Schedule update and Pov's Movie Point of View II

Sorry that this review is off schedule, but my schedule has changed in real life, and so I'm going to have to change the Pov's POV schedule to adapt to it. So, as of now, Movie Point of Views are moved to Wednesday, Desert Island Games are moved to Friday, and Must Have Music Play-lists are moved to the weekend.

So, business is out of the way, lets get down to it. This week I'm going to review a classic: George A. Romero's original Dawn of the Dead.

Brainy Brain-eaters

I'm normally not a fan of horror movies. I don't really like being scared out of my wits by a monster or watch people torture themselves to survive. But I have one weakness in this genre, namely zombie movies, in partciular the work of visonary director George A. Romero. His work began with Night of the Living Dead in the 1960's, which was followed up by today's subject, Dawn of the Dead. First off, like all of Romero's original work, the movie was made on a surprisngly low budget. It took less than a $3/4 million to make this movie. Even adjusted for inflation, thats dirt cheap. But just because its low budget doesn't mean it's low quality.

The plot of this movie is in no way original: survivors of a zombie pandemic hole up to survive in a chaotic world where the government is rapidly falling apart. None of Romero's work has a very surprising plot. The genius of this film is the symbolism and imagery. It sounds weird, refering to a low-budget horror movie like that, but it really is there. Dawn of the Dead continues it's predecessor's overarching theme: that in a hostile enviornment, it's not the dangers of the world that will destroy a group, it's people themselves. This time, instead of the group imploding due to internal disagreement, which was the case of the first movie, the original group resolves their interpersonal issues quickly and effectively. They manage to create for themselves a little Utopia inside their shopping mall/hideout, and dispite a bit of cabin fever, things seem to be generally going well. Then other people show up. In what I see as a metaphor for war and agression, a deadly, heavily armed gang of biker-pirates attack our heroes, breaking in, and in the process, destroying the paradise the survivors had created for themselves by letting in the zombies. In the end, the conflict destroys the predators as well, not simply the prey.

But the explosive finale is not the only metaphor in the film. Laced throughout the film is a stirring and disturbing motif of the zombies shambling about the mall, brainlessly attempting to live out the lives they had before death. This conjures up a disconcerting image of today's modern shoppers, and the whole film feels like a silent protest of American consumerism, that it is slowly deading us from the inside, as illustrated by the zombies' decomposing exterior. This is an uncomfortable but very valid protest, and it really show's Romero's genius.

Its not all brain-eating goodness here, however. I do have a few, minor grievances. The most important one is the very, very end, the last 30 seconds or so. I won't ruin the final situation, but suffice to say, the ending is a let down and almost compeletly negates the pessimistic message of the movie. It feels like the producers of the movie pulled to have a happier ending, which just doesn't fit with the rest of the movie's feel and vibe. Other than that though, the film is dated and low budget, but surprsingly good.


Final Verdit: 3 1/2 stars out of 4. Argueably the best zombie movie of all time, let down only by the ending.