Friday, November 30, 2007

Dawn of the Dead

     This is the infamous sequel to Night of the Living Dead. Dawn of the Dead was a bit more mainstream than its predecessor, mostly due to George Romero trying to outdo Night of the Living Dead after it became such an unexpected success. 

      The storyline supposedly takes place the following day, even though it's obviously not, due to the different, more modern clothes and hairstyles. Anyway, the dead are still being resurrected for some as yet unknown reason (it was hinted as space radiation in the first film, but never confirmed) and are outnumbering the police and military, and eventually starting to overrun the planet. At a television station, people are panicking and abandoning their jobs as TV informants and are heading for who knows where. 

      A helicopter pilot, his girlfriend, a military buddy, and his friend take to the skies, trying to figure out what the hell to do next. They come across a huge shopping mall (another storyline continuation discrepancy since they didn't have malls when the original film came out in 1968) and land on the roof. There are a few zombies roaming around, but not many. They soon realize the benefits of staying there for a while. They rid the mall of the few zombies it has in it and blocks off all the entrances to the mall with freight trucks. 

      Finally, after getting some sleep, they milk the mall for all it's worth, which is quite a lot. Food, clothes, televisions, radios, and ammunition as far as the eye can see. While placing the freight trucks, one of the men gets bitten on the leg by a zombie. Three days later, he dies, then comes back, then dies again, and is buried in the mall garden courtyard. 

      All goes well for a while until the mall is raided by a gang of motorcycle bandits. In fighting for what he has claimed as his, the helicopter pilot flips out and fights back. He ends up wounded and then attacked by zombies, dies, resurrects, and comes after the only two remaining live people he knows of. The rest of the zombies follow him and bombard the upstairs sanctuary they've created, leaving the military guy and the pilot's girlfriend to escape in the only way possible... straight up. They fly off in the helicopter (thankfully, he taught his girlfriend how to fly it) and that's the end. 

      I have to say that I was a little disappointed when it ended. There were just too many unanswered questions. Near the beginning of the movie, we find out that the pilot's girlfriend is pregnant, but she's like 18 months along at the end when they fly away. Also, where the hell did they go with almost no fuel left? I guess it was so that they could make another sequel (which they did, and much like this one it differs greatly in time discrepancy). The movie basically ends right where it began, so it makes a good transition between part one and part three. 

     The movie seems to be making a statement about consumerism, seeing that the zombies are attracted to the mall because it's what they remember from their life before dying and the need to buy stuff.  The message from the first film was that if everyone had worked together and not been fighting continuously, they might have actually survived.  This movie was recently remade and unlike the great majority of movie remakes, this one is actually pretty damn good. Scary as hell, mostly because the zombies could run and were a hell of a lot more threatening.


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