Tuesday, October 30, 2018

The 13 Days Of Halloween:
DAWN OF THE DEAD (2004)

So, I'm not usually one for remakes - and I'm a big fan of Romero's original DAWN OF THE DEAD because it's all about how consumerism has turned us all into zombies wandering through the mall mindlessly shopping - but the 2004 remake with a script by SLITHER's James Gunn works on its own terms. When I first did my Horror Screenwriting class at the Raindance Film Festival in London, I didn't bring any clips... but *did* have the DVD of DAWN OF THE DEAD in my luggage, and found an illustration of almost every point I was going to make in the film.

The opening scene is *textbook* horror - we start out in suburbia on a normal morning...




As you can see, in very little time we have gone from order to chaos, and the police and authorities are powerless, and the monster could be anyone - the little girl next door, the man you love - ANYONE. You are not safe.

The great thing about zombie movies is that they take people you know and love and turn them into monsters, which creates a huge emotional turmoil for the protagonist(s). You love them... but they want to kill you - what do you do? You have to kill them, but...

- Bill

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't like zombies :(

The Modern Prometheus said...

Videos not available...maybe because I'm in the UK?

The Modern Prometheus said...

Picked up a copy of the video from a second-hand store for £1.50 as not seen it and the screenshots I could see looked good. What a great movie. Was watching a film on Prime the other night - "Infected Paradise". Incredibly low budget and it showed. about 20-30 minutes in, nothing had happened at all. All was set-up - i.e. meeting the characters who were going to the island to be attacked by Zombies. But that's really padding and not beginning at the beginning. People are dead before the credits have rolled in this film (Dawn of the Dead). I love the break down of civilisation in films (one of my favourites is Threads (about nuclear war in UK), much more of a slow burner in terms of actual breakdown, but you get to the end and think, how did we get here?) Thing about zombies though...it's usually the other living who are the biggest problem! Like that Twilight Zone where they're all fighting over who's going to get into the nuclear bunker...

eXTReMe Tracker