Violence/Gore: Pretty impressive for an R-rated “mainstream” release, but obviously not as excessive as the old days. Still, they try, with throat biting, a spike through the head, and a plethora of other blood-soaked moments. But where is all the flesh-eating stuff? We’re told that the zombies are eating people, but we don’t see any of it! Damn the MPAA anyway.

Sex/Nudity: There’s a bit of apocalyptic “we may never get out of this mall” action briefly, but hey, this movie is about zombies and the end of the world, not screwing around.

Best Line: “When there’s no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth.” (spoken by Ken Foree, original DAWN cast member, in a cameo)

Score:

We appear - thankfully - to be emerging from the ’90s era of self-parodying horror that kicked off with SCREAM and quickly infected every other similar project. While that was nice for a while, it’s good to know the straight-forward, no-holds-barred gory approach favored by the classics of the ’70s and early ’80s is on a comeback. With this remake of the original Romero epic, horror steps up to the plate in the mainstream movie stadium and knocks one out of the park. Anyone who remembers the old EC comic story about the baseball player who gets dismembered by his team and used in a playful night-time game should be able to picture exactly how I envisioned the otherwise awkward metaphor in that last sentence.

But no matter what the makers of this new zombie adventure will tell you, this is not strictly a remake of the original. Sure, the mall is there, and we have Ving Rhames standing in for Ken Foree as the big imposing African-American member of the team, and yes there are zombies all over the place and looking far more grotesque and realistic (if you can use that word here) than their ’70s predecessors. But there are several key alterations that, deliberate or not, clearly place this in a universe other than the one established by George & Co. In fact, a few surprising changes to the zombie “rules” suggest that this movie has been equally influenced by the sort-of-zombie hit 28 DAYS LATER from two years ago and the prevalent fears about bio-terrorism that now weigh heavily on us all in the early days of the 21st century.

To wit: In Romero’s oeuvre, the zombies shamble slowly. In the new DAWN, they run like a bat out of hell, something that you might see in any of a dozen Italian undead films of yore. But there’s a legitimate reason for that here, and it speaks to one of those major telling alterations I mentioned. In the new DAWN, the zombie “infection” (and it is called that several times, shades of 28 DAYS) is spread only by a bite. If you die any other way, you ain’t coming back. As all Romero fans know, this differs drastically from the old DEAD films, in which some supernatural or scientific switch was thrown on the first NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, and after that any dead person is coming back - out of the grave, off the floor from a gunshot wound, and certainly if left relatively intact after a zombie attack. This seemingly minor change firmly establishes the new DAWN as a viral-themed film with an epidemic that might be manmade or bacterial in origin. And they don’t eat dogs! One vital sequence reveals that zombies don’t care about animals - they only want to eat human flesh. But again, Romero established in NIGHT that zombies want any living thing they can chew; not so the new breed. Now I don’t mean to point these out as flaws; they’re merely indicative of a new way of looking at the premise.

If that new way is the price we pay for movies like DAWN to make it into theaters, then roll on with the zombie apocalypse! The new DAWN is action-packed but not without a few intimate moments that help to delineate the otherwise opaque characters. Let’s face it, we’re not here for complex drama, but we do grow to know these people just enough to make their survival - or lack of it - meaningful. There are charming touches like the celebrity shootings (you’ll see), the friendship between Rhames’ cop and the gun shop owner across the street from the mall, and even a few tension-relieving quips from the requisite bitter comedy relief character who manages to be amusing without shattering the reality of the film. And rest assured, there are some scary moments too - my girlfriend nearly crushed my hand during the particularly disturbing baby scene.

Not that the movie doesn’t have its share of stupid people doing stupid things, such as people walking right up to doors that they know have zombies lurking just on the other side, or idiots literally putting their heads right next to the mouths of corpses that might jerk to unlife any second and take a chunk out of their brain. One bit with an airhead girl going after a dog in the midst of the end of the world has to be seen to be believed, but to be honest, I didn’t really fault any of it too much. After all, how do we know how we would react when faced with the total collapse of society, and who knows what strange emotional priorities might enable us to keep our sanity? Or am I just so happy to see zombies in the movie theater that I’m being too easy on them? Oh well.

There may not be as much gore as there used to be, but the movie does deliver on most expectations while freshening the rotting zombie concept with a few modern touches. The first ten minutes are relentless, the final escape in the armored trucks is powerful, and the last shot of the movie (literally) packs quite a punch. But for the love of all that’s unholy, don’t leave the theater right when the closing credits begin! The movie is not over. In fact, the final inter-credits sequence - a last-minute reshoot - is one of the film’s high points.

ATB