Originally published October 2007 at NYU.
During the late nineties, studio sharks began to smell green blood in the horror genre and pounced, releasing wave after wave of horror titles. Though new and cheap properties sometimes prove profitable, nothing prints money like a remake of a well-regarded movie during a boom in its genre. George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead—though by no means a commercial success—is regarded as a classic in the horror genre. The film paints a grim picture of America’s commercialization using a zombie infestation in a mall. Zack Snyder’s remake only uses the original as a point of plot origin to construct a frenetic, gore filled chase film. Looking at the differences and similarities in how each film constructs their ending’s escape from the mall reveals the different social climates in which they were created.
In the original Dawn of the Dead, a gang of bikers breaks through the protagonists’ barriers and allow the zombies to poor in. The mall itself—lit with soft lighting and a brown filter—is wide-open, two stories and has a floor of pure, clean, white tiles. Having a comfortable and inviting atmosphere, it feels more like a home than a mall. The gang breaks in, dragging with them a low string and piano accompaniment, heightening the tension and sense of foreboding. With their motorcycles—shot from low angles—they quickly lay waste to the mall’s clean interiors. Stephen hides and watches the intruders from the unfocused garden in the background as the camera stays on the bikers’ looting. Their actions infuriate Stephen. Shot-reverse-shots between Stephen and the gang ransacking the mall speed up, with each successive shot coming closer and closer to Stephen’s face until he is framed in an extreme close-up, signaling his decision to fight the intruders.
Stephen’s assault on the bikers forces Peter to take potshots from the second story, covering Stephen as he strides for cover. The low, melancholic music begins to overshadow some of the diagetic noises from the zombies and motorcycles. As the zombies begin to take the upper hand, Romero rapidly cuts from a long shot of a group zombies lurching towards their victim to a medium shot of the attack and kill to close shots of the wounds and zombies eating; he then pulls out in the same manner, only reversed. The editing and framing of the victim (usually only parts of the face, and never seeing them clearly) keeps the focus on the zombies: we get close when the zombies attack, we move back out when the zombies are done. The camera acts and focuses on actions like a zombie.
Cornered in an elevator, Stephen bleeds to death from bite wounds in a medium, high angle shot. He emerges from the elevator later in a close up revealing his undead status. Peter retreats to the safe room in the mall manager’s office as zombies decimate in note the remaining bikers who did not flee. The editing slows down and the orchestral music fades away as Peter and the other remaining survivor, Francine, plan to escape. We then cut back to the insides of the mall as the zombies lurch back into the stores, following their phantom habits. Romero films from high angles, unlike the many lows used during the gang fight, with deep space as the zombies slowly seep in from the edges of the screen to take over the entire composition, like water—especially given the bluish tint to the zombie makeup—flowing back in through a broken dam. In many of the stores, we see the zombies through mirrors on the walls or off of cosmetic counters to reflect a return to normalcy: thoughtless consumption persists. Accompanying the zombies shopping is a playful folksy melody, with lots of trumpets and xylophones. The music coming from the mall’s sound system is in stark contrast to the visuals onscreen, highlighting the true horror and deterioration of the situation.
Don’t let the poor makeup scare you away from watching
As Francine preps the helicopter on the roof for takeoff, Peter ponders whether he wants to continue fighting to live. We watch the zombies enter and fill the safe house with a long lens, making the danger to Peter seem that much closer and palpable. Once Peter decides to fight on, a swell of cheerful winds and percussion accompany the quick cuts of medium shots as he makes his way to the helicopter. The camera then tracks the helicopter as it leaves the roof right at dawn; Romero never leaves the mall and Peter and Francine’s fate remains ambiguous. As the credits roll, the folksy mall music returns as we cut between different high angle shots of the mall, showing the the status quo is back to normal.
Snyder’s update of Dawn of the Dead strips out the themes and lighthearted comedic moments of the original in favor of a lean and fast paced narrative with a bigger group of protagonists containing less character development. Whereas the original ending concerns waking up from the small isolated dream of normalcy they developed in the mall and accepting the world, the remake ends with a hastily rushed escape to water as the zombies flood the mall.
After a botched rescue plan of a survivor in a building across the street, the protagonists return to the mall a few members short with a herd of zombies tracking their path back into the mall. The most apparent difference between the remake and the original is the color saturation and contrasts. Where the original paints with a palette of muted browns, the remake leverages high contrast film stock to yield much brighter interiors and much darker shadows, yielding a hyper-real environment. There are also different color motifs for different areas, with the underground having a green tinge, the mall blue, and the outside natural. Lighting is also different, with the final moments in the mall using only source lighting from a few overhead fluorescent lights spotting the floor with areas of dim light, unlike the mall’s typical stark brightness. The mall is no longer an inviting place, and the many shadows covering the mall represent the inhering danger in staying.
A more sterile and ominous mall environment
Snyder implores lots of handheld cameras with deep focus to disorient the spectator into not knowing where to pay attention. With so many planes of action happening simultaneously that draw the survivors’ attention, the viewer in effect becomes the final survivor. Repeated quick cuts between different protagonists add to the frenzied pace, never allowing the spectator to sit and digest a shot for too long. An orchestral accompaniment also heightens the emotions in the remake, but unlike its use in the original, the remake’s soundtrack is much more bold and over the top. The music helps move the characters along and creates a rhythm for the cuts during the action fights with zombies. The zombies themselves also differ greatly from the original, with vastly superior natural looking makeup and the ability to run at full speed. The zombies’ range of motion allows Snyder to more clearly show the deluge of the virus; they quickly move to fill any empty space within a scene. The kills themselves also lack the nuance of Romero’s, with jarring extreme close cuts firing at a rapid pace.
The protagonists leave the mall in two heavily fortified shuttle busses. After a tracking shot of the vehicles speeding up int he parking garage, we cut to a shot from the outside as the vans break through the barrier: the camera is waiting for them to leave and the camera follow them—unlike the original—after they leave. From high angle crane shots, we follow the crew as they make their way through the sea of zombies in total darkness. As the vans crawl to a stop and rapid cuts show the growing zombie swarm, we see from a bird’s eye view one character throwing an explosive canister—in slow motion—and then detonating it with a gun shot, creating a blast that blows up and knocks down all of the zombies around the vans. The music, after a spike in tempo here, comes to a complete stop; it starts up again as a jazzy drum beat accompanies quick cuts of the vans racing through the empty city as they approach the docks. The final moments before they depart are filled with zombie battles filmed with an altered shutter speed to give a jumpy and super real feeling to the fights. Right before the credits role, the ship—their goal—takes off sailing towards dawn’s rising sun in the middle of the frame, with the music coming to a tempered and uplifting ending. The credits then roll as additional scenes reveal the actual fate of the characters as they reach their deserted island destination that is also filled with zombies. A diagetic digital camera lying on the hull of the ship records the gruesome and unambiguous true ending to the movie. The original and remake of Dawn of the Dead—while similar—are unique enough that the remake doesn’t attempt to replace the original so much as coexist with it. Though Romero conveys a critique of society’s direction through his film, it may be the remake’s existence that offers a stronger critique of society. The remake’s existence—as the stripped down attention deficit cousin to the original—and superior financial success is only possible in a society enamored with commercialization. Its place in modern times is as much a criticism of society today as the entire text of the original.