That’s right, children, Uncle Lazarus is back from his vacation. I had a splendid holiday in Kamchatka visiting some old friends. I am about to embark on the subgenre nearest and dearest to my heart (if I had one) – the Zombie movie. I am going to start with a modern remake of a classic – Dawn of the Dead (2004). The cast includes Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Mekhi Phifer and the husband from Medium and a bunch of other people you have never heard of. It is directed by Zach Snyder, who went on to direct the man-licious 300. I had high hopes going in on this movie, and I was not totally disappointed.

The movie begins with the news showing hundreds of my relatives running about, eating brains and destroying things, then shifts to our main character Ana in a hospital working as a nurse. After getting off work, hot Anna goes home to watch soap operas and hump her boyfriend – evidently a daily ritual. This made me angry at boyfriend, so I was happy the little girl from next door ripped his throat out and made him a zombie. So as you can tell, all hell breaks loose and Ana barely gets out of her house to her car to escape her smoldering Zombie infested neighborhood.

One thing I like about this movie is the abrupt out of the blue comedy, for example, when outside of her home, her neighbor confronts her from the middle of the street and right before he is about to shoot her, he is run over by an ambulance..I love that scene. So Ana starts driving, sees mass carnage – which is done really quite well I might add, almost gets carjacked by some pasty fat beardie guy, then careens off the road and slams into a tree. When she awakens she meets Ving Rhames with a large shotgun and horrible complexion. They then meet up with Mekhi Phifer, his pregnant wife and husband of Medium who talks incessantly. The five then head to ….THE MALL…..(cue eerie music)

At the mall, they meet the second best character in the movie – CJ the security guard, a redneck control freak with probably the greatest handlebar mustache ever seen on film, who refuses to let our 5 refugees eat at the food court unless they give up their guns. He stays in tyrannical charge of everyone until Sarah Polley calls him mean names, thereby angering him and taking him off his game and Mekhi Phifer and Ving Rhames beat him up and take his guns. CJ is always complaining from this point on and saying the F word a lot and basically being awesome and making me laugh. While I still want the zombies to devour him, I want them to devour him last.

Our survivors also manage to rescue a truckload of refugees who are more or less insignificant except for a few passengers. One if Max headroom – you remember him – half man, half snarky computer program. Yeah – he is infected and Ving Rhames blows his head off – sweet justice. There is also a woman who appears to be a cross between Archie Bunker and Rosie O’Donnell who is also infected who gets her head blown off. The last character of note is Steve, a slightly effeminate, rich, sarcastic a-hole. He is my favorite human. He is constantly belittling our heroes and making fun of them. Oh and also, he bangs one of the girls in the group – which is double awesome – why worry about impending doom when you can get you some stank on your hang low.. I can’t believe I actually just wrote that.

At some point our survivors decide to make buses into Armored Personnel carriers – which are pretty awesome that have chainsaw slots to cut up Zombies, and make bombs out of propane tanks, make a break for the gun shop across the street to get ammo, then haul balls to Steve’s boat and go to a deserted island on Lake Michigan. Long story short, everyone dies and excruciating death except for Ving Rhames, two whiney kids, their dog and Sarah Polley – who make it to the boat and sail around, land on an island and discover it was not deserted and they get ate. Yay! We win!

The film starts with enormous promise – frantic and gory. It slows down in the middle where we learn all of the characters are kind of sad, tragic people with lots of flaws. But we do get some great lines from CJ like “I don’t want anyone sneaking around and stealing shit” as he locks everyone up. Or “I’ll kill each and every one of you to stay alive” – his redneckery are awesome. Steve also has some great snarky lines but too many to get into.

There is also a great scene where our mall inhabitants have the gun store owner across the street snipe zombies in the head based on who they look like – Rosie O’Donnell, jay Leno, etc. As horrible as it is, killing zombies, that was inspired fun in the heart of terror.. But the movie seriously drags in the middle and loses some of it’s scary franticness. Also we rarely get to see the zombies much and they also seem to move at light speed when encountered – they must be on Meth or something, because I have never moved that fast – ever – even when the plague took out millions and I had banks I could clear out with no opposition and pastry shops to loot… But I digress. The movie finds it’s franticness again in the last 20 minutes or so with the escape from the mall and lots of awesome explosions. In the end, the bad guys win, and that is the way I like it.

Overall, a very decent remake and an admirable effort with some nice performances. I give the Dawn of the Dead Remake 4 out of 5 dangling eyeballs.

Forever yours,
~Laz