Dawn of the Dead (2004 film)

After completing a nursing shift in the Milwaukee area, Ana returns home to her husband, Luis. Because they are distracted during the evening, they miss emergency news reports. The next morning, a zombified neighbor girl enters their bedroom and kills Luis. He quickly reanimates and attacks Ana, who escapes through the chaotic neighborhood, crashes her car, and loses consciousness. When she wakes, Ana joins police sergeant Kenneth Hall, electronics salesman Michael, and Andre, a criminal, with his pregnant wife, Luda. They enter a nearby shopping mall, where an infected security guard attacks them. Three uninfected guards, C.J., Bart, and Terry, disarm them but allow them to stay. After securing the mall, the group sees another survivor, Andy, trapped in his gun store across the parking lot. They also spot a military helicopter but fail to attract the pilot's attention. The next day, a truck carrying survivors reaches the mall while pursued by zombies. Although C.J. and Bart want to refuse them entry, the others intervene. The newcomers consist of Norma, Steve, Tucker, Monica, Glen, Frank, and Frank's daughter, Nicole, plus a gravely ill woman who dies, reanimates, and is killed. The group realizes that bites spread the infection. Frank, who has been bitten, isolates himself; after he turns, Kenneth shoots him. Andre then goes to Luda, who has hidden a scratch wound. Kenneth and Andy begin communicating by whiteboard, while Ana grows closer to Michael and Nicole bonds with Terry. When the power fails, C.J., Bart, Michael, and Kenneth go to the parking garage to restore the emergency generator and discover a breach, signaled by a friendly dog named Chips. Zombies kill Bart, and the others set them on fire. Elsewhere, Luda, restrained by Andre, dies during childbirth and reanimates. Norma kills her, leading to a gunfight in which both Norma and Andre die. The others find and kill the zombie infant. The survivors then decide to reach a marina, take Steve's yacht, and sail to an island on Lake Michigan. They reinforce two shuttle buses for the escape. To send supplies to Andy, the group lowers Chips into the parking lot with provisions strapped to his body. The dog reaches the store, but a zombie enters through the dog door. Nicole crashes a truck into the store to retrieve Chips, but is trapped by the now-infected Andy. Kenneth, Michael, Tucker, Terry, and C.J. reach the store through the sewers, kill Andy, rescue Nicole, and collect ammunition. On the way back, Tucker breaks both legs, and C.J. kills him at his request. When the group cannot secure the mall doors, they evacuate. During the drive to the marina, Glen accidentally kills Monica with a chainsaw, and the resulting crash kills him as well. Steve tries to abandon the others but is killed by a hidden zombie. Ana kills the reanimated Steve and takes his boat keys. At the marina, C.J. stays behind so the others can escape. Michael reveals that he has been bitten and kills himself, while Ana, Kenneth, Nicole, Terry, and Chips leave on the yacht. The film ends with camcorder footage showing the group running out of supplies, reaching an island, and being overwhelmed by zombies. ==Cast==

Additional members of the cast include stuntman Ermes Blarasin as the bloated woman, Natalie Brown as a CDC reporter, and dog actor Blu as Nicole's adopted pet dog Chips. Director Zack Snyder cameos as a soldier battling zombies at the United States Capitol during the film's title sequence. There are also cameo appearances by Scott Reiniger, Tom Savini, and Ken Foree (who were in the original film) as a general, sheriff, and televangelist, respectively. ==Production==

Development ) agreed to write the script for Dawn of the Dead due to his love of the original film and zombie films in general. The producers conceptualized the remake as more of a "re-envisioning" which would work in some references to the original but would primarily work on its own terms. Gunn decided to leave the origin of the zombie outbreak ambiguous, believing this would give not only equal consideration to each audience's viewpoint (scientific or otherwise) but also something to think about what they would do if they found themselves in a similar situation. Gunn revealed he received internet backlash over the film due to his past screenwriting credit on Scooby-Doo (2002), believing him to be unqualified for the job. Pre-production (pictured here at the 2016 San Diego Comic-Con) worked primarily as a television commercial director before he made his feature film debut with Dawn of the Dead. Zack Snyder chose to direct the remake as his first feature film because it gave the television commercial director "a reason to care about every shot". Set design In searching for a suitable upscale mall location for the film, production designer Andrew Neskoromny looked for existing malls that were scheduled for demolition. Anderson completed his test makeups for the film over four weeks, and then he and his team traveled to the Toronto set and set up their makeup effects lab next to the mall. Filming and post-production Principal photography Filming began on June 9, 2003, on location in various parts of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. They built various makeup rooms for the artists to work in: one consisted of camper trailers where they would apply detailed prosthetic makeups to extras playing "hero zombies", a special type of zombie; and the other consisted of tents where they would produce painted masks for extras playing background zombies. Extras playing foreground zombies were painted with plain palette makeups in Anderson's mall lab. The makeup artists were given his concept images to work on as references. According to Anderson and Heather Langenkamp, the most extras they ever had in a given day sat between 200 and 400, The production shot scenes for which Snyder wanted as many as 4,000 live-action zombies, which Berardi created rather as a combination of practical zombies and CG zombies which he built as 3D models with Autodesk Maya. One such scene involved tens of thousands of zombies at the mall's parking lot, which was shot with motion-control passes whose green screen elements of 200 extras, combined with the CG zombies, were later composited to create a "digital crowd simulation that looks realistic". ==Soundtrack==

Film score The score for Dawn of the Dead was composed by Tyler Bates, his first for a horror film. Bates was hired after being recommended by music supervisor, G. Marq Roswell, as both of them were involved on the Mario Van Peebles's film Baadasssss! (2003). However, the studio was not convinced on Bates's hiring because he was not an established composer at that time, but upon Snyder's insistence, he was ultimately hired. While scoring the film, Bates avoided taking cues from the original film's music by the band Goblin, as he felt it incompatible with what Snyder had filmed. Although he liked Goblin's themes for the counterpart, he felt it was specific to that period and Snyder's version had a "different attitude" in comparison to the original film. Hence, he let go of the popular themes from the original film, including the main title theme, which he felt "was cool and was a different thing". Other songs In a 2023 interview with Total Film, Snyder revealed he had lobbied for the inclusion of the Richard Cheese cover of "Down with the Sickness", originally sung by the heavy metal band Disturbed, which plays in a montage where the characters relieve boredom in the mall. According to Snyder, the studio originally declined the Richard Cheese version in favor of the Disturbed version, but he managed to convince them that the former was appropriate for the scene. Snyder also stated his rationale behind the decision to play "People Who Died" by the Jim Carroll Band at the end of the film: "I really love that [opening chords of 'People Who Died'] DANG! DANG! DANG, DANG, DANG! I thought that it was cool as a way to end the movie because it's so dark. It's a bleak ending, in a cool way." ==Release==

Universal Pictures distributed the film worldwide, excluding the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Japan, Scandinavia, Iceland, Turkey, Israel, South Africa and the Middle East. Strike Entertainment retained the film through a set of closed deals, selling the film to Entertainment Film Distributors in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Metropolitan Filmexport in France, Toho-Towa in Japan, Nordisk Film in Scandinavia, Samfilm in Iceland, Pinema in Turkey, Forum Film in Israel, Nu Metro in South Africa and Italia Film in the Middle East. Box office Dawn of the Dead was marketed with its 10-minute opening sequence that was broadcast on cable television four nights prior to its theatrical release. In the U.S. and Canada, the film was released alongside Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Taking Lives, on March 19, 2004. Variety reported, "Some 63% of Dawn [audiences] were under age 25, with 57% of patrons male. Hispanic moviegoers comprised 21% of its supporters and African Americans 14%." Dawn of the Dead was screened out of competition at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Home media Universal Pictures Home Entertainment released Dawn of the Dead on DVD, Blu-ray, and digital with director Zack Snyder's unrated director's cut of the film: he described this version as longer, gorier, and more character-driven than the theatrical one. Bonus features found on the DVD and Blu-ray include Snyder and co-producer Eric Newman's audio commentary; the featurettes Attack of the Living Dead, Raising the Dead, Drawing the Dead, Splitting Headaches, Surviving the Dawn, and Special Report: Zombie Invasion; the short film ''The Lost Tape: Andy's Terrifying Last Days Revealed''; deleted scenes with optional commentary by Snyder and Newman; and the film's theatrical trailer. On Halloween of 2017, Shout! Factory's horror sub-label Scream Factory released a two-disc collector's edition Blu-ray of Dawn of the Dead, which contains the film's theatrical version and the director's cut. The Blu-ray, which is said to have been "derived from the digital intermediate archival negative", contains bonus features found in previous releases in addition to new and exclusive ones featuring interviews with actors Ty Burrell and Jake Weber, screenwriter James Gunn, and makeup effects artists David LeRoy Anderson and Heather Langenkamp. A 4K Ultra HD collector's edition Blu-ray from Scream Factory with extras ported over from the label's previous release was released on January 31, 2023. ==Reception==

Contemporary response Dawn of the Dead received generally positive reviews upon its release, with critics praising it as a worthy remake of the original and a fine addition to the zombie genre. Audiences polled by CinemaScore reported that moviegoers gave the film an average letter grade of B. The film was considered by most to be an improvement over the original in terms of acting, production values, and scares, Despite giving it a negative review, Variety said that the film was "more palatable" than the "atrocious" Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake of the previous year. a sentiment also shared by IGN. while Roger Ebert said in a positive review that anyone paying to see it is guaranteed to get their money's worth. Abundant praise was given to the film's opening sequence, which, for an otherwise negative review on The Hollywood Reporter, was "pulse-poundingly good". Gingold found Snyder's camerawork using a first-person video-game perspective at the beginning of the film to be praiseworthy, more so than those of the live-action videogame adaptations Resident Evil (2002) and House of the Dead (2003). and could pass for a remake of the original, by contrast. Wesley Morris gave a negative review in which he said the film "feels like the product of the PlayStation era" as opposed to a reverence for Romero. Conversely, the BBC complimented the film as a "stylish, gore-drenched shoot-em-up", In a 2024 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Pegg described the remake as a "great movie", but criticized Snyder's decision to stick with the title Dawn of the Dead, saying, "They could have called it Deadish, which was a great line in the film that one of the actors used, and it still would have been a great film, but when you just take a title because people recognize it, it's so disrespectful to the original." Numerous publications have named Dawn of the Dead Snyder's best film. Revisiting the film on its 15th anniversary in 2019, Joe Lipsett wrote the following verdict for Bloody Disgusting: Fifteen years later, Dawn of the Dead completely holds up. The film's flaws are mostly at the character level, though having a dumb zombie baby and a few undeveloped red shirts in the mix is hardly a deal breaker. The action – particularly the opening scene and the propane explosion climax – in addition to the fantastic special effects makeup, the brief flirtation with found footage, and the reverence for its source text while introducing something new makes 2004's Dawn of the Dead one of the best remakes on the market. In a June 2018 article for The Hollywood Reporter, Richard Newby wrote that Dawn of the Dead helped revitalize the zombie genre along with 28 Days Later at a time when the United States "was ripe for the re-emergence of zombie movies" following the September 11 attacks, which he believes to have contributed to the Americans' "increased fear of biological weapons, fervent mass militarization and the burrowing question of who exactly are the people we call our neighbors". Author Stephen King, in the forenote of the 2010 edition of his book Danse Macabre, saw what he believed to be Snyder's subtext conveying the horrors induced by terrorist attacks, drawing parallels between the zombie apocalypse and a post-9/11 America. King described Dawn of the Dead as "genius perfected" in terms of its standing in the zombie genre. South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and South Korean filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho have also spoken of their appreciation of Dawn of the Dead and cited its influence upon their works. , Dawn of the Dead is Snyder's highest-rated film on the website, where it has also made its lists of The 20 Scariest Opening Scenes in Horror Movie History (at number 6), The 25 Best Horror Movie Remakes (at number 9), The 30 Essential Zombie Movies (at number 13), and 18 Memorable Horror Remakes. Dawn of the Dead has made several rankings of the top zombie films, including number 3 by Rolling Stone (2012), number 12 by Empire (2020), by Collider (2021), number 17 by IndieWire (2022), and by Variety (2023); as well as the best horror films, including number 3 by Dread Central (2010), number 8 by Bloody Disgusting (2009), number 52 by IGN, and number 55 by Rolling Stone (2020). Accolades ==Spiritual successor==

On March 25, 2007, Variety announced that Warner Bros. Pictures would produce a new zombie film from a screenplay written by Joby Harold, based on an original idea conceived by Snyder. In a statement, Snyder said that he wanted the film to feel similar to Dawn of the Dead and 300 and that it would center around a father in Las Vegas "who tries to save his daughter from imminent death in a zombie-infested world". At the time, Wesley Coller was attached to executive produce, with Snyder and his wife Deborah Snyder producing through Cruel & Unusual Films (now known as The Stone Quarry). Snyder got the idea during Dawn of the Deads production and wanted to explore a new evolution of the zombies. The film is not a sequel to Dawn of the Dead but rather a spiritual successor. Snyder realized that he needed a new origin story to develop the plot and create a new incarnation of the living dead. He titled the project Army of the Dead as a tribute to the works of George A. Romero. After languishing for several years in development hell, the distribution rights to the film were acquired by Netflix in 2019, and Snyder began shooting that same year. Army of the Dead had a week-long limited theatrical release starting May 14 prior to its wider Netflix release on May 21, 2021. ==See also==