Dawn of the Dead (2004) Directors Cut
Just a shit version of Mallrats with a bit of blood thrown in.
But seriously, almost twenty years on this remains director Zack Snyder's best film. It's a reworking of George A Romero's 1978 film of the same name and whilst it doesn't have the social comment or satire of that film and it's undead commit what i feel is the ultimate sin of running, it's still a fantastic zombie film.
The gore and make up effects are excellent and extreme with it whilst the cast and acting is far superior to the original with the characters, or some at least, better developed allowing the audience to root for them and in the case of Michael Kelly's tyrant of a security guard, actually change our opinion of and warm to the longer he's on screen.
The film's three leads are uniformly excellent - Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames and Jake Weber - seeing them adapt to survive and come to crucial but hard thought out decisions which practically involve the viewer certainly adds to their appeal.
As well as Snyder, James Gunn is also a huge influence on the film with his well thought out script full of great dialogue. The cinematography is excellent especially long shots which show the world in all it's post apocalyptic glory during an awesome opening ten minutes.
Dawn of the Dead is a genuine horror blockbuster the likes of which we do not see nowadays and having not seen it for years last night's Blu-ray viewing was fantastic, tense entertainment.
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