 Dawn of the Dead --
posted by Dante on 3.21.2004 - 11:30 pm
I was somewhat amused by this film. I wanted to be impressed, I wanted to like it a lot. I walked into the theater hoping for the best. Maybe I didn't do a good enough job of managing my expectations. Maybe if I had set my sights a little lower.... The best I can give this movie is that it was just 'okay'.
This was a zombie movie for the playstation set. The character development, and non-zombie tensions weren't terribly well conceived. I would have probably liked the movie a lot more if they had just cut out all the personal growth items and character plot. I'm not even saying you need to replace it with more gunplay and brain-eating .. just cut that crap out. Give me a tight little 60 minutes of destruction and turn me loose into the world again.
I think some people take some incredible liberties with a story, but they still expect to be able to say that it was 'based on' the original work. How much of the original concept needs to remain? In watching this film, my only guess ... not a lot. I mean, this movie could just as easily say it was based on the classic tale of 'Romeo and Juliet' - since it includes a forbidden love between two rival groups ... and both of the lovers die. A claim like that would take some sack, but they could have tried it. The shot-for-shot Psycho remake can certainly say it was based on a previous work. This movie had zombies, a shopping mall, and some of the dialog overlapped with the original. I would say that the threshold for the 'based on' claim should lie somewhere in the gray area in between those 2 examples.
Though completely different from the original Dawn of the Dead, the original and the remake are enjoyable for different reasons. The majority of the reviews I have read say that it is completely different - like that's necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps if they hadn't said it was 'based on' the original, they could have avoided those negative comparisons and allowed their film to be evaluated on its own. You should pick up the Romero classic and give it a watch, just don't try to compare the two versions when you're finished.
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 Yawn of the Dead
posted by Christopher on 3.22.2004 - 10:53 am
i'm not really sure how to approach this...
to begin with, i went in with LOW expectations. i figured that the story was going to be something along the lines of a first-person shooter. person is dropped in the middle of thousands of enemies, shoots them all, or dies trying. i figured there would be blood by the bucket, appalling acting, and lots of effects. distilled to one thought: "this is going to suck, but might have some cool stuff in it" i guess i was mostly right.
as an avid horror film avoider, i think i've only seen one or two others in my time (by mistake). it's not that i'm against the violence or gore or anything, and it's not that i'm scared (no, really... i mean it!), it's just that i never thought i'd get anything out of them. if i want wanton destruction, gore and multiple forms of ass-kicking, i prefer a movie like Kill Bill. for suspense or nail-biting, there are movies like Silence of the Lambs. if i want campy or cheesy done right, there's Bubba Ho-tep, Evil Dead, or anything else by sam raimi. most horror movies that i've discussed or read about, or even seen, have elements of gore, suspense and cheese, but don't seem to combine them well. dawn of the dead was no exception... the cheese was unintentional, it wasn't suspenseful, and while it had plenty of gore, there were only a few scenes where i thought "damn, that's cool".
the story did indeed suck, and even in a panic situation, i'd like to think i wouldn't have made some of the dumbass choices the characters did. the suspension of disbelief went right out the window almost immediately.
so even though my expectations were low, they were only just met... i can't say i disliked it - i wasn't about to bite my own leg off to leave the theatre (e.g. Master of Disguise) - i just wasn't into it. there were a few scenes that i enjoyed, but they could have just as easily been in a movie from a different genre, or a video game, for that matter.
i guess i just don't get horror movies. if anyone has a compelling argument for why this genre exists, i'd love to hear it.
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