Dawn of the Dead (2004)

[FoxWander]

I just saw it today, and I really liked it. One of the better zombie movies I've seen. I'm more than half-tempted to base a post-apocolyptic GammaWorld-esque campaign on the concept.

That being said, I had problems with some plot points.

Spoiler

Ok, obviously these people exist in a reality that doesn't have zombie movies. That can explain alot of the stupid things they do- like not initially shooting for the head. Or, not immediately decapitating the half-dead bloated green women from the truck when she finally "died" (or heck, right when they wheeled her in!!). And, most obviously, just calling all the dead-but-still-walking-around-people ZOMBIES! It's the stupid, gimmicky or just dramatically convenient, things in the plot that kinda bug me.To be fair though, the movie holds up pretty well until they decide to leave the mall. And keep in mind- I do like this movie, but here goes...

Why does Andy's gun store just happen to have a steel plate covered DOGGIE DOOR! Good thing he does though, cause the dog is conveniently pre-trained to run to the sound of a whistle blowing!

Speaking of Andy- once the group made friends with CJ, why didn't he mention there just happens to be a sewer tunnel that leads RIGHT to Andy's FRONT DOOR when he was objecting to the 'drive over and have him jump on the roof' plan to rescue the guy!

As for that sewer chase, I love the dramatic control the zombies have to pause and look menacing on the stairs when it looks like the heroes are trapped, rather than charging like the ravaging, mindless horde they've been during the whole film. Again, to be fair though, this 'pause' may just be a side effect of the battle scene going Slo-Mo. (Slo-Mo battle scenes being a contractual obligation for every post-Matrix action film. )

Oh, and some thoughts on that 'horde' as well. At first just a few zombies fall thru the manhole after the heroes. Then it's a whole gang of them at the top of the stairs. By the time our heroes come zipping thru the mall to the zombie-mobile, it's a veritable FLOOD of the critters! How did SO MANY of them make it thru the sewers, up the stairs, thru the back halls of the mall and into the mall after the heroes? Maybe movie zombies are like Black Puddings. If you hit one but don't kill it, it splits in two! So all that random shooting into the horde (Which our heroes should know by now will be completely ineffective!) just made things worse.

Then there's the Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics. Since they've wisely sidestepped ANY sort of explanation for the actual zombies themselves, we'll just skip that bit. I'm talking about the 'makes your burning rag in a flask of oil look like a sad party favor' of a molotav cocktail- the flare on the propane tank! So CJ lobs this thing into the zombie mob that's keeping the buses from moving. It gets lost in the horde but (conveniently for CJ) Quarterback Zombie picks it up and, making to lob it back, holds it up high. Shoot the tank... BOOM! Massive (and again, in contractually obligated Slo-Mo!) explosion with cool shockwave effect that mows down the zombies for a hundred feet or more... but leaves the ALUMINUM SIDING shielded bus just 10 feet away completely unscathed!! Oh, and let's not forget the apparently superhuman CJ who manages to duck back into the bus FASTER than the approaching explosion!! And why didn't CJ use his superspeed to get out of the fricking bus a few scenes later rather than opting for the 'brilliant' hold-off-the-zombie-hordes-with-a-PISTOL plan!! A PISTOL?!?!

CJ's plan shows another example of the invulnerable nature of aluminum siding though. Of course, when CJ gets knocked back onto the huge propane tank (it's hugeness being explicitly shown during the building-the-zombie-mobile montage which bizarrely had someone measuring the thing and marking it as "36" inches wide! Why were they measuring this??) and road flares get scattered everywhere, it's pretty obvious how CJ is going out. One lit flare and bullet later... SUPER BOOM!! (With, again, high altitude Slo-Mo!) [cue 1950's scientist vioce-over] But thanks to impregnible nature of our friend- Aluminum! Our heroes, just FIFTY FEET AWAY on the dock, are completely unharmed!![/end voice-over] (Screw mithral and adamantine- I"m getting me some ALUMINUM plate mail!!)

But at least nobody survived in the end! Well maybe they survived the island, depends how hopeful you are for a "good" horror movie ending. "Good" meaning everybody dies- ESPECIALLY when you think they've gotten away. And again, I have to stress, I really liked this movie. Pretty much everything I'm ranting about is completely ignorable in the interest of just enjoying a good horror flick. I especially liked the very NON-cliche fast zombies! (Why would being dead make you so slow when you don't have muscle pains and fatigue toxins to worry about anymore?) The chainsaw channel for dealing with zombie hitch-hikers was the perfect kind of thing a PC in a game like this would come up with! For that matter, so was the 'shoot the celebrity look-alikes' game they played.

Anyway, nitpicky flaws aside, I'll definitely be adding it to my movie collection when the DVD comes out.

 

[Kai Lord]

That being said, I had problems with some plot points.

Spoiler

And why didn't CJ use his superspeed to get out of the fricking bus a few scenes later rather than opting for the 'brilliant' hold-off-the-zombie-hordes-with-a-PISTOL plan!!!

Spoiler

Because he was contractually obligated to fulfill his role as Hudson/Gorman by cursing the horde of monsters attacking him before taking them all out with him in a giant fireball.

And I really wish the first poster had just put "Spoilers" in the subject header so we wouldn't have a page of this semi-annoying blacked out text.

 

[Warden]

EDIT: Even though its the type of scene you'd kind of expect in a movie like this, I found the "chainsaw accident" to be incredibly brutal and unsettling. When I think about the film my thoughts inevitably come back to that and it takes away from the "thrills as entertainment" aspect and just makes the whole experience kind of a downer.

That's always been the purpose behind a good zombie movie. Gory effects and stomach pulling horror are a staple as well, but the main purpose is to shock and upset. If you sit there in the theatre or in your living room and say to yourself: "Man, if that were to really happen, we'd be (insert expletive)!" I've always felt that way. It's the reason why excellent zombie flicks feature ordinary people in this situation -- the bad ones are a Predator ripoff. Zombies taking over the world is perhaps the largest, most biblical curse that you can live through...for a while.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. While there were some pieces of the original that stand out better (that level of shock and dismay that I spoke of earlier was more prevalent in the 1978 version, I found), it was good to see that this revised version recognized many elements from the original and tried to incorporate those into our 2004 film. The scenes of carnage in the suburbs was very nicely done (particularly the van crashing into the gas station as part of the background -- very nicely done).

I've tried to convince the rest of my gaming group to watch it as there may be a scene in which they have to enter a zombie-infested section of town sometime soon...

 

[d4]

EDIT: Even though its the type of scene you'd kind of expect in a movie like this, I found the "chainsaw accident" to be incredibly brutal and unsettling.

i saw the movie with my group and afterwards we said, "great idea! give the old man with the 8 Dexterity on an unstable platform the chainsaw!"

and as far as the girl running for the dog being unreasonable, we all agreed we've got a player in our group who's character(s) would do exactly the same thing...

 

[WayneLigon]

About the decision to leave the mall. They pretty much have to. We don't really get a sense of exactly how much time passes, though I think it has to be less than a couple weeks because of when Luda gives birth; at least I think so. Given that she looks massively pregnant when they join with her, I'm assuming she could give birth any time. But she was kinda slender; they maybe could have been there as long as a month.

From what happened around the coffee stand, I'm assuming they were running out of food, esp when they realized they had to give some to Dave. So, they were going to have to leave at some point. The situation wouldn't have been any different, though.

Re: Getting food to Dave. Damn if I wouldn't have found a way to built a catapult

 

[Kai Lord]

Re: Getting food to Dave. Damn if I wouldn't have found a way to built a catapult

I think you mean "Andy". And I wonder if your average mall has those big waterballoon slingshots that take three people to fire, two to hold each end and one to pull it back. That would have done the trick....

 

[Villano]

With the creative bankrupcy in Hollywood in which every other film is a remake, an adaption of a tv series, or a sequel, I think this film (along with Walking Tall) are a sign of the End Times!

Seriously, I think this is the first Hollywood film that's a remake of a sequel. That's just so sad. And Walking Tall is a remake of a film that was based on a true story.

Why couldn't they just have made an original zombie film set some time within the Living Dead trilogy? Or let Romero do his planned 4th film?

Anyway, I'm waiting until it comes out on dvd. The running zomibes turn me off. I don't mind a fast shuffle, but a full on, arm pumping run looks kind of stupid. To quote George Romero, "We don't need ninja zombies." :\

 

[Iron_Chef]

There is a dual-statted AFMBE/GURPS adventure/map pack, MALL OF THE DEAD (from Steve Jackson Games) which presents survivor and zombie counters and a detailed shopping mall adventure location (dual sided, hex and square gridded maps). Retails for $14.95.

 

[WayneLigon]

There is a dual-statted AFMBE/GURPS adventure/map pack, MALL OF THE DEAD (from Steve Jackson Games) which presents survivor and zombie counters and a detailed shopping mall adventure location (dual sided, hex and square gridded maps). Retails for $14.95.

And a wonderful, lovely thing it is, too.

 

[Iron_Chef]

Just came back from seeing the new Dawn. Lotta fun, but not as good as the original, which was an epic and one of my all-time favorite movies. The new fast zombies didn't bother me. What bothered me was I didn't care about any of the characters the way I cared about the four in the 1978 original Dawn. The script was definitely not as clever as George Romero's (who got the shortest screen time for his credit in the film, another irksome moment for me as a Romero fan). Still, the new Dawn's lotsa fun, but I wanted to see more of the happenings in the world at large through the newscasts, hear more on the radio, etc. I recommend seeing the film, and find it compares favorably with 28 Days Later, which didn't have enough zombie action in it (technically they weren't zombies, yeah, I know, but you know what I mean), but was a bit more cerebral. Five minutes of gore and five minutes of character development were cut (gore by MPAA to get an "R" rating , the rest probably for pacing or run time). I'm sure these will end up on a special unrated edition in six months or so. The movie was still gory as hell, though, and it takes a lot of grue to satisfy an old gore hound like me. Intestine-ripping/eating was missing (I hear this was a cut scene for the rating).