Dawn of the Dead

I remember when I first heard of the production of this movie, I, like so many others, had already condemned this to be one of the worst movies of the year. After all, why do a zombie remake? All zombie movies are essentially the same; zombies take over, a group of survivors barricade themselves in some sort of shelter, most end up dying, a few survive. Logic persists that a filmmaker should just do another movie rather than dishonor a classic. Stephen King wrote an interesting article in Entertainment Weekly regarding the Dawn of the Dead remake. He wrote that the original was so shocking because it pushed the limits of what can be shown on film. There was a classic scene, in particular, were a terrified woman runs into the arms of her husband near the beginning of the film. Expecting to be safe from the army of zombies, she then looks up towards his face only to find his expression cold and lifeless. He then takes a huge chunk out of her shoulder. At the time, that was going too far, Stephen King writes. Nowadays, that's no big deal. How could the remake push the envelope like the original did? Most of time, studios won't even try. They'd rather do a lackluster job and cash in on the name. I'm happy to say that the Dawn of the Dead remake has all the elements that made the original so magnificient, as well as pushes the envelope far beyond what any of us expected. That particular scene in the original....now replaced with an eight year old girl, biting into her bewildered father's neck as blood shoots out in streams. An obvious homage to the classic scene in the original, but improving upon it. But it only begins there, this entire movie is non-stop zombie destruction. Some of the most creative uses of gore I've ever seen in a movie. Zombies running down the street get their heads splattered in real time with no editing away and then back to the zombie. A survivor accidently getting sawed in half by a clumsy ally with a chainsaw. A zombie woman giving birth to a zombie baby and much, much more. In my humble opinion, this surpasses the original in every single aspect imaginable. Not only should remakes be this good, but ALL horror movies should be done like this. This, people, is how it's done.