Issue 2: Film Reviews
Dawn of the Dead
Dir: Zack Snyder, USA, 2004
A Review by Stephen Harper, University of Glasgow (Crichton Campus), UK
Fans of George Romero often bewail the absence of the cult director's fourth and final film in his celebrated 'Living Dead' series. Their frustration is understandable: as hopes for Romero's final instalment have withered over the years, the zombie movie itself has proved to be a genre that will not die. As if to add insult to the fans' injury, Universal have recently produced a remake of Romero's Dawn of the Dead (the 1979 sequel to 1968's Night of the Living Dead). It is impossible to assess Zack Snyder's film without reference to Romero's original; which is tough for Snyder, as the original Dawn is one of the most critically acclaimed of contemporary horror films.
Indeed, one might begin by asking why this film was made at all. The film's release coincides with a recrudescence of zombies in recent popular culture, as the entertainment industries capitalise on the money-spinning potential of the undead. The almost simultaneous appearance of Resident Evil (2002) and its forthcoming sequel Apocalypse (2004), 28 Days Later (2002), the zombie spoof Shaun of the Dead (2004), and the myriad of video games such as House of the Dead seems to beg socio-cultural explanation. With their images of groups of running, panicking citizens, zombie films certainly encapsulate the apocalyptic anxiety of contemporary America in a more direct and horrifying way than other horror subgenres. In the stunning opening scenes of Snyder's film, for example, the zombie menace breaks out in a suburban housing development, scored to Johnny Cash's Revelation-based song 'The Man Comes Around'. The shocking incongruity of mundane domesticity and explosive terror recalls the terrorist attacks of September 11 itself, while the fear of the other and the sense of paranoia in the heartlands of America speak to the post-911 zeitgeist. Clearly, the social anxiety inherent in these depictions of zombie-related terror is in no way bad for business; the public concern with Last Times equals good times for the entertainment industries.
Snyder's Dawn of the Dead follows the fortunes of a nurse, Ana (art-house staple Sarah Polley), and a policeman, Kenneth (Ving Rhames, of Pulp Fiction and the Mission Impossible series). They soon encounter another policeman, André (Mekhi Phifer), his pregnant wife Luda (Inna Korobkina) and a white collar hero named Michael (Jake Weber). This band grows in number when the survivors decide to seek sanctuary in a shopping mall and meet some initially hostile security guards. Before long, more survivors enter the mall, making this film much busier than its precursor. The larger number of characters gives the film a sociable atmosphere absent from the original (in which the intense alienation of the four survivors was more palpable). The larger number also provides the opportunity for a number of gruesome despatchments, which hinder the development of narrative, character, and theme (at least, for those benighted horror fans who still demand such fripperies).
Indeed, a fatalistic atmosphere pervades this film. In Romero's film, two survivors escape from the mall in a chopper (this was a significant change to the original screenplay and novelisation of Dawn of the Dead, in which all the characters are killed). In doing so, they represent the potential of the more progressive and sensitive human beings to move 'beyond apocalypse' (Wood 1986: 121). The escape in Snyder's version, on the other hand, is short-lived, as the survivors meet a horde of zombies on the island to which they finally escape. This 'twist' - shown in short snippets over the closing credits - gives the film a very dark tone. This movie is more brutal and pessimistic than Romero's, substituting gory nihilism for character-driven ideologiekritik.
One of the interesting aspects of Romero's film was that in some scenes the zombies – pathetically defenceless against a gung-ho mob of survivors - elicited the audience's sympathies. The zombies (who possessed a degree of originality or even, in some cases, of personality) seemed to have something to teach the human beings. Moreover, the human beings in Romero's series were always potentially more dangerous than the zombies. There is no such sense in this film; here the undead are simply an othered and undifferentiated mob. Romero's zombies shuffled ominously, as if inviting the audience to ponder their socio-political significance; Snyder prefers more threatening, fast-moving zombies, reminiscent of the afflicted human beings in 28 Days Later (2002). If we accept Robin Wood's notion of the inverse relationship between the otherness of monsters and the progressiveness of the films in which they appear, then this movie is less radical than Romero's.
Nonetheless, while most reviewers have stated that Snyder steers clear of the 'moralising' and satirical aspects of Romero's original, there is some overt social commentary in the film. The appearance of the American flag at the beginning and end of the film speaks sombrely to the post-9/11 audience, rather as the stars and stripes in the graveyard at the start of Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) slyly suggested the deadliness of American foreign policy in Vietnam. Likewise, the early aerial shots of Ana's surburban neighbourhood, mockingly scored to Stereophonics' 'Have a Nice Day' constitute a Romero-esque swipe at the sterility of American bourgeois culture. Here the cinematic style, as well as the narrative content, recall Romero's original, in which aerial shots created the sense of distance required by satire.
The gender politics of this film, on the other hand, give rather more cause for concern. In Romero's film the heroine Fran (Gaylen Ross) is pregnant and yet never reduced to a maternal body. She constantly struggles to be recognised as an autonomous agent, while the men - in her absence - discuss whether she should have an abortion. Fran becomes a multi-faceted heroine who is both an active agent and yet who is also able – because of her position of inferiority in relation to the men in the film - to identify with, and show sympathy for, the hapless zombies (see Harper 2003). In this film, the pregnant Luda is reduced to her function as the carrier of a zombie baby, leaving the hardbody action to Ana. This bifurcation of female roles in the remake dilutes the strong feminist import of the original film. It also reflects the remake's more general tendency to present characters in relation to a relatively restricted narrative function rather than to a symbolic or thematic significance. As a result, the characters are underdeveloped and the audience cannot care very deeply about any of them.
Fans of Romero's zombie series will enjoy the film's several visual jokes. There are several allusions to Romero's oeuvre, the most obvious of which is a clothing store named 'Gaylen Ross', the name of the actress who played Fran, the original film's heroine. Nevertheless, this remake is less progressive, critical, and feminist than its predecessor. But as the cultural appetite for zombies increases, it may be that the funding for Romero's final zombie film is closer at hand than ever before.
References
Harper, Stephen (2003), '"They're Us": Representations of Women in George Romero's "Living Dead" Series', Intensities 3. www.cult-media.com
Wood, Robin (1986), Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan. New York: Columbia University Press.