Alright, you ghoulishly gleeful bunch, ready to revel in the misfortune of others? Your “Dawn of the Dead” has arrived! There’s plenty here to satisfy your primal cravings for sex and gore, even if the more discerning horror aficionados might approach this blockbuster with a raised eyebrow.
Sarah Polley is enjoying a quiet moment with her husband before bed somewhere in Wisconsin. And here’s where insomnia comes in handy: Sarah Polley’s greatest act of heroism is that she woke up first. Because when a plague-ridden girl with bluish eye sockets and a bloody mouth burst into their bedroom in the morning, all her husband’s fault was that he was still asleep, and he got bitten. The husband died instantly, but then woke up and became plague-ridden himself, that is, a zombie. He wanted to bite Sarah. She hid in the bathroom. He was tearing at it. She climbed out the window. Pure nightmare. But when Sarah stumbled outside, it became clear that this was no nightmare. Everyone is running. Apparently, the dead became cramped in the cemeteries, although this is not explained. Overload, and a couple were squeezed out. Well, having come into the light, they decided to take revenge. They turned all the cities and villages into the dead. Rome, Paris, London, New York. Moscow is not mentioned, although one of the heroines is Russian by passport. She, by the way, suffers the worst.
Those who haven’t been bitten are distinguished from those who have by articulate speech and firearms. After various chases, they huddle together and dig in at a luxurious supermarket. The bitten can’t stand it, because they want to eat, and the only product they are interested in is the insides of the unbitten. Neck, arm, breast, tummy. The whole set will be available, as well as shootings, explosions of cars, buses, and the hard work of a chainsaw. The combination of zombie, vampire and ghost in one bottle, which is apparently an innovation, in mass form gives rich ground for film quotes from all horror films at once, which does not require explanation. But it is the advanced fans who immediately feel: something is wrong. And indeed, in “Dawn of the Dead” the blockbuster defeated the dead.
From Cult Classic to Mainstream Blockbuster
The horror films of Romero, Argento, and their predecessor Corman were the bastion of cinematic nonconformists and leftists. They mocked ancient instincts and modern cinema with sarcasm and dirt, stubbornly working in group “B” with a small budget and a great sense of humor. They were never mainstream. The current director Zack Snyder, with his debut, gives away an exemplary advertiser, who in the past diligently served “Audi”, “Jeep”, “Land Rover”, “Nike”, “Reebok” and “Budweiser”. As if Romero’s remake turned into a purely mainstream dystopia like the past “28 Days Later” or the upcoming “The Day After Tomorrow”.
Exploring Themes and Conflicts
Psychologism and values are on the march. The conflict is that the bad security guards of the supermarket mock the newcomers and do not allow them to launch another pack of newcomers into the supermarket. It is clear what’s next: the living will not only put the security guards under arrest, but the worst of them will be re-educated in the end. He will become a doomed hero. Another conflict is whether to shoot a living person if he has already been bitten, but has not yet died and has not woken up to start biting too. It is clear that relatives are against it, but in the end the survivors themselves will ask to be shot. Or a close relative will do it himself. In general, the story of “Dawn of the Dead” is not linear, but epic. First, the surviving humanity was afraid and hid in many ways, then got used to it and began to settle down in many ways in the new conditions. Here, in fact, is the most humor (with the chess player across the road, with the inedible dog). Finally, it even risked equipping a kind of “Noah’s Ark” and break through to a certain “Mount Ararat”, and all creatures were in pairs. In general, the Bible, not a horror movie.
A Politically Charged Subtext?
Only on the final credits a little hooliganism, but it does not change anything. “Dawn of the Dead” is clearly a politically correct, mainstream allegory. In this vein, preserving the humor of Romero and Argento, one cannot help but assume what is really going on. All the characters in the film are walking and bipedal. But of these, crowds of bloody and bluish, hungry and aggressive - this means the dead. Therefore, the few who are not yet bluish can shoot them at their pleasure, laughing and competing in accuracy. “Can you do Burt Reynolds (the zombie looks like Burt Reynolds)?”. “Can you do Britney Spears (the zombie looks like Britney Spears)?”. The parody of Hollywood is the tenth thing here. The first is that the film gives the few “living” a license to shoot the rest. Even all of them. They’re zombies.
This license is stronger than the plot to the extent that “seeing” is more convincing than “hearing”. And it is very curious not at all in the history of horror films and not in the history of cinema. It says something about the attitudes of today’s America. “International terrorism”, the second “Desert Storm”…