5. DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978)
Fuck a Zack Snyder remake – no other zombie movie, not even by George Romero, will ever surpass the original Dawn of the Dead. How do I love this gory, nasty, and surprisingly moving masterpiece of terror? Let me count the ways. First of all, while it can’t surpass the closed-up creepiness of the original Night of the Living Dead, it opens it up to staggering effect and makes it a truly apocalyptic horror film. Second, Night had always been projected as a one-off; it was Dawn that made zombies into one of the famous monsters of filmdom, that transformed Romero’s dead-eyed flesh-eaters into beings with their own mythology and internal logic. By doing so, it didn’t just launch a franchise – it launched an entire universe, a cultural archetype with as much meaning and possibility as vampires, werewolves – or angels. Third, it’s tight as hell, incredibly suspenseful, and remarkably well-acted, with the technical difficulties of filming something so ambitious on a shoestring overcome in surprising and effective ways. Fourth, like all great horror movies, it gives us an essential human drama at its center; we care about the story because we care about Stephen, Peter, Roger and Francine. Fifth, it’s a deeply satirical exercise, the first attempt – and probably the most successful – by Romero to mock us by showing us the way a lot of people probably see us: zombies as cultural/political metaphors. And sixth…well, it’s about a bunch of flesh-eating zombies running amok in a shopping mall. And, to use the highfalutin language of film criticism, that’s awesome.
Read More...