f13.net forums - Dawn of the Dead

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July 25, 2025, 04:55:50 PM

we're back, baby

Quote from: Jain Zar

It might collect new players for my upcoming All Flesh Must Be Eaten game though.

Elighten me, what is that game? I caught a preview for one called "Zombies: The Awakening" a few months ago. Looked like Raccoon City the FPS.

Right now OFP and the Unified Zombie pack are satisifing my bloodlust against the walking dead.

www.allflesh.com (IIRC)

Its an RPG by Eden studios. Allows for a HUGE number of ways to run a zombie survival horror game, and even more with the small amount of expansion books. Like Kung Fu cinema, pulp era, or western. The game has conversions in the main book for that silly D20 system, and the western one apparently has a well meaning but flawed conversion to Deadlands. My friends got a look at the book this morning and they are itching to play. They aren't seeing DOTD till friday, so I hope the movie won't push them away from zombie fun. It shouldn't as they appreciate "dumb" movies more than I do...

Quote from: Alluvian

Sounds like most would have liked the movie better if it didn't bother trying to pretend to be a remake.

Similar to how I would not mind the upcoming I, Robot movie if it was not named I, Robot.

Winner!

If this was named 28 more days later I would be raving at how well it looked on screen instead of how much it was NOT Dawn of the Dead.

You can't make fucking remakes of classic movies that have nothing at all to do with the original, no matter how good they look or how excellent the cast is. So yeah, I "liked" the movie on it's merit as a movie but it is yet another fucked up and completely wrong remake.

Given that "zombies killing people" is highly unlikely to be anything trademarked or infringable they could have called this movie anything and been assured of much rejoicing. The title implies congruency but the movie doesn't deliver that. Cheap marketing ploys 2 crush!

IIRC it said based on, so if you were expecting Dawn of the Dead v2.0 with super r33t CGI, you sure set yourself up.

Yeah really... The CGI fucking sucked.

Now that I've seen the movie, I no longer think Hellfire is right.
I know it.

The remake was a solid gore/scare flick and the best zombie movie since Romeros Day of the Dead. It succeeded were 28 Days later failed miserable, because they had the money to do it right. The story was just as clichéd as 28 days later, but at least they returned to the original cliché and remembered, that the zombies were the interesting monsters.
But it doesn't come close to the original.
In 20 years when people talk about all times greatest horror movies or zombie classics, this won't be on the list - the original will.

The special effects were better in the original and so was the story. Dialogue was better and the charcters more interesting. And the movie had depth and worked as an allegory - while managing to be scary - when I left the theater after this one, the music playing in my mind, was the supermarket Muzak of the original (which I haven't seen in more than 10 years) - every scene in that was more memorable.

The remake had better actors and higher production values - the top down shots of the destruction was magnificent. But when played on the same scale as the original - ie in the mall - the original wins.

(and while I like the running zombies and can see they're scarier purely based on logic, I still think the stumbling and shuffling but relentless zombies of the original conveys their monstrous nature better and thus ends up being more horrifying on a pure emotional level. Most of these were just somewhat bloodied crazies like those from Romeros movie by that name or the abonimation, 28 Days Later - they don't beat shotgun zombie by any stretch of the imagination.)

Hanzii, you need to watch the original again. The special affects aged horribly, as did the music and the dialogue, which turned out to be just utter crap. Again, this one (DotD 2004) had no narrative and the dialogue could be almost COMPLETELY ignored. In the original it couldn't be. Also, the original was all over the place and the zombies were completely uninteresting. In this one the zombies were actually worth fearing.

As I see it this is a great revision of what was once a great film, but isn't any longer. If you yearn for the days of good Italian horror Opera and Suspiria withstood the test of time, Dawn of the Dead did not.

EDIT: And just to add, who the hell cares about story in a movie like this? And maybe that's the problem, people expect story.

I will watch the original again - simply because this movie made me yearn for it.
It won't change my mind, though. I know what I am talking about... and I disagree with what you said.

Ok, that's it. After hearing so many people blather on about how the original was such an incredible allegory and blah blah blah, I went ahead and put it on my Netflix queue at #1.

See, I thought "Night of the Living Dead" sucked, even if you go beyond the terrible production values. It did nothing for me, and I'm not expecting much from the original DotD. I'm prepared to be surprised, but it's a fucking zombie movie. If it has shambling zombies and desperate survivors blasting brains, I think that's about all the levels it needs to succeed on.

It's like people who diss the Matt Broderick Godzilla movie. I enjoyed it, because it had a big fucking lizard trashing New York. That's why I watch fucking Godzilla movies; everything else is pretty much fluff.

Yeah, but that godzilla movie spent way too much time on the raptor babies which had been done to fucking death in jurrasic park. Then godzilla ate a taxi and spit it out without damaging a single tire or any of the glass in the vehicle. At that point I was ready to turn off the tape and call it a loss. I finished watching it, but there wasn't much to see. Ugh, way off topic. Will probably be seeing the remake this weekend and the original probably never. I think I saw it on cable at one point but all those zombie flicks are the same.

I just kept wondering why the big lizard was after Ferris Beuller...

I can see how you'd make that mistake WayAbvPar, the man really does resemble a lizard.

Quote from: Rei

I can see how you'd make that mistake WayAbvPar, the man really does resemble a lizard.

Well, he certainly did when he was one of the Dark Overlords of the Universe in that other underappreciated movie classic...

Well since we're slightly off topic I can mention that I finally caught Rob Zombie's "House of 1000 Corpses" on HBO (I think) last night. Given that it had horrible reviews despite much hype I didn't have high expectations and wasn't sure if I would even bother watching the whole thing.

I did end up watching the whole thing even though the last 15-20 minutes pretty much sucked. As an homage to Texas Chainsaw Masacre it was decent and I have to say better than TCM 2 (not the remake, haven't seen that yet, I'm talking the Matthew McConahay version). If he would have cut it to about an hour, removing a pointless robbery scene and a few cut scenes that were mainly time fillers it would have been better. But you can't really release a 60 minute movie in theatres so it was padded with some crap.

Worth spending an hour and a half if you have nothing better to do but probably not worth going out of your way to see it.

Quote from: Rei

I can see how you'd make that mistake WayAbvPar, the man really does resemble a lizard.

Jeffrey Jones wasn't after Ferris, he was after Ferris's kiddie porn collection (link is to CNN, NOT to any sort of example).

Just got around to seeing it, not sure if I ever saw the original or not.

Zombie history notwithstanding, I thought it was an excellent movie. Don't worry about it being named as a sequel. That is just the suits thinking they could make more money with a remake vs a standalone. This movie is a standalone and as such is a great zombie action flick. Like 28 days but better IMO.

I did like how 28 days came up with a story about the origins of it and it was logically contained to the continent like it should have been following that story. I also liked how they kept that one zombie to see how long they could live with no food. The main character becoming some super commando with ESP suddenly at the end almost ruined the movie for me though.

This movie never bothered with any origin story, it just happened, and was not logically confined in any way. Sounds like the first DotD played more on the 'no more room in hell' stuff, but within this movie it was little more than a crazy preacher on tv. The characters and action was pretty internally consistent though and made for a very fun movie, even if it was nothing past an action/horror flick. Well, I take that back, it had some real good humor moments as well.

Next up looks to be the second resident evil movie. That movie has nowhere new to go really. I suppose they can keep playing on the evil corporation thing, but if they drop that they have nothing.

[Edited to add]

Just finished watching the original on DVD. I hadn't actually seen it before as it turns out. I liked it, but it was really fucking painful to watch until they got to the mall. Everything before that sucked donkey balls. Some of the worst acting I have seen in a long time. And freaking BLATANT stupidity. Like filling up the helicopter and staring at your hand pumping gas for a good 5 minutes while a zombie slowly walks toward you. I mean what the fuck? Guy scrambling on the ground for a hammer that is inches from his hand with a zombie on him. The woman he got pregnant and supposedly loves him is standing over him doing nothing. He is telling her to run because there is a zombie barely moving about 20 feet from her that will arrive in about 4 hours at its current rate. She does NOTHING.

After they got to the mall I enjoyed it from then on out. Other than zombies, and a mall, there was nothing in common with the new movie by the same title. I won't even call it a remake. That said, if I was going to watch one of them again right now it would be the new one. I frankly liked it better for the duration and found it much more watchable. Horrible acting and people dying from mass stupidity bother me. The original had a lot more of that than the new one.

The cinematography in the new one was so much more advanced of course as well. Mostly due to budget and advanced special effects I am sure. But the camera shots and scenes were more entertaining.

It is apples and oranges though. Comparing an action flick to ... um... I don't know what you would call the original. Zombie social commentary I suppose.

[edited again to add]
The original worked much better for me on the second viewing. I just was not really in the totally non-scary shambling zombie mood the first time. And I was able to appreciate some of the campy effects more. Much of the movie effect would have been the shock value of the effects which were over the top for their time, but seeing now, it is pretty tame and fake.

I finally watched the original Dawn of the Dead this weekend.

I can say that it is my honest and earnest opinion that George Romero is exactly the kind of hack I always thought he was. The special effects didn't bother me, I allowed for them. But I saw nothing in it which made it stand out to me as any sort of deep (or even shallow) social commentary. Ok, maybe if I stretch and squint I can see the fact that the blonde white woman goes off at the end with the big black man and how that might be shocking in 1978. And maybe no one else was talking about how malls are soulless places full of mindlessly shuffling people. Maybe it was, but to me, it seems like it was trite then and even more trite now.

As for budget, I think he uses that as an excuse entirely too much. Look at a movie like "El Mariachi" done on probably a fraction even of "Dawn"'s meager budget, in Mexico nonethless. Even the editing is smoother, the framing and composition is much more professional. If I saw one more badly spliced together, tight-cropped shot, I was going to barf. He's just a bad director. I felt like I was watching the worst episodes of the A-Team with blue-makeupped zombies. Bonus points for including Tom Savini (SEX MACHINE) but only so many.

I still can't get the damn Richard Cheese cover of "Down with the Sickness" from the remake out of my head. Had to download it and listen to it nearly daily driving my wife fucking batty. It is taking over my soul.

*sings*
Open up your hate and let it flow into me...