Dawn of the Dead (2004 film)

Dawn of the Dead is a 2004 American action horror film directed by Zack Snyder and written by James Gunn. A remake of George A. Romero's 1978 horror film "Dawn of the Dead", it stars an ensemble cast that includes Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, Mekhi Phifer, Ty Burrell, Michael Kelly, Kevin Zegers, and Lindy Booth; with the original's Scott Reiniger, Tom Savini, and Ken Foree appearing in cameos. It is Snyder's first feature film, having previously worked as a television commercial director. Set in Milwaukee, "Dawn of the Dead" follows a group of lone survivors who take refuge in an upscale suburban shopping mall during a zombie apocalypse. 
Producers Eric Newman and Marc Abraham developed the film rather as a "re-envisioning" of the original "Dawn of the Dead", aiming to reinvigorate the zombie genre for modern audiences. Newman and Abraham were handed the rights to the original courtesy of its producer and rights holder Richard P. Rubinstein; and then Gunn was brought in to write the script, borrowing the original's basic premise and pairing it with a different storyline that is more action-oriented. Snyder came on board to direct with a goal of keeping every aspect of the production as grounded in reality as possible. Filming took place from June 9 to September 6 of 2003, on location in Toronto, Canada where a now-defunct shopping mall that was slated for demolition was used. The special makeup effects for the film were created by David LeRoy Anderson.
Released on March 19, 2004, the film topped at the box office on its United States opening weekend, and went on to gross $102.3 million worldwide on a $26 million budget. Upon release it received favorable reviews from film critics, who considered it an improvement in terms of acting, production values and scares over its predecessor; though some found it lacking in character development, excessively gory, and indifferent to the sociopolitical subtext of the original. Retrospective reviews have cited "Dawn of the Dead" as Snyder's finest work, and it was ranked as one of the best films in the horror and zombie genres.
Plot.
After finishing a long shift as a nurse at the Milwaukee County Hospital, Ana returns to her suburban neighborhood and her husband Louis. Caught up in a date night, they miss an emergency news bulletin. The next morning, a girl from the neighborhood enters and kills Louis, who immediately reanimates as a zombie and attacks Ana. She flees in her car, crashes, and passes out. Upon waking, she joins police sergeant Kenneth Hall, electronics salesman Michael, petty criminal Andre and his pregnant wife, Luda. They break into a nearby mall and are attacked by a zombie security guard, who slightly bites Luda. Three guards — C.J., Bart, and Terry — make them surrender their weapons in exchange for refuge. They split into groups to secure the mall. On the roof, they see another survivor, Andy, who is stranded in his gun store across the zombie-infested parking lot. During this time, a broadcast from a television features a group of cops burn the corpses of zombies and instructs the viewers to shoot the zombies in the head to kill them quickly, enabling the survivors to prioritize headshot for the zombies from now on.
The next day, a delivery truck carrying more survivors enters the lot, pursued by zombies. They include Norma, Steve, Tucker, Monica, Glen, Frank and his daughter, Nicole. Another woman is too ill to walk; she is wheeled inside, only to die and reanimate. After she is killed, the group determines the disease is passed by bites. Luda keeps her bite a secret from the group, though Andre knows. Frank, who has been bitten, elects to be isolated. When he reanimates, Kenneth shoots him.
Kenneth and Andy start a friendship by way of messages written on a whiteboard; romance buds between Ana and Michael, and Nicole and Terry. When the power goes out, a few of the survivors go to the parking garage to activate the emergency generator and find a friendly dog who is adopted by Nicole and named Chips. Zombies kill Bart, forcing the others to douse the zombies in gas and set them ablaze. Meanwhile, Luda — tied up by Andre — dies before giving birth. She reanimates and Norma kills Luda. This makes Andre snap; he exchanges gunfire with Norma and the two kill each other. The others find a zombie baby in Andre's arms delivered after Luda's death, which they kill reluctantly. The group decides to fight their way to the marina and travel on Steve's yacht to an island on Lake Michigan. They reinforce two shuttle buses from the garage for it; welding on a snowplow, attaching metal bars and chains as well as stocking chainsaws, propane tanks and road flares.
To rescue Andy, the group straps supplies onto the dog, Chips, and lower him into the parking lot; the zombies have no interest in him. Chips enters Andy's store safely, but a zombie follows and bites Andy. Pursuing Chips, Nicole crashes the delivery truck into the gun store, where she is trapped by a zombified Andy. A group of them reach the gun store via the sewers, kill Andy, and rescue Nicole. They grab ammunition and go back to the mall; along the way, Tucker breaks his legs, and C.J. shoots him out of mercy. Once inside, they are unable to lock the door because Steve temporarily abandoned his guard duty. Zombies storm the mall, forcing an evacuation via the buses.
While navigating the city, Glen loses control of a chainsaw, accidentally killing himself and Monica. In the chaos, their bus crashes. Steve tries to flee on his own but is ambushed by a zombie. Ana kills the zombified Steve and retrieves his boat keys. At the marina, C.J. sacrifices himself so the others can escape. Michael, after revealing a bite wound, kills himself as Ana, Kenneth, Nicole, Terry, and Chips flee on the yacht. Footage from a camcorder found on the boat shows the group runs out of supplies, arrives at an island and is attacked by a swarm of zombies. The camcorder drops leaving their fate unknown.
Cast.
Sarah Polley was the first choice to play the nurse Ana Clark. Polley agreed to take the role because she saw it as an unusual departure from the stereotypical portrayal of female characters as "anything more than somebody screaming and running away", and she admired Ana's resilience in the face of adversity. Ving Rhames said he was sold on the project due to the diversity of the cast as well as director Zack Snyder's track record of "[saying] a lot with the camera without dialogue". Rhames also jokingly stated, "I want to be in this movie because the black guy lives." Mekhi Phifer agreed to be in the film because he was "intrigued" by the script, whose quality he described set it apart from B movies laden with "terrible acting, silly situations, [and] chicks running around with their boobs out". 
Both Jake Weber and Ty Burrell auditioned on the same day for the roles of Steve Markus and Michael Shaunessy, respectively; casting decided exchanging their roles and both got the part, making "Dawn of the Dead" Weber's second horror film after "Wendigo". Weber described his character Michael as an "everyman" suffering from an existential crisis after his divorce and the loss of his child, but later finds his identity as a skilled zombie slayer. Prior to landing the role of Steve, Burrell revealed that he had struggled getting employed as a theatre actor because he "was at a point in [his] career when auditioning for bigger parts meant not getting bigger parts", until he got a call back from the production asking for his wardrobe size, much to his surprise. Burrell added that playing what he described as a "totally nihilistic jerk" was appropriate in retrospect as he felt he was "too flawed and too scared of a person" to effectively portray the ideal leading man required of Weber's role.
Production.
Development.
Plans to remake 1978's "Dawn of the Dead" were conceived by producer Eric Newman, a self-professed zombie film fan who praised the George A. Romero horror film as the best in its genre. With the remake, Newman and producer Marc Abraham wanted to reinvigorate the zombie genre for modern audiences as well as "make the old fans happy and make a lot of new fans". Newman and Abraham bought the rights to "Dawn of the Dead" from its producer and rights holder Richard P. Rubinstein, who was initially "concerned that somewhere along the way a studio would sanitize Newman's vision for producing a version with 'attitude'", which is why he had turned down several remake offers in the past. Newman hired James Gunn to write the script, who was brought in despite not wanting to pitch the studio a treatment for the project beforehand. 
The producers described 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. Co-producer Eric Newman cited "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1978), "The Thing" (1982), and "The Fly" (1986) as cinematic influences to the remake, explaining that these had "some amazing updates" which "add to rather than diminish the original films". By way of respect to Romero's film, the producers cast some of its actors in cameos: Tom Savini, Scott Reiniger, and Ken Foree; and incorporated visual references to two additional co-stars: Gaylen Ross and James A. Baffico. 
In writing the script, Gunn took the original's basic premise of a group of lone survivors taking refuge in a mall during the zombie apocalypse and then developed a new storyline that is more action-oriented, putting the characters in certain scenarios that would force them to evacuate the mall. Gunn's script was given uncredited rewrites by Michael Tolkin and Scott Frank; co-producer Richard P. Rubinstein said Tolkin further developed the characters while Frank provided some of the bigger, upbeat action scenes. Gunn revealed he had faced internet backlash over the film due to his past screenwriting credits on "Scooby-Doo" (2002) and "" (2004), believing him to be unqualified for the job. However, Ain't It Cool News founder and film critic Harry Knowles, initially an opponent of the remake, eventually got a hold of Gunn's script and gave it a glowing response, which Gunn said helped eliminate doubts cast upon him by fans of the original.
Theme.
Gunn explained in detail how he sees the remake in an interview during a press junket for "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed":
I think that in the end, "Dawn of the Dead" is about redemption because it's about a bunch of people who have lived certain lives, who have maybe not been the best people, and suddenly they have everything that they've used to define themselves: Their careers, their churches, their jobs, their families are stripped away. They're gone. They start at nothing and they have to become who they really are in the face of all that and some of the people are redeemed and end up becoming good people and some of them are not redeemed and they end up, you know, not redeemed. And that's what kind of drove me throughout the story, was it was a story about redemption. I also think that there's a lot about how people survive and what people turn to in the face of such tragedy. The tragedy in this case being flesh-eating zombies. And really it's a group coming together to work as a community who wouldn't otherwise work together. So there is that foundation of love, that basic message, within even "Dawn of the Dead"...
Pre-production.
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". Not wanting his version inevitably compared to George A. Romero's, Snyder concurred with the producers on "re-envisioning" the original instead of doing it as a "remake", which, in his view, is a re-shoot of the original script. For that matter, Snyder aimed to make his film a straight horror that was "as serious as a heart attack", and keep every aspect of its production as grounded in reality as possible. To achieve these, he previsualized the film with storyboards and introduced the concept of running zombies, which he said was his "fresh, new way" of giving it a sense of verisimilitude and rendering zombies as if they are a real threat especially when they attack in hordes. Gunn supported this concept, believing that the "danger factor" brought about by running zombies would add more tension to the story.
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. His search yielded no results until he found the now-defunct Thorn Hill Square shopping mall in Toronto, Canada, which measured approximately . Dubbed the "Crossroads Mall", the crew completely remodeled the mall over an eight-week period, adding an expensive water feature near the entrance, 14 stores, parking structures, and warehouse areas. Since Snyder wanted the stores palpable in terms of design and stood not merely as storefronts, Neskoromny and his crew built them as actual retail stores complete with merchandise. Most of the stores were given fake names since only two major retail brands agreed to be featured in the film. Snyder recalled one such case in which Starbucks passed on the film for fear that their corporate logo would get splattered with blood in a film that contained scenes of gore.
Makeup effects.
The special makeup effects for the film were created by David LeRoy Anderson, with assistance from his wife Heather Langenkamp. Prior to accepting the job from Universal Pictures executive James D. Brubaker, Anderson had been in a two-year hiatus from working as a makeup effects artist to operate his company DLA Silverwear. Anderson completed his test makeups for the film over a four-week period, and then he and his team traveled to the Toronto set and set up their makeup effects lab next to the mall.
Since the filmmakers had decided that the zombies in the film would become more decomposed over time, Anderson did research on human death and decay, looking through several medical books and crime scene photographs showing graphic images of trauma victims; he broke down the look of decomposition into three stages:
The first stage looks like someone who was just in the ER – pale, with lots of fresh blood. The second stage has moist wounds but the skin is beginning to break down. There is a lot of discoloration and mottling, mostly blues and greens. The third stage is the most intense, with the skeletal form coming through. The wounds are dried-up, the skin is sloughing off and colors are oily blacks.
Filming and post-production.
Principal photography.
Filming began on June 9, 2003, on location in various parts of Toronto, Canada. Hundreds of zombie extras had to be constantly available for the entire shoot. To handle the volume of willing extras, Anderson and his team built a large factory where painted extras would stay put until they are spoken for by either the main or second unit film crew. Anderson 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 as "hero zombies", a special type of zombie; and the other consisted of tents where they would produce painted masks for extras playing as background zombies. Extras playing as foreground zombies were painted with plain palette makeups in Anderson's mall lab. The makeup artists were given Anderson's concept images to work on as references. According to Anderson and Heather Langenkamp, the most extras they ever had in any given day sat between 200–400, with a total of 3,000 makeups completed when filming ended on September 6, 2003.
Visual effects.
The visual effects for the film were provided by Canadian VFX studio Mr. X Inc., with its president Dennis Berardi serving as the film's co-VFX supervisor.
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 that were later composited to create "a digital crowd simulation that looks realistic".
Title sequence.
The title sequence for the film was designed by Kyle Cooper, who reportedly used real human blood.
Release.
Box office.
"Dawn of the Dead" was marketed with its 10-minute opening sequence that was broadcast on cable television four nights before its theatrical release. Released on March 19, 2004, the film grossed $26.7 million on its United States opening weekend, claiming the No. 1 spot "The Passion of the Christ" formerly held for three consecutive weekends. "Dawn of the Dead" ended its theatrical run grossing $102.3 million worldwide (against a budget of $26 million), with a gross of $59 million in the United States and Canada and $43.3 million in other territories. "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%."
The release of "Dawn of the Dead" in the U.S. nearly coincided with that of "Shaun of the Dead", another zombie film distributed by Universal Pictures. In a February 2004 "Variety" report, a spokesman at Universal revealed that the studio had greenlit "Shaun of the Dead" "with the condition that "Dawn of the Dead" would be released here in the U.S. first" in order to avoid this conflict.
"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, which Snyder described as longer, gorier, and fleshed-out in terms of characterization than the theatrical version. Bonus features found on the DVD and Blu-ray include an audio commentary with Snyder and co-producer Eric Newman; the behind-the-scenes featurettes "Attack of the Living Dead", "Raising the Dead", "Drawing the Dead", "Splitting Headaches", and "Surviving the Dawn"; deleted scenes with optional commentary with Snyder and Newman; and the film's theatrical trailer. 
In 2017, Shout! Factory released a two-disc collector's edition Blu-ray of "Dawn of the Dead" which comprises 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 extras found in the previous releases as well as exclusive ones featuring interviews with actors Ty Burrell and Jake Weber, screenwriter James Gunn, and makeup effects artists David LeRoy Anderson and Heather Langenkamp.
Reception.
Theatrical.
Upon its theatrical release, "Dawn of the Dead" was praised by film critics as a worthy remake of the original, and was hailed as a breakthrough in zombie films. It was called "superior in many ways" to the original ("ReelViews"), "a promising silhouette on the horizon of a faltering genre" ("IGN"), and "the best proof in ages that cannibalizing old material sometimes works fiendishly well" ("Los Angeles Times"). For "Entertainment Weekly", critic Lisa Schwarzbaum called the film director Zack Snyder's "killer feature debut", while Roger Ebert for the "Chicago Sun-Times" said it "works and it delivers just about what you expect when you buy your ticket". The film's 10-minute opening sequence was singled out for further praise, which some critics liked better than the whole film. While some said the remake had better acting, production values and scares than its predecessor, others argued that it "[failed] to trigger as much fear and mirth as the original" ("The Guardian") and "[worked] only on the level of a visceral horror exercise and, even then, only intermittently" ("Variety").
Despite the praise, the film was criticized for downplaying key elements of its predecessor. Some critics argued that whereas George A. Romero had exploited the shopping mall location to satirize consumer culture, Snyder had used it merely as a convenient setting for his characters. Others complained that, unlike the original, the remake was content to indulge in bloody zombie violence at the expense of witty satire and nuanced storytelling, leaving the viewers rather numbed and "less mercifully handled, even at the end-credits". The "Los Angeles Times" critic Manohla Dargis counterargued that "what makes the film pop aren't the buckets of blood, but the filmmakers' commitment to genre fundamentals." Despite complaints that the film lacked the humor of the original, some said it had some funny scenes of its own, including one in which a couple of male characters shoot zombified celebrity lookalikes with a sniper rifle, which an otherwise negative review from "The Hollywood Reporter" cited as some of its "moments of inspired audacity".
While James Gunn's script was complimented as "sharp" and propulsive, albeit "snappy on repartee at the expense of any kind of intriguing plot development", it was also criticized for a lack of character development due to its large ensemble. "ReelViews" owner and critic James Berardinelli was lenient in his assessment, however, arguing that "it's inevitable that most of [the characters] end up as one-dimensional throw-aways whose sole purpose is to increase the body count," and that "not many people go to a horror film looking for character development and drama." Along with Ebert, Berardinelli praised the "touching" subplots involving the Mekhi Phifer and Ving Rhames characters, which the latter critic said were "handled with a deft hand". Out of the cast, which was praised as "superlative" and "respectable", Sarah Polley garnered the most attention from critics, who complimented the actress as "a perfect against-type heroine" with "a nice anxious stare".
Retrospective.
In 2005, George A. Romero spoke of how critical he was with the film during an interview with actor Simon Pegg for "Time Out", saying: "It was better than I expected. I thought it was a good action film. The first 15, 20 minutes were terrific, but it sort of lost its reason for being. It was more of a video game. I'm not terrified of things running at me; it's like "Space Invaders". There was nothing going on underneath."
Reception to the film from retrospective reviews have been complimentary: it has been widely praised as Zack Snyder's best film, with Den of Geek going so far as to call it his masterpiece. 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.
"Dawn of the Dead" was one of the few horror remakes author Stephen King praised in the forenote of the 2010 edition of his book "Danse Macabre". King, who lauded the film as "genius perfected", observed that it had commented not on consumerism but rather on society's fear of terrorism. King explained in part:
By 2004, only three years downriver from 9/11, rampant consumerism was the last thing on our minds. [...] What haunted our nightmares was the idea of suicide bombers driven by an unforgiving (and unthinking, most of us believed) ideology and religious fervor. You could beat 'em up or burn 'em, but they'd just keep coming, the news reports assured us. They would keep on coming until either we were dead or they were. The only way to stop them was a bullet in the head. That's exactly what Snyder's zombies are, it seems to me: fast-moving terrorists who never quit. You can't debate with them, you can't parley with them, you can't even threaten their homes or families with reprisals.
Numerous publications have ranked "Dawn of the Dead" as one of the best zombie films, including number 3 by "Rolling Stone" (2012) and number 12 by "Empire" (2020); as well as one of 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). The film made review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes' lists of "The 25 Best Horror Movie Remakes" (at number 9), "The 30 Essential Zombie Movies" (at number 13), and "18 Memorable Horror Remakes".