‘‘Snyder, making a killer feature debut, trades homemade cheesiness for knowing style, revels in the sophistication of modern special effects, and stomps off with the best remake — er, ‘re-envisioning’ — of a horror classic in memory.’’
And Quentin Tarantino liked it too! He called it ‘terrific.’
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!!! That film is CRAP. It’s pointless, it misses the point of the original (a scary movie + message about consumerism), and NOTHING HAPPENS IN IT. Nothing.
Okay, so it has a few good ideas- the opening scene is visual and energetic; the mother giving birth to a zombie baby; the killing of zombies for sport based on a game (one person holds a sign with a celebrity name, and the other shoots the zombie who resembles that person)- but that doesn’t make it good! It sucks- nothing happens in it, and nothing is done at the end but
They escape in a bus and get away on a boat.
Nothing entertaining happens in it. Unlike the original, this one just gets the characters to the mall, has nothing happen, and then they run away. All the good aspects of the original are gone- think the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, only slightly better (and by ‘better’, you must undertand that having my penis cut off and fed to me would be ‘better’ than Texas Chainsaw Massacre). It’s a crappy movie, and the fact that EW and Tarantino can’t see that makes me feel like I’m the last real human in a world of zombies. Somebody better agree with me, or imma start shooting people in the head.
I take it you didn’t stick around for the credits? And what, really is the difference between that and getting away in a helicopter in the original?
Suffice to say, I obviously disagree. I liked it better than the original. Yes, the original had some fun and snarky things to say about consumer culture and blah blah blah, but I’m sorry, the whole business with the biker attack on the zombies was just stoopid.
I rathered liked the remake, but then again, I didn’t see how the original was so special, other then “We’re living in a mall”. I’m not a huge fan of the running zombies, but I thought they worked well here, and I felt the film did a good job of getting across the message “You’re screwed and nobody is coming to help”.
I also appreciated the fact at least one person proposed killing an infected person before they became a zombie.
The ending was nice and bleak as well, assuming you stayed through the credits.
I liked it a bit better then 28 days later and Resident Evil, but not as much as Shaun of the Dead or Night of the Living Dead. It’s still fairly far up there.
The original Night of the Living Dead is one of my favourite movies of all time. But I though Dawn was kinda lame, and found it didn’t age well (don’t even get me started on Day. Lordy that was ridiculous).
But I thought the Dawn remake was great (save for the reaterded zombie fetus bit) i.e. it scared the (of the) living shit out of me. Great creepy beginning with the little girl, Polley’s fantastic, the scene with the dog carrying supplies terrified me, and the very last shots (after they get on the boat) made me want to cry. And I am not easily frightened. Though I do fear zombies. As for Romero’s “messages,” I love him as a filmmaker, but, well… let’s not get carried away, here. Sure there’s the whole “they ended up fearing each other more than the undead” thing, the vague anti-consumerism jabs, but come on.
I’m with you, and I’ll add: the way they did the whole beginning before the credits with the Johnny Cash song, with the rest of the movie afterwards, was a nice touch as well–if “nice” can be an operative word here.
I like how they handled the guy on the roof in the remake. He was a major plot point in moving the story forward yet they resisted in letting us meet him.
Regular hollywood lazy writing would have shown us a tender death scene with one of the hero’s making it to his place before he died. Yawn. I’m glad they killed him how they did. Our hero’s didn’t really get a chance to know him and neither did we.
Didn’t watch the special features on the DVD did you? There was a special feature (what looks to be a gimmick promo) on there that shows you parts of the movie from his camcorder.
Moderator speaketh: Just to comment, I thought there was considerable suspense about the pregnancy, so I’ve put in spoiler tags for those who gave away the outcome.
Don’t bother watching it. Five minutes into it and I knew why they left him alone on the rooftop.
I liked the remake much better than the original. Yeah. I know. Consumerism :rolleyes: I think the new one was much better from a story point of view. The fast zombies cranked up the desperation and made it more believable. I’ve never liked civilization being overthrown by zombies that can barely move fast enough to be a threat. I liked how they got chased from the mall as opposed to the “I don’t know how to get them out of the mall so I’ll just use a biker gang” from the original.
Personally, I loved the remake. So much that I went and bought the dvd’s of the original Dawn and Day of the Dead. It’s interesting to watch the extended versions and see how they tie together.
Plus I just really, really liked seeing that one bitch get chainsawed.
PLUS, if I could remember to click on the correct buttons, I wouldn’t have to post twice in a row.
I agree that the idea of slow moving zombies taking over anything when a guy on crutches should be able avoid them is totally ridiculous. It’s like these people never heard of drinking a buttload of coffee or something.
Xploder, zombies never tire. Zombies never get hungry (well, except for brains and other internal organs, but lack of food doesn’t seem to slow them down). Zombies never need to go potty so bad they just have to stop. Unless you can get more bullets then zombies, and fire them off accurately (head shots only) faster than the zombies can approach, they will get to you. With slow zombies, you know they’re coming and you can’t do a damn thing about it.
I agree about the never get tired/hungry/whatever thing but still, seems to me that anyone who has been able to survive so far would band together and find a way to make a zombie-proof place to protect. It isn’t that far fetched to think that if they did so then there would at least be the possibility of ultimately defeating the zombies.
Then again we’re talking about zombies so pretty much anybodys opinion holds the same weight as everybodys.
They take off on the boat and you see the credits via a videocamera they found or had. They look through the boat and find a cooler that had a head or some bodyparts in it. Eventually, the people get hungry and make their way to an island to look for food and fuel. They get on the dock and the dog takes off for the woods. As the folks start calling for the dog/look for supplies, zombies rush them from the woods and the film ends with the classical ‘camera lying on the ground on its side’. There are no survivors (except maybe for the dog). Added an awesome bleak touch.
You can barricade yourself up, but eventually food and water become an issue. The movie (which I enjoy, but I’m not going to wax poetic about) makes this point. One guy is holed up with all the weapons, but no food (some survivalist he was). The others have a supply of food to last a few weeks, at least, but not the means to escape their safety (and nowhere to go if they do).
Land of the Dead, I’ve heard, starts from your presence. I’ll catch it on cable eventually to see how they solve the problems of renewable food sources and potable water for extended periods of time.
Oh, okay - I did see that then. Thanks, Tommy. That’s what I thought happened, but then people were referring to a helicopter shot at the White House (which must be in the original, which I haven’t seen) and I got confused.