Dawn of the Dead (2004 film)

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For the original, see Dawn of the Dead

Dawn of the Dead
Promotional poster for Dawn of the Dead
Directed by	Zack Snyder
Produced by	Marc Abraham Eric Newman Richard P. Rubinstein
Written by	1978 Screenplay: George A. Romero Screenplay: James Gunn Uncredited: Michael Tolkin Scott Frank
Starring	Sarah Polley Ving Rhames Jake Weber Mekhi Phifer Kim Poirier
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	March 19, 2004 March 26, 2004
Running time	Theatrical Cut: 100 min. Director's Cut: 109 min.
Language	English
Budget	$28,000,000
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IMDb profile

Dawn of the Dead is a loose, "reimagined" remake of George A. Romero's 1978 horror film of the same name. The remake and original both depict a handful of human survivors living in a shopping mall surrounded by swarms of zombies, but the details differ significantly. The film was released in 2004 by Universal Studios and features cameos from original cast members Ken Foree, Scott Reiniger and Tom Savini.

Tagline:

"When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth."

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 Premise changes from the original
5 Trivia
6 External links
- 6.1 References

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The story concerns a plague which turns recently deceased humans into flesh-craving ghouls. While the source and exact nature of this contagion remains unexplained, it is confirmed that it is spread when a victim is bitten by an infected person.

Ana, a nurse, finishes a long shift at her Milwaukee County hospital and returns home to her husband, Luis. They make love and go to sleep, missing warnings trickling through the local media. The next morning they are awoken by a zombiefied neighbor girl, who bites Luis. He dies, immediately reanimates, and attacks Ana. Ana escapes him and flees the chaos-torn suburbs in her car before a failed hijacking attempt sends her crashing into a tree. The opening credits roll, showing the worldwide collapse of human civilization.

Ana meets Kenneth, a grim police sergeant. They join three others - jack-of-all-trades Michael, petty criminal Andre and his pregnant wife Luda - and break into a local shopping mall. A scuffle with a zombified mall security guard results in Luda getting a minor bite-wound. They then meet three living security guards (C.J., Bart and Terry), and give up their weapons in exchange for refuge. After the group secures the mall, they "meet" another survivor, Andy, who is stranded alone in his gun store, across the mall's zombie-infested parking lot.

A delivery truck arrives, carrying the driver Norma, jerkish Steve, working man Tucker, elderly Glen, trampy Monica, Frank and his teen daughter Nicole, and a critically-injured obese woman. The newcomers bring word that no help is coming from the outside. The obese woman dies, reanimates and is killed by Ana. Frank soon succumbs to his own bites, and his reanimated body is destroyed by Kenneth.

Though the mall provides many material distractions, and Ana edges into a romance with Michael, the undead surround the refuge in ever-increasing numbers. Finally the mall’s power goes out and Michael, C.J., Bart and Kenneth go down to the underground parking garage to turn on the emergency generator. After they meet an unaffected dog, a zombie swarm kills Bart and traps the others in the generator compartment, where they douse the zombies with gasoline and set them on fire. Meanwhile, Andre, sunk totally into denial, has the heavily-pregnent and heavily-infected Luda tied to a bed in the mall's children's store. Even as Luda gives birth, she dies and reanimates. Norma checks on the couple, discovering the zombie-Luda and the demented Andre clutching a small bundle. Norma kills Luda, causing Andre to completely snap. They exchange more gunfire, and the remaining members of the group rush in to find their bodies. Ana opens the bundle, revealing a zombie baby. She draws her own gun and kills it.

At an inpromptu memorial, Kenneth says anything is better than waiting to die. The remaining mall-dwellers thus plot to escape to the local marina, and from there travel out on Steve's boat to an island in Lake Michigan. They begin to reinforce two small buses from the parking garage in preparation for the trip. Meanwhile, Andy is rapidly running out of food, so the group straps a pack on "Chips", the dog from the basement, and lower him the ground. Unfortunately, while Chips makes it to the gun-shop, a zombie gets in as well and bites Andy. Nichole, distraught over Chips, takes the delivery truck and barges her way into the gun store, where a now-zombified Andy traps her in a closet.

Kenneth, Michael, C.J., Terry and Tucker gather what weapons they have and go into the sewers. They reach the gun store, kill Andy, and gather weapons and ammunition. A detonated propane tank is used to clear a path back to the sewers, but the zombies follow them, Tucker is killed and mall security is breached. The remaining survivors flee in the buses, using another propane tank to clear the parking lot. When Glen moves to take out a hitchhiking zombie with a chainsaw, a sudden swerve send the chainsaw cutting into Monica instead. The resulting splatter of blood causes driver Ken to crash. Glen and Monica die, while Steve flees and is attacked by the hitchhiking zombie.

The others scramble for the second bus, meeting zombie-Steve en route. Ana shoots him, then must linger long enough to get the boat keys off his corpse, allowing more zombies to catch up with them. After another fight, they escape and arrive at the marina, crashing the bus at the dock. Swarmed by pursuing zombies, C.J. sacrifices himself, blowing up the bus, the zombies, and himself. The remainder of the group gets on the boat, except for Michael; he was bitten while Ana got the keys. The boat sets sail, and Ana watches unflinchingly as he draws his pistol and a final gunshot rings out over the water.

The end-credits roll, interspaced with video footage taken by Terry, using a camera from the boat. Following a grim voyage, the remaining humans succeed in reaching an island, only to find a new swarm of zombies waiting for them. As the swarm attacks, the camera falls to the ground and goes dark, leaving the fate of the survivors unknown.

[edit] Cast

Actor	Role
Sarah Polley	Ana Clark
Ving Rhames	Kenneth Hall
Jake Weber	Michael
Kevin Zegers	Terry
Lindy Booth	Nicole
Mekhi Phifer	Andre
Ty Burrell	Steve Marcus
Michael Kelly	C.J.
Michael Barry	Bart
Jayne Eastwood	Norma
Boyd Banks	Tucker
Inna Korobkina	Luda
R.D. Reid	Glen
Kim Poirier	Monica
Matt Frewer	Frank
Bruce Bohne	Andy

[edit] Reception

Heavily derided by some fans before its release,^[1] on release the film received mixed reactions from both moviegoers and critics. Some felt that the film did not retain the social satire and poignancy of the original.^[2] George A. Romero is quoted as saying of the film, "It was better than I expected. [...] The first 15, 20 minutes were terrific, but it sort of lost its reason for being. It was more of a video game. I'm not terrified of things running at me; it's like Space Invaders. There was nothing going on underneath."^[3] The film grossed over $59 million at the box office,^[4] more than any other zombie film in history.^[5]

[edit] Premise changes from the original

In the original film the zombies moved very slowly and were most menacing when they collected in large groups. In the remake however the zombies are fast and agile, and are, on the whole, closer to the quick-moving, psychotically violent victims of the 'Rage' virus in the 2002 British horror film 28 Days Later than the traditional shambling Zombie archetype. Many admirers of the original (as well as Romero himself) protested this change, feeling that it limited the impact of the undead.^[6]^[7] This is somewhat borne out by the fact that the remake has almost no close up shots of zombies that last more than a second or two. Snyder mentions this problem in the commentary track of the remake's DVD, pointing out that they seem too human when the camera lingers upon them for longer.

In the original, all 'recently dead' are reanimated by an unidentified source. Zombie bites seem to somehow induce rapid death, and subsequent reanimation. The workings aren't elaborated upon. In the remake, it springs up worldwide overnight, and is definitely bloodborne, relying on zombie bites for transmission. In the original, anyone who dies of any reason returns after an hour or two. In the remake, only those infected return and after a period of less than a minute after death.

The original had a smaller cast than the remake, allowing more screen time for each character. Many fans and critics protested the resulting loss of character development.^[8]

In the original version the story unfolds over several months, indicated by the advancing stages of Fran's pregnancy. In the remake the events transpire within approximately 1 month, as evidenced by the supplemental feature The Lost Tape: Andy's Terrifying Last Days Revealed, located on the DVD. The character Andy owned the gunshop across the street from the mall in the film, and in this bonus feature Andy records a video diary of his ordeal for future reference. He begins recording on May 7, 2004, the day after he first encountered the flesh eaters, and continues to record until his death on June 6. Also included on the DVD was the supplemental "Special Report", a news program detailing the world-wide effects of the zombie epidemic on humanity.

[edit] Trivia

This article contains a trivia section.
Content in this section should be integrated into other appropriate areas of the article or removed, and the trivia section removed.

Title Shot of Dawn of The Dead (2004)

The song that plays over the film's opening credits is "The Man Comes Around" by Johnny Cash. The track has suitably apocalyptic lyrics, contains a mention of Armageddon, numerous Bible references and quotes from the Book of Revelation 6:8.
The music in the film featured both the original version of "Down With The Sickness" by Disturbed and the Lounge music version by Richard Cheese.
The first half of the film was shot almost entirely in chronological order.^[9]
Starbucks Coffee, along with many other corporations, did not wish to be featured in the film. All stores in the mall, except for the Roots and Panasonic stores featured in early mall scenes, are fictional.^[9]
The mall scenes of the film as well as the rooftop scenes were shot in the Thornhill Square Shopping Centre in Thornhill, Ontario and the rest of the scenes were shot in the Aileen-Willowbrook Neighborhood of Thornhill, Ontario. The mall was demolished shortly after the film was shot.
Three actors from the original film have cameos in the remake, appearing on the TVs the survivors watch: Ken Foree, who played Peter from the original, plays an evangelist who asserts that God is punishing mankind; Scott H. Reiniger, who played Roger in the original, plays an army general telling everyone to stay at home for safety; and Tom Savini, who played the motorcycle gang member Blades in the original, plays the Los Angeles County Sheriff explaining the only way to kill the zombies is to "shoot 'em in the head."
Additional references to Romero's original Living Dead movies: A store in the mall is named Gaylen Ross, the actress that played the female lead in the original Dawn of the Dead. A sign for "Wooley's Diner" can be seen, a nod to the character of "Wooley" in the 1978 version. The character Tucker's name is a reference to Rod Tucker, one of the SWAT team members in the original. A truck from the BP corporation is seen, the same company as in the original. The WGON helicopter from the first film is seen flying into the frame in one sequence. Even the film's tagline, "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth", is the same one from the first film, and is delivered in both films by actor Ken Foree. Also, the opening sequences contain at least two references to the original Night of the Living Dead film; a car crashes into a gas station and explodes, and the female lead crashes her car into a tree.
The production used real amputees to portray zombies that were missing limbs.^[9]
James Gunn is only partially responsible for the screenplay, despite receiving solo writing credit. After he left the project to concentrate on Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, both Michael Tolkin and Scott Frank were brought in for rewrites. In a commentary track on the Ultimate Edition DVD for the original film, producer Richard P. Rubenstein explained that Tolkin further developed the characters, while Frank provided some of the bigger action sequences.
No mention of a cause for the living dead is actually mentioned in the film. However, the copy on the DVD box implies that it is a virus.
The word "zombie" is never said in the film. However, the term is used in the news report on the DVD.
The final sequences on the boat and island were shot much later and at a different location (Universal Studios Hollywood) than the rest of the movie. Preview audiences objected to the sudden ending of the original print.^[9]
In the UK, both this film and Shaun of the Dead were originally scheduled to be released the same week, but due to the similarity in the names of the two films, UIP opted to push back Shaun's release by two weeks.
The muzak playing in the mall when the survivors first arrive is Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy".
Ermes Blarasin, the man who played the bloated woman, was a stunt performer in the 2005 Land of the Dead