“These creatures are nothing but pure, motorized instinct.”
A newsroom in chaos. People are leaving their posts, rescue stations are being shut down (rescue for what?), and on the air a panel of two men debate in increasingly hostile tones; we hear snippets of their conversation: something about the dead coming back to life. Across town, the police raid a tenement building. Racial tensions boil over, and a black cop kills a white cop who had been freely using the N-word. The casualties mount up, and then they start coming back, blue-grey monstrosities tearing hunks out of each others’ flesh. Two cops find a basement full of the living dead, and methodically exterminate every one of them.
This is the beginning of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, and by starting in medias res, Romero is able to capture the chaos and confusion one would feel in the midst of a zombie outbreak. One of Dead‘s greatest strengths is this opening prologue and the anxiety it induces in the viewer. Unfortunately, it’s also the best part of a very long movie.
Can a horror film sustain itself for 139 minutes? Horror survives on tension, and Romero’s film stretches itself to its breaking point; a lot of the time this is a hangout movie, very episodic in nature, almost like the world’s first mumblecore zombie film. The Shining is 146 minutes, but The Shining is hypnotic in a way that Dead is not. Dawn of the Dead is an inordinately long film – it’s the same length as The Player, and longer even than A Clockwork Orange, Raging Bull, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
The setup of the film is well-known to any horror fan: a group of survivors hole up inside a shopping mall, surrounded on all sides by the dead. What I just wrote takes up almost an hour of screen time. There are some eerie shots of rural Pennsylvania overrun with zombies, but this is where Romero makes the unwise choice to try to inject some levity, as rednecks drink Iron City beer and take potshots at zombies (who told ’70s horror directors that they were funny?). There’s a more successful scene at an airstrip, where Roger (Scott H. Reiniger) is refueling the helicopter when Peter (Ken Foree) is attacked by a zombie. Steven (David Emge) takes aim at the zombie; later, Peter throws him to the ground and aims a gun at his face, asking him how it feels.
The film doesn’t exactly kick into gear when the foursome (including Steven’s girlfriend Fran, played by Gaylen Ross in the best performance) arrives at the mall. Everything is pretty secure, and the zombies are so weak and slow-moving that half the time the group just punches them instead of shooting them. “Smart” zombies are Romero’s worst contribution to this genre. Here one pretends to be a mannequin so it can attack Roger; this practice would reach its nadir in Romero’s Land of the Dead (2005), wherein a zombie learns how to use a gun.
Most of Dead is just the group doing the things you should do the second you arrive in a facility like this. Well past the hour mark, they get the bright idea to make sure all the doors are locked (this is followed by two shopping montages). In their defense, life in the mall is pretty easy, which takes away from the tension. The reason movies like 28 Days Later or shows like The Walking Dead (which, fun fact, used to be good) work is that they show you the desperation and the dehumanization of the survivors. Think of Cillian Murphy greedily sucking down a warm Pepsi, or the joy on Andrew Lincoln’s face when he gets to take a shower. In Dawn of the Dead, power and water are such a nonissue that the group leaves the damn fountains and escalators running. When creature comforts are so readily available – they even have table settings! – it induces boredom. Comfort is the enemy of tension, and as a result, a lot of Dead lives in a lull.
Which is why it comes across as so half-hearted when Romero tries to introduce any actual conflict. The racial tensions are quickly done away with, but to be fair, the film’s most successful relationship is the one between Steven and Peter, who become believable friends. Fran says she’s being ignored and outvoted, then when the film realizes that that’s not going to stick, it’s revealed that she’s pregnant. If you think this makes their lives at all harder, then buddy, I want to watch the movie you’re thinking of.
The most believable conflict comes after Roger is bitten. He clings to life for a few days, and is even mostly ambulatory, but he eventually succumbs. It what is easily the film’s best scene – give or take that bravura opening – as he slowly dies, he makes Peter promise to kill him if he turns. “I’m gonna try not to come back,” he croaks. “I’m gonna…try…”
It’s just too bad that on the heels of a wonderfully human scene like that, Romero makes his worst decision, which is the introduction of a group of cartoonish bikers who want to get into the mall. Mind you, this happens at the 110-minute mark of a 139-minute movie. This leads to what might be the worst scene in cinema history; the bikers make it into the mall, and when they discover the bakery, they decide it would be fun to ride around throwing pies in zombies’ faces. It’s even stupider than it sounds, and it’s the equivalent of the film shaking us by the shoulders and screaming “Don’t be afraid of these monsters, ever!”
I’m not going to dispute George A. Romero’s place in the pantheon of horror directors. I think Night of the Living Dead is a terrific film, and I’m very much looking forward to re-watching his Creepshow later this month. But Dawn of the Dead is more or less a dud. It’s boring, overlong, and beats you over the head with its ham-fisted commentary on consumerism. People like shit, George. Get over it.
10/1: Dawn of the Dead
10/2: Drag Me to Hell
10/3: Pet Sematary
10/4: The Descent
10/5: Repo! The Genetic Opera
10/6: Desierto
10/7: The Blair Witch Project
10/8: Blair Witch
10/9: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
10/10: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
10/11: Prince of Darkness
10/12: 30 Days of Night
10/13: Friday the 13th (2009)
10/14: Slither
10/15: Tremors
10/16: Pandorum
10/17: It Follows
10/18: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
10/19: Poltergeist
10/20: Paranormal Activity
10/21: Creepshow
10/22: VHS
10/23: Nosferatu the Vampyre
10/24: An American Werewolf in London
10/25: The Witch
10/26: The Rocky Horror Picture Show
10/27: Cronos
10/28: The Hills Have Eyes
10/29: The Hills Have Eyes (2006)
10/30: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
10/31: Halloween (2007)
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