Alright, horror aficionados and those who 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 seasoned horror enthusiasts approach this blockbuster with a degree of skepticism.
A Suburban Nightmare
Sarah Polley is enjoying a quiet moment with her husband before bed in Wisconsin. This is where insomnia comes in handy: Sarah Polley’s heroism stems from the fact that she woke up first. When a plague-ridden woman with bluish eye sockets and a bloody mouth bursts into their bedroom in the morning, her husband is to blame for still being asleep and getting bitten. The husband dies immediately, but then wakes up and becomes plague-ridden himself, that is, a zombie. He wanted to bite Sarah. She hid in the bathroom. He was tearing. 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 to light, they decided to take revenge. They made all the cities and towns dead. Rome, Paris, London, New York. Moscow is not mentioned, although one of the heroines is Russian by passport. By the way, she suffers the worst.
Survival in a Supermarket
The unbitten are distinguished from the bitten 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 product they are interested in is only the insides of the unbitten. Neck, arm, chest, belly. The whole set will be available, as well as shootings, explosions of cars, buses, and the hard work of a chainsaw. The combination of a zombie, a vampire and a ghost in one bottle, which is apparently a novelty, in mass form gives a 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 dead were defeated by the blockbuster.
From Nonconformist Horror to Mainstream Dystopia
The horror films of Romero, Argento, and their predecessor Corman were a stronghold of cinematic nonconformists and leftists. They sarcastically and dirtily mocked ancient instincts and modern cinema, 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 this debut betrays the 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 anti-utopia like the past “28 Days Later” or the upcoming “The Day After Tomorrow”.
Morality and Mayhem
Psychologism and values are on the march. The conflict is that the bad security guards of the supermarket mock the newcomers alive and do not allow them to launch another pack of newcomers alive 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 - 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 in many ways in the new conditions. Here it is - the most humor (with the chess player across the road, with the inedible dog). Finally, it even risked equipping a “Noah’s Ark” and break through to a “Mount Ararat”, and all the creatures were in pairs. In general, the Bible, not a horror film.
A Politically Correct Allegory?
Only in the final credits a little bit of hooliganism, but it does not change anything. “Dawn of the Dead” is clearly a politically correct, mainstream allegory. In this vein, while preserving the humor of Romero and Argento, one cannot help but assume what it is really about. 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 marksmanship. “Can you do Burt Reynolds (the zombie looks like Burt Reynolds)?”. “Can you do Britney Spears (the zombie looks like Britney Spears)?”. A parody of Hollywood is the tenth thing here. The first is that for the few “living” the film corrects the license to shoot the rest. Yes, even all of them. They are zombies.
This license is stronger than the plot as much as “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 tells something about the attitudes of today’s America. “International terrorism”, the second “Desert Storm”…