Lexmark3200
07-03-2005, 03:36 PM
I know I am going to get a lot of slack for this one. I am not a fan of the original George Romero Dawn, but I DO have it in my collection for comparison sake now that this remake has come out --- which I feel has been the best effort out of all the horror remakes that have recently flooded the theaters. And before anyone begins their attacks on why the original is better, let me say this: I RESPECT the original for what it was; it's just that to me, this new one brings the zombie excitement to a whole new level and relieves some of the "pacing problems" I believe plauged the first film. And believe me --- I am NOT an advocate of these remakes; the new version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre just completely SUCKED and ruined the vision and downright creepiness of Tobe Hooper's original creep fest; the only saving grace of the film, as I have said, was getting to see Jessica Beil and those great tits of hers in the tank tops she wears and that awesome ass of hers in those jeans.....and dont even get me started on the recent Amityville Horror remake which was COMPLETELY and UTTERLY inaccurate to the true story of what happened to that family in Amityville, New York, because I used to live twenty minutes from the real house where it all happened and I know all the stories and family that was involved in that case. The remake was an insult and completely inaccurate.
I couldnt have been the only one, though, who felt this remake was exciting; when I showed this DVD during last Halloween's Horror Movie Marathon party I hosted at my apartment, EVERYONE loved it and it went over very well with all my guests. In fact, it was the talk of the evening.
While fans argue that Romero's Dawn was more of a kind of "political satire" more than a balls-out horror film, Zack Snyder's version, to me, was just a whole lot more exciting, and I thought was the best horror film of the time when I left the theater after seeing it. Again, like in the original, we have survivors of a strange flesh-eating-zombie plague hiding out in a shopping mall, as in Romero's version, but thats pretty much where the similarities end. In Snyder's remake, the opening sequence is brilliant --- not showing the title of the film until well into the zombie eating action; in the original, the film opens with a news broadcast regarding the flesh-eating zombie problem --- in this remake, Sarah Polley is a nurse who comes home from an exhausting shift to join her husband in bed, and then in a love making scene in a shower. As we hear the creepy music begin, we know something is up, and as the couple lie in bed together, their bedroom door creeps open, showing a little girl standing in the doorway. It seems to be their neighbor's kid they usually babysit for, but suddenly the girl shows blood all over her face, fangs for teeth and glowing eyes, and this rabid zombie child manages to bite the neck of Polley's husband in a rather greusome scene where the skin from his neck stretches from his body to the zombie girl's mouth (this DVD is an UNRATED DIRECTOR'S CUT, which adds some gore to certain scenes that were not seen in theaters, and I'll get to the extra gore scenes as I write more).
Polley, after being attacked by her now "zombie possessed" husband, manages to escape from her house away from him (it seems once a person gets bitten in this remake, they instantly become zombies depending on their body chemistry and makeup) and sees her entire neighborhood going crazy --- people turning into possessed zombies, running after other people, houses on fire, just complete chaos. After the opening title sequence which follows this opening scene (with a weird song playing by Johnny Cash in the background which didnt really fit the opening title sequence), Polley ends up seeing zombies everywhere eating each other and attacking each other as she drives through town, listening to radio broadcasts about the unidentified "plague" that has swept over this Miluakee town; she ends up running into Ving Rhames, a cop, who, armed with a shotgun, realizes she's not a zombie, and proceeds to try and find other non-infected humans. They both run into three other survivors, and the group make it to a local shopping mall, where they barricade themselves in from the horde of the "living dead" that are descending on the town.
What is never really explained in Dawn of the Dead is how or what this "disease" or "problem" is that created these zombies --- was it the dead coming out of graves and then biting human beings and spreading the disease of "being dead", or was this some kind of plague that started and just made people into zombies? At any rate, in THIS version of Dawn, we have VERY fast moving zombies, running faster than ordinary people, in fact, as compared to the slowpokes of Romero's zombie films, and this all smacks of 28 Days Later for anyone who has seen that British-made film about a flesh-eating virus that turns people into zombies too.
Once inside the mall, the band of human survivors run into some rude, outrageously mean security guards that want to keep the mall for themselves as a hideout, but are eventually convinced to let the new survivors join them. Soon, more survivors show up in a truck and come into the mall to join the group, and then, as the group goes to the roof of the mall to paint an "SOS" sign to alert people in the air that they are alive, they realize that there is another human survivor on the roof of the building across the street named Andy; they communicate with Andy by writing messages on signs back and forth to each other, while below, THOUSANDS of zombies have now gathered, making any escape from the mall impossible.
In the middle of these sub plots is another sub plot revolving around Mekhi Phifer and his pregnant Russian girlfriend, who ends up getting bitten and turning into a zombie herself; as the child is born right there in the mall, it too is a zombie, and must be shot. Because this was an UNRATED DIRECTOR'S CUT of the film, there is a great deal of added gore here --- specifically a scene where Jake Weber's character is struggling with a zombie trying to bite him and Weber takes a sharp object and jams it right through the zombie's chin and through his brains, where they fly out of his head. Very cool. There are other examples of this added gore, and it makes the film all that much better. THIS is what a gory horror film should be --- not the watered-down crap they made Paramount put out with the Friday the 13th films because they were considered "too gory".....so, what are you watching a horror film for then?
The last of the survivors decide, as a last ditch effort, to take some mall shuttle buses in the garage and equip them with metal protection to "cage in" the buses as they attempt to drive out of the mall and try and get to a marina, where they can get on a boat and hopefully away from the mainland, now crawling with fast moving zombies. The plan works, as the buses make their way into a MASSIVE SEA of angry zombies waiting for them, but once shooting a canister of propane into the crowd of zombies, the buses are once again on the move and on their way to the marina, with the leftover zombies following behind and running after them at a lightning fast pace. And, the golden zombie rule holds true here: you must shoot these ****ers in the head in order to kill them, and Snyder provides some really greusome, up close special effect tricks where the zombies are getting bullets to their heads and brains are flying everywhere......like I said, to me, THIS is what a gory horror picture SHOULD be.
However, there was a dissapointing moment I wanted to mention, where in this so-called UNRATED version, there is a scene where Polley's character is sitting in her car watching zombies eat each other on the back of a bus while a really hot naked chick walks by her car.....however, instead of seeing her tits, we get some blood from Polley's windshield covering up the nudity......huh??? I thought this was supposed to be an unrated version. From what I understand, different region releases of this DVD show those tits in all their glory. Why cant we get that in the U.S.?
There are also some amusing moments of this remake, where "Andy" and Ving Rhames are taking turns shooting different zombies from the rooftops and calling them names of celebrities they look like, such as "tell him to shoot Burt Reynolds!" as a really, really strange jazz version of Disturb's "Down With The Sickness" is playing.
The ending of this remake is a bit confusing, as the survivors make it to the marina, but must leave Jake Weber's character behind because he has been bitten, and as they board a boat to escape, with the zombies right behind them on the deck of the marina, Weber's character puts a gun under his chin and kills himself just before the end credits begin rolling. But the film doesnt end there.....as the end credits play, it is suggested that somehow the survivors on the boat are attacked by more zombies that made it off the marina, or that there are more waiting on an island they decide to sail to....this is made confusing because there are rapidly fast flashes of all this happening between the end credits, and I still dont know what happened at the end of Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead.
But, I'll tell you this ---- I enjoyed this remake more than the original, and although I know Im going to get a lot of slack for this, I cannot help how I feel. This was the best remake of the whole bunch of horror remakes to recently come out, and EASILY overpowers the disasters that were The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Amityville Horror. Of course, now we have the new War of the Worlds and soon, I am told, there is going to be a remake of John Carpenter's classic ghost tale The Fog. I have not seen the remake of House of Wax yet, with Paris Hilton.....has this even come out yet? The trailers for the film looked awesome; that pig Hilton did not.
Because, as I mentioned, this was an UNRATED DIRECTOR'S CUT of the film, this DVD came with added gore moments as well as stickers all over the box that proclaimed UNRATED EXTENDED VERSION TOO SCARY FOR THEATERS! And because I purchased this disc at Best Buy, there was an exclusive added bonus DVD that came with this DVD, exclusive from Best Buy only, with more making-of featurettes and such. The packaging of the DVD is beautiful, along the lines of what Universal did for their Van Helsing release, with a raised-lettered slip case over the standard keepcase, the sticker I mentioned boldly proclaiming TOO SCARY FOR THEATERS!
VIDEO SPECIFICATIONS:
DUAL LAYER FULL FRAME 1:33:1 VERSION
Because I purchased this DVD when I was still using a 27" 4:3 set, I chose the full screen version.....but it played back fine on my 16X9 set. Now, when I say "fine", dont get me wrong, there are some issues here.....I just meant it filled my widescreen just fine from edge to edge. There is an intentional grittyness to this film, on behalf of Snyder, which makes it look grainy and "newsreel like" in certain spots --- but this is not a transfer problem from Universal. It was to give this film a certain drab, dirty look, and it succeeds. You can see this grain and some of these specks pop up every now and then as you watch carefully, and its throughout the entire film --- it adds to the quick-cut editing Snyder chose for this remake, with the zombies coming at the screen very fast and from different angles.
AUDIO SPECIFICATIONS:
ENGLISH, SPANISH & FRENCH DOLBY DIGITAL 5.1, ENGLISH CAPTIONS, SUBTITLES IN SPANISH AND FRENCH
Here is a ***** I have with Universal Home Video, and always have: they make these really strange, stupid marketing decisions when putting out their DVDs in which they add DTS tracks to titles like Meet The Parents and Along Came Polly, but give awesome high-action thrillers like Dawn of the Dead and Van Helsing ordinary Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes. Now, dont me wrong, the Dolby tracks on these DVDs are probably running at full bitrate --- they sound good. But they could have sounded even BETTER in DTS.
The sound mix on this DVD's English Dolby Digital 5.1 mix has a problem in the fact that dialogue is mixed a bit lower than the rest of what is going on; so when you have your volume up to hear what characters are saying --- especially in the very beginning, where the dialogue is downright inaudible sometimes --- suddenly, when there is a zombie attack, you are blown back from the loud effects, and you find yourself playing with the volume control on your remote a lot. But the mix seems to heat up as it goes along, and towards the end, the audio gets downright mean sounding, with the growls of the zombies and the explosions of propane tanks rocking your sound system --- just give this mix a chance, and it will come to life. Bass rocks your sub whenever there is an onscreen explosion or a deep gunshot from a rifle; but one thing I noticed, and it was confirmed by others who have professionally reviewed this disc on other sites, was that there was little surround usage for such a film. It is there mostly to create atmosphere, and the occasional zombie groan comes in through the rears, but believe it or not, this is mainly a front-focused Dolby track. All in all, I think Universal could have done a SLIGHTLY better job with the audio on Dawn.
The special features on this UNRATED DIRECTOR'S CUT were exhausting to get through, and included:
UNRATED EXCLUSIVES:
-SPLITTING HEADACHES - ANATOMY OF EXPLODING HEADS
-ATTACK OF THE LIVING DEAD
-RAISING THE DEAD
Plus....
-THE LOST TAPE: OVER 15 MINUTES OF TERRIFYING FOOTAGE REVEALED
-SPECIAL REPORT: ZOMBIE INVASION
-OVER 12 MINUTES OF DELETED SCENES
-COMMENTARY by Director Zack Snyder and producer Eric Newman
Enjoy, horror fans!
I couldnt have been the only one, though, who felt this remake was exciting; when I showed this DVD during last Halloween's Horror Movie Marathon party I hosted at my apartment, EVERYONE loved it and it went over very well with all my guests. In fact, it was the talk of the evening.
While fans argue that Romero's Dawn was more of a kind of "political satire" more than a balls-out horror film, Zack Snyder's version, to me, was just a whole lot more exciting, and I thought was the best horror film of the time when I left the theater after seeing it. Again, like in the original, we have survivors of a strange flesh-eating-zombie plague hiding out in a shopping mall, as in Romero's version, but thats pretty much where the similarities end. In Snyder's remake, the opening sequence is brilliant --- not showing the title of the film until well into the zombie eating action; in the original, the film opens with a news broadcast regarding the flesh-eating zombie problem --- in this remake, Sarah Polley is a nurse who comes home from an exhausting shift to join her husband in bed, and then in a love making scene in a shower. As we hear the creepy music begin, we know something is up, and as the couple lie in bed together, their bedroom door creeps open, showing a little girl standing in the doorway. It seems to be their neighbor's kid they usually babysit for, but suddenly the girl shows blood all over her face, fangs for teeth and glowing eyes, and this rabid zombie child manages to bite the neck of Polley's husband in a rather greusome scene where the skin from his neck stretches from his body to the zombie girl's mouth (this DVD is an UNRATED DIRECTOR'S CUT, which adds some gore to certain scenes that were not seen in theaters, and I'll get to the extra gore scenes as I write more).
Polley, after being attacked by her now "zombie possessed" husband, manages to escape from her house away from him (it seems once a person gets bitten in this remake, they instantly become zombies depending on their body chemistry and makeup) and sees her entire neighborhood going crazy --- people turning into possessed zombies, running after other people, houses on fire, just complete chaos. After the opening title sequence which follows this opening scene (with a weird song playing by Johnny Cash in the background which didnt really fit the opening title sequence), Polley ends up seeing zombies everywhere eating each other and attacking each other as she drives through town, listening to radio broadcasts about the unidentified "plague" that has swept over this Miluakee town; she ends up running into Ving Rhames, a cop, who, armed with a shotgun, realizes she's not a zombie, and proceeds to try and find other non-infected humans. They both run into three other survivors, and the group make it to a local shopping mall, where they barricade themselves in from the horde of the "living dead" that are descending on the town.
What is never really explained in Dawn of the Dead is how or what this "disease" or "problem" is that created these zombies --- was it the dead coming out of graves and then biting human beings and spreading the disease of "being dead", or was this some kind of plague that started and just made people into zombies? At any rate, in THIS version of Dawn, we have VERY fast moving zombies, running faster than ordinary people, in fact, as compared to the slowpokes of Romero's zombie films, and this all smacks of 28 Days Later for anyone who has seen that British-made film about a flesh-eating virus that turns people into zombies too.
Once inside the mall, the band of human survivors run into some rude, outrageously mean security guards that want to keep the mall for themselves as a hideout, but are eventually convinced to let the new survivors join them. Soon, more survivors show up in a truck and come into the mall to join the group, and then, as the group goes to the roof of the mall to paint an "SOS" sign to alert people in the air that they are alive, they realize that there is another human survivor on the roof of the building across the street named Andy; they communicate with Andy by writing messages on signs back and forth to each other, while below, THOUSANDS of zombies have now gathered, making any escape from the mall impossible.
In the middle of these sub plots is another sub plot revolving around Mekhi Phifer and his pregnant Russian girlfriend, who ends up getting bitten and turning into a zombie herself; as the child is born right there in the mall, it too is a zombie, and must be shot. Because this was an UNRATED DIRECTOR'S CUT of the film, there is a great deal of added gore here --- specifically a scene where Jake Weber's character is struggling with a zombie trying to bite him and Weber takes a sharp object and jams it right through the zombie's chin and through his brains, where they fly out of his head. Very cool. There are other examples of this added gore, and it makes the film all that much better. THIS is what a gory horror film should be --- not the watered-down crap they made Paramount put out with the Friday the 13th films because they were considered "too gory".....so, what are you watching a horror film for then?
The last of the survivors decide, as a last ditch effort, to take some mall shuttle buses in the garage and equip them with metal protection to "cage in" the buses as they attempt to drive out of the mall and try and get to a marina, where they can get on a boat and hopefully away from the mainland, now crawling with fast moving zombies. The plan works, as the buses make their way into a MASSIVE SEA of angry zombies waiting for them, but once shooting a canister of propane into the crowd of zombies, the buses are once again on the move and on their way to the marina, with the leftover zombies following behind and running after them at a lightning fast pace. And, the golden zombie rule holds true here: you must shoot these ****ers in the head in order to kill them, and Snyder provides some really greusome, up close special effect tricks where the zombies are getting bullets to their heads and brains are flying everywhere......like I said, to me, THIS is what a gory horror picture SHOULD be.
However, there was a dissapointing moment I wanted to mention, where in this so-called UNRATED version, there is a scene where Polley's character is sitting in her car watching zombies eat each other on the back of a bus while a really hot naked chick walks by her car.....however, instead of seeing her tits, we get some blood from Polley's windshield covering up the nudity......huh??? I thought this was supposed to be an unrated version. From what I understand, different region releases of this DVD show those tits in all their glory. Why cant we get that in the U.S.?
There are also some amusing moments of this remake, where "Andy" and Ving Rhames are taking turns shooting different zombies from the rooftops and calling them names of celebrities they look like, such as "tell him to shoot Burt Reynolds!" as a really, really strange jazz version of Disturb's "Down With The Sickness" is playing.
The ending of this remake is a bit confusing, as the survivors make it to the marina, but must leave Jake Weber's character behind because he has been bitten, and as they board a boat to escape, with the zombies right behind them on the deck of the marina, Weber's character puts a gun under his chin and kills himself just before the end credits begin rolling. But the film doesnt end there.....as the end credits play, it is suggested that somehow the survivors on the boat are attacked by more zombies that made it off the marina, or that there are more waiting on an island they decide to sail to....this is made confusing because there are rapidly fast flashes of all this happening between the end credits, and I still dont know what happened at the end of Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead.
But, I'll tell you this ---- I enjoyed this remake more than the original, and although I know Im going to get a lot of slack for this, I cannot help how I feel. This was the best remake of the whole bunch of horror remakes to recently come out, and EASILY overpowers the disasters that were The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Amityville Horror. Of course, now we have the new War of the Worlds and soon, I am told, there is going to be a remake of John Carpenter's classic ghost tale The Fog. I have not seen the remake of House of Wax yet, with Paris Hilton.....has this even come out yet? The trailers for the film looked awesome; that pig Hilton did not.
Because, as I mentioned, this was an UNRATED DIRECTOR'S CUT of the film, this DVD came with added gore moments as well as stickers all over the box that proclaimed UNRATED EXTENDED VERSION TOO SCARY FOR THEATERS! And because I purchased this disc at Best Buy, there was an exclusive added bonus DVD that came with this DVD, exclusive from Best Buy only, with more making-of featurettes and such. The packaging of the DVD is beautiful, along the lines of what Universal did for their Van Helsing release, with a raised-lettered slip case over the standard keepcase, the sticker I mentioned boldly proclaiming TOO SCARY FOR THEATERS!
VIDEO SPECIFICATIONS:
DUAL LAYER FULL FRAME 1:33:1 VERSION
Because I purchased this DVD when I was still using a 27" 4:3 set, I chose the full screen version.....but it played back fine on my 16X9 set. Now, when I say "fine", dont get me wrong, there are some issues here.....I just meant it filled my widescreen just fine from edge to edge. There is an intentional grittyness to this film, on behalf of Snyder, which makes it look grainy and "newsreel like" in certain spots --- but this is not a transfer problem from Universal. It was to give this film a certain drab, dirty look, and it succeeds. You can see this grain and some of these specks pop up every now and then as you watch carefully, and its throughout the entire film --- it adds to the quick-cut editing Snyder chose for this remake, with the zombies coming at the screen very fast and from different angles.
AUDIO SPECIFICATIONS:
ENGLISH, SPANISH & FRENCH DOLBY DIGITAL 5.1, ENGLISH CAPTIONS, SUBTITLES IN SPANISH AND FRENCH
Here is a ***** I have with Universal Home Video, and always have: they make these really strange, stupid marketing decisions when putting out their DVDs in which they add DTS tracks to titles like Meet The Parents and Along Came Polly, but give awesome high-action thrillers like Dawn of the Dead and Van Helsing ordinary Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes. Now, dont me wrong, the Dolby tracks on these DVDs are probably running at full bitrate --- they sound good. But they could have sounded even BETTER in DTS.
The sound mix on this DVD's English Dolby Digital 5.1 mix has a problem in the fact that dialogue is mixed a bit lower than the rest of what is going on; so when you have your volume up to hear what characters are saying --- especially in the very beginning, where the dialogue is downright inaudible sometimes --- suddenly, when there is a zombie attack, you are blown back from the loud effects, and you find yourself playing with the volume control on your remote a lot. But the mix seems to heat up as it goes along, and towards the end, the audio gets downright mean sounding, with the growls of the zombies and the explosions of propane tanks rocking your sound system --- just give this mix a chance, and it will come to life. Bass rocks your sub whenever there is an onscreen explosion or a deep gunshot from a rifle; but one thing I noticed, and it was confirmed by others who have professionally reviewed this disc on other sites, was that there was little surround usage for such a film. It is there mostly to create atmosphere, and the occasional zombie groan comes in through the rears, but believe it or not, this is mainly a front-focused Dolby track. All in all, I think Universal could have done a SLIGHTLY better job with the audio on Dawn.
The special features on this UNRATED DIRECTOR'S CUT were exhausting to get through, and included:
UNRATED EXCLUSIVES:
-SPLITTING HEADACHES - ANATOMY OF EXPLODING HEADS
-ATTACK OF THE LIVING DEAD
-RAISING THE DEAD
Plus....
-THE LOST TAPE: OVER 15 MINUTES OF TERRIFYING FOOTAGE REVEALED
-SPECIAL REPORT: ZOMBIE INVASION
-OVER 12 MINUTES OF DELETED SCENES
-COMMENTARY by Director Zack Snyder and producer Eric Newman
Enjoy, horror fans!