—three sticks of doom

It takes a lot of guts to use a Johnny Cash song in a zombie movie, but Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead does it, and does it well. Imagine scenes of rampant carnage, wanton destruction, and the occasional close-up zombie glamour shot, all set against the folksy backdrop of "The Man Comes Around," Cash's famed song about the End Times. Brilliant, in my opinion. And this is just one example of the kind of detailed craftsmanship that makes this film so fun, gruesome and, ultimately, watchable.

Dawn of the Dead is a 2004 remake of the 1978 George Romero film of the same name. It was skillfully shot, with lots of long, angled camera shots that create a sense of the surreality and . . . well . . . wrongness in everyday landscapes. The result is that you're a little creeped out before anything at all has happened, and of course, that's just how the filmmakers want you to be. We follow a small group of survivors as they take refuge in a local mall, and the film expertly captures the incongruous experience of walking through this shrine to capitalism with the persistent drone of zombies trying to get in. Even zombies love the mall, you see. Dead or no, they're still Americans.

The group is composed of Sarah Polley (a nurse), Ving Rhames (a cop), some generic-looking guy who sells TVs at Best Buy (the laconic cowboy-type), Mekhi Phifer (an ex-con), and his pregnant wife (a pregnant wife). They arm themselves with the best weapons they can find in the mall (croquet mallets and what-not), before encountering three security guards who are vigorously defending their little fiefdom. The guards are led by the ruthless, arrogant, semi-mulleted CJ. (Oh, and by the way, CJ has a character arc. A character arc in a zombie movie, aren't you impressed? Usually I find that character development is to horror films what caviar is to ham sandwiches—you just don't see them combined that often. But then I discovered CJ and his amazing character arc. Now, I'm not saying that Dawn of the Dead is a Bildungsroman in the classic style or anything, but I do think a little r-e-s-p-e-c-t is in order.)

The funniest thing to me is that this film seems to take place completely outside the common mythology of zombies. None of the characters are able to recognize the zombies for what they are, even though the creatures have all the traditional characteristics associated with the recently demised.

Guy #1: "What are they?"
Guy #2: (dramatic pause) "I don't know."

Um . . . they're lurching around with their arms held out in front of them, groaning and feeding on human flesh. Is this really a tough one? Also, the characters can't seem to get a handle on how zombie-ism is transferred. At one point, a wide-eyed Sarah Polley proclaims, "I think it's the bites!" Oh, you think? It must be all that medical training that helped you make that jump in logic. I mean, just because everyone who is bitten turns into a ravening zombie himself . . . .

There are no real explanations for the plague, although the televangelists have their ideas about it. Gay marriage. Abortion. The usual suspects. People are supposedly misbehaving worse than usual, and now "Hell is overflowing." Go figure.

While stranded in the mall, our group spends a lot of time up on the roof, gazing down at the sea of zombies. While up there, Ving Rhames befriends a guy named Andy, who owns the gun shop across the street. For awhile, the men use whiteboards to play chess. And when they're bored with that, they play "Hollywood Squares," a game where one of them writes the name of a famous person on the whiteboard, and the other has to pick off the zombie in the crowd who looks like that person. Jay Leno . . . Burt Reynolds . . . Rosie O'Donnell . . . you get the idea.

This movie goes places that zombie movies have never gone before. Part of it is the extremely convincing gore shots (not for the faint of heart), but mostly what I'm thinking of is the craziness that occurs with regard to Mekhi Phifer's pregnant wife. She gets bitten during one of the attacks, and he keeps her sequestered in one of the baby supply stores, where she gets progressively more ill. Eventually, she dies, gets zombified, and starts going for his jugular. Determined to save his family unit, Mekhi straps his wife down and delivers the baby himself. I think we all know the result . . . zombie baby! Hilarious, growling-grinning zombie baby! It's a little like the lizard baby in V, but even more funny, if you can imagine that. Anyway, the trio gets out of hand and has to be dispatched, and an Old West-style gunfight ensues. Great stuff.

I won't give away any more of Dawn of the Dead, because you need to see it for yourself. You get to hear some great music, like "Down with the Sickness," performed by Richard Cheese & Lounge Against the Machine, and the closing credits bring you the Jim Carroll punk anthem, "People Who Died," which has never been put to better use. See it today.

Coming soon: a review of Shaun of the Dead. (sinister laughter)