the mall, there's a huge difference between the way our heroes do it and the biker gang's killings.
Once again the direction is pretty masterful in this film. In ten years, Romero's intuitive ability at directing has become more refined and well thought out. There's lots of scenes with really suspenseful moments including Stephen getting lost in the darkness of the pipes and trying to fire at a lone zombie that followed him there, the attempt to barricade the doors of the mall amongst a mass of zombies and even the characters hiding out and using the mall as their fortress to battle the invading marauders.
One of my favorite things about this film is the really strong characters. You as the viewer mostly care about all of them and even though they don't get along perfectly the film has a great way of showing that what happens to one character really affects all of the others. I love how even though this film doesn't have a huge villain it still finds away to give all of the main characters a really strong and unique character arc.
And lastly of course I couldn't finish without mentioning this film's social commentary. Apparently unlike Night, Romero started planning this film initially with the germ of its themes. This film (obviously) is a big attack on American consumerism and materialism, which in the world today sadly has only gotten worse since the release of this film. But when you consider that when this was released the shopping mall wasn't as standardized an common place as it is today, you realize that Romero was really thinking ahead with this one. "This was an important place in their lives."
3.5/5 Stars.
Happy watching!
Tomorrow on the 31 Nights of Macabre Movies we're going to finish Romero's original trilogy with Day of the Dead (1985).
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