Dawn of the Dead (1978) - film review

The world is in the grip of an unexplained pandemic.  The bodies of the dead have become reanimated and are preying on the flesh of the living, creating worldwide pandemonium.   Believing that this zombie threat is confined to the United States, Stephen, an employee at a television studio in Philadelphia decides to escape to Canada in a helicopter with his girlfriend Francine.  Before they go, the couple meet up with Peter and Roger, a pair of cops who are among the few survivors of a SWAT assault team that was sent in to raid a tenement block after its residents refused to surrender their dead for disposal.  Running low on food and fuel reserves, the four land the helicopter on the roof of a shopping mall which is infested with zombies.  This proves to be an ideal place to set up base since the mall provides everything the four could possibly want.  In the attempt to repel the zombies, Roger is bitten by one of their number and Peter has no choice to shoot him dead.  Some months later, Stephen, Francine and Peter are living in safety and luxury.  The zombies have all been driven from the centre and the three surviving humans could want for nothing.  But, just as boredom begins to set in, a new threat suddenly appears, in the form of a gang of armed bikers.  Peter realises that the only way to deal with this latest menace is to open all of the entrances to the mall, allowing the flesh-hungry zombies to return in their hundreds...

George A. Romero’s eagerly awaited sequel to his zombie classic Night of the Living Dead (1968) isn’t what you might call a traditional horror film, but rather an all-guns blazing indictment of capitalism, specifically the kind of mindless consumerism that was running rampant in America in the mid-1970s.  The film has its fair share of heart-stopping shocks and grisly gore nastiness, which makes it irresistible to all true horror aficionados, but there is clearly far more to it than just cheap exploitation thrills of this kind.  Dawn of the Dead is also an intelligent piece of social commentary and remains one of cinema’s most potent representations of the failings of raw capitalism.

Although its budget of around 0.7 million dollars was considerably greater than what Romero had to spend on his first zombie film, it was pretty minuscule by the standards of Hollywood and once again Romero achieves miracles with very limited resources.  Although the rich colour photography and expansive location (a huge shopping mall) prevent the film from having the relentlessly claustrophobic feel of Night of the Living Dead, the sheer pace and energy of the film, not to mention the quirky mix of satire and horror, keep the audience enthralled and entertained from start to finish.

Whether by accident or design, Dawn of the Dead seems to be a decidely tongue-in-cheek retelling of how the west was won and lost.  A party of gutsy travellers arrive at a paradisiacal setting inhabited by unfriendly natives, mercilessly drive these unwelcoming brutes away and then take up residence to create a consumerist Utopia which, in no time at all, they get bored with and end up trashing.  Here we have the rise and fall of America and western-style capitalism in a zombie-flavoured nutshell.

Like its predecessor, Dawn of the Dead was a phenomenally successful film (it took around 55 million dollars at the box office) and had an enormous impact on subsequent films in the horror genre.  The film’s popularity guaranteed another Romero sequel, Day of the Dead (1985) and inspired the respectable 2004 remake, directed by Zack Snyder.   Regarded as George Romero’s masterpiece, Dawn of the Dead definitely deserves a high place in anyone’s ranking of the top ten horror films.  Enjoyable as the spectacle of thrills and chills is, what makes the film so great is its cheeky political subtext.  How better to portray the soulless vacuity of the capitalist system than with mindless zombies wandering aimlessly around a shopping centre?  The next time you go shopping on Christmas Eve, it will be exactly like Dawn of the Dead, only scarier.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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