.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

There is a common conception that horror films are fairly easy to produce. Take a bunch of sexed-up, young, good looking actors, throw in a faceless killer and then top it off with new and interesting ways to maim, dismember and dispose of a mounting body count. Voila! Instant horror fare that will appeal to its target demographic - namely 15 to 18 year-olds.

Indeed, this form of logic is hard to argue. Just look at most of the Friday the 13 th or Halloween entries and you will see that exact formula being worked into box office success. However, the making of a good horror film has got to be one of the more daunting tasks in Hollywood . With a generation that can turn on the television at any given time and see images of planes flying into the side of buildings or war being waged on foreign soil, how do you find things to scare your new audience?

First and foremost, there is the beginning of the film. Maybe even before the credits role, horror films, unlike any other genre have but 10 minutes - 15 minutes tops - to show us something we haven't seen before or wow us into a paralyzed frenzy. It is expected and therefore, harder to appease the salivating masses. Take the opening of Jaws or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre as examples of using the audiences short attention span to the fullest before the story evolves.

Now, we can add the new Dawn of the Dead (2004) to the list of films that have a wow before a how. A re-make of the 1978 George Romero classic, Dawn of the Dead begins with Ana (Sarah Polley) waking up to see her man being bit by a cute girl-turned-zombie we were introduced to on the street just minutes earlier. Ana at first tries to stop the bleeding, but soon, her companion falls dead. Or is he? Seconds later, he springs from the bed and attacks Ana who barely escapes out the bathroom window. Confronted with a street gone mad, she stands on the driveway and watches aghast as houses burn, and neighbors are shot or rundown. In other words, complete chaos. Jumping into her car, Ana weaves in and out of the city streets witnessing various atrocities until finally crashing her car down an embankment. The credits role, and I am hooked.

Dawn of the Dead stars Polley, Ving Rhames, Mekhi Phifer and a bunch of unknowns in a tale about a city gone mad with flesh biting zombies and a group of survivors that hold themselves up in the local mall. Feeling secure within the plaza, they go day by day, watching the zombies from the malls roof while trying to figure out how they were going to survive.

First time director Zack Snyder does an excellent job in giving the audience exactly what it has paid to see. Zombies, blood, a few scares, humor and to top it off, he stays true to the original and puts the cast inside a shopping mall. What more could a teenager hope for. Buckets of blood and a place to shop all in one.

I have to admit that although I have seen the original, I can't remember that much about it. I remember some corny humor and blood that looked like thick cherry sauce, but not much else. Therefore, I cannot do you justice and try and compare the two films. But this might not be such a bad thing either. Horror remakes are always easily compared and rarely to the new entries favor. Take David Cronenberg's The Fly or John Carpenter's The Thing as two films that were above average flicks, but were blasted by critics for not giving them the same euphoria as their outdated predecessors.

So as a stand alone film, I thought Dawn of the Dead was very entertaining. It was a smart horror film, and by that I mean, the proposed victims didn't run up the stairs when they should be running out of the building or check a persons pulse when they should be calling the police. Dawn showed us characters that reacted in a way we all hope we would if ever unfortunate enough to be put in the same circumstance. We see characters that are very content just to live inside the mall. They have dinners together and act as if they have adopted a new family and its surroundings.

Of course, one cannot review a horror film without the gore factor being discussed, and Dawn of the Dead has plenty to go around. Everything from a sniper who guns down zombies for fun from an adjacent rooftop to a chainsaw that slides through zombies like butter, there is enough blood to keep the Freddy vs. Jason fans rubbing their hands with adolescent glee.

Another interesting tidbit is how I thought there was no chemistry between the actors and how well it actually worked given the format. We are not forced to believe that these people can bond immediately or become best of friends in the matter of a few days. Sure, there is the stereotypical hard-ass, the tough guy and even the guy who you know will screw things up for everyone by looking out for himself. But hell, that is what makes it all the more fun!