2004
runtime of 100, but there are 9 extra minutes in the directors cut.
This film is loosely based on the 1978 Romero film of the same title in the sense that they both have people seeking shelter from the zombie apocalypse in a shopping mall. After that the similarities end, which is a good thing, because it's like a brand new zombie movie, and I always like a new zombie movie. The undead makeup is stellar, the cast is strong, and story is polished. The zombies are fast, which I don't entirely approve of but, they are done so well I can't complain. This film is quite possibly the best zombie movie ever made.
May 12, 2006runtime of 100, but there are 9 extra minutes in the directors cut.
This film is loosely based on the 1978 Romero film of the same title in the sense that they both have people seeking shelter from the zombie apocalypse in a shopping mall. After that the similarities end, which is a good thing, because it's like a brand new zombie movie, and I always like a new zombie movie. The undead makeup is stellar, the cast is strong, and story is polished. The zombies are fast, which I don't entirely approve of but, they are done so well I can't complain. This film is quite possibly the best zombie movie ever made.
Dawn of the Dead
spoiler:
Our protagonist is a nurse just getting off a long shift. She goes home,
This man gives one of the best zombie performances I have seen.
Our nurse narrowly escapes and drives through the bedlam of the apocalypse until someone tries to pull her out of her car and causes her to lose control, careen down a hill and crash into a tree in the woods. Dazed she crawls from the wreck and bumps into Ving Rahmes, who plays an excellent tough guy and has a sort of Mr. T quality about him. The two of them wander around until they bump into another group of survivors, and they all decide it would be safest to hide in the mall. Three security guards who have taken over the abandoned shopping center try to kick them out and eventually settle on keeping them locked in one of the stores. Our group eventually overthrows them and locks the three of them up. Shortly thereafter a delivery truck comes careening through the parking lot and backs into the loading bay, a thrilling zombie battle ensues and soon they're all back in the mall chatting with the new band of survivors in their midst. Amongst them is a huge woman of at least 300 pounds who is on the edge of death from a zombie bite, she eventually turns and almost kills our main protagonist, the nurse.
There are two characters, a father and a pregnant woman, who were bitten somewhere along the line. In the first case, after much argument, they decide to wait with a gun and the second the father changes over they shoot him. However, no one ever finds out about the pregnant woman because her boy friend hides her in the back of one of the stores and tries to help her deliver even after she as trying to eat his skin. Eventually this kind of erratic behavior leads the only place it can - a deadly shoot out. When the smoke clears the only survivor of the debacle is the zombie baby who the rest of the mega mall refugees decide to put down. Now I myself would have studied it. Will it grow or will it decay? Does it eat flesh or does it have to grow into solid foods? Would it drink milk or blood? I mean here you have a golden opportunity to advance your scientific knowledge of zombie, and there is no risk. What's it going to do, gum you to death?
On the other side of the mall parking lot and across the street is another survivor living in a boarded up gun shop. From their respective roof tops, he and Ving Rahmes communicate via dry erase boards. The number of undead surrounding the mall continues to mount until the parking lot is a sea of oozing rotten heads. Our survivors decide it would be best to move along before they run out of food and the crowd of zombies surrounding them becomes utterly insurmountable, though it seems it may already be. The group discovers that one of their members owns a boat, and decides that reaching it and sailing to an island is their best hope. They go down to the parking garage and convert a shuttle bus into a make shift armored car. Before they're prepared to leave the guy at the gun shop runs out of food so they send over a dog with a sandwich on it's back. Why the zombies don't eat the dog, I don't know, but the girl who's father died flips out and drives over there in the tucks the second group of survivors showed up in. The guy from the gun shop got bitten trying to get the dog in the front door, so by the time the dumb girl gets there he wants to eat her brains. If stupid brains taste yucky, hers won't be any good at all. Everybody gets in the armored shuttle bus and they leave early so they can mount a rescue mission. Why bother?
They rescue the girl but only manage to travel a short distance before they are completely surrounded and can't drive. They throw a propane tank into the crowd and shoot it, the explosion knocks down the zombies it doesn't blow apart and they manage to drive on. There are further trials and tribulations and the only surviving members of the group to make it to the boat are the nurse, Ving Rhames, and a couple of characters I didn't care about. The credits roll, and interspersed throughout are clips of the surviving few as they sail about. Finally the boat pulls into dock and the camera goes dark as a horde of zombies come running toward the pier.
