This is FREAKY! A few days ago I needed something to watch in the kitchen while getting some housework done. I dug through the old videotapes and pulled out “Dawn of the Dead” (1978) which I hadn’t seen in a while.
A sequel to “Night of the Living Dead,” it centers on a group of people taking refuge in an abandoned mall while America is overrun by zombies. There’s a lot to like about the movie, but it has problems, too. It overdoes it on the societal commentary (how many times do we need to watch the mindless zombies wandering the mall with vague memories of shopping before we get the point?). It’s oddly-paced. The “mall music” consists of bizarre cartoon music with slide whistles; no one would shop to that! Some MUZAK would have been appropriately mindless.
Then there’s the bizarre zombie makeup which appears on a person so soon after they die, for no other reason than to mark them as zombies. The zombies are unevenly acted. Sometimes they’re vicious and fast, other times they stumble aimlessly when their pray is only inches away.
The whole time I’m watching it, I’m thinking, “This is a movie that really needs to be remade. Take the same plot and tell it better.”
Voila! I log on to Apple’s Trailer site today and what do I find but DAWN OF THE DEAD.
I can’t tell if it will be a good movie, but at least the mall looks appropriately modern. But that may be a bad thing. I remember the 1970s, when you could find a guns and ammo shop in the mall. You never find those, these days…so what will you defend yourself with if you’re trapped in a mall? A super-soaker from Kay-Bee? Those poor people had better hope that Gander Mountain is an anchor store of that mall!