The setting remains the same, though: a large shopping mall where the still-living take refuge. The inspiration seems less Romero than John Carpenter films like The Thing and Assault on Precinct 13, in which the characters are defined mostly by how they react to extreme circumstances. Rather than focus on a quartet of survivors of a plague that has turned everyone around them into flesh-ravenous ghouls, new Dawn director Zack Snyder and screenwriter James Gunn take a less personal approach their theme is how humanity as a whole responds to a crisis. Romero’s original, but then it doesn’t really try to. In any case, Dawn of the Dead joins The Ring and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as an update that both honors its source and emerges as an effective horror film in its own right. What does it say that a number of the major horror remakes in the last couple of years have been better than most of the original genre fare? Perhaps that studios don’t feel the need to be as controlling creatively when they’re working with a presold property, or maybe just that we’ve lucked out and seen these projects handed to filmmakers who respect the films they’re revamping.
Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on March 18, 2004, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
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