Dawn of the Dead

My housemate doesn't like scary movies. Passing through the living room on her way out, she hunches her shoulders and covers her eyes and offers a nervous laugh. Unlike some people I know, she retains sensitivity to grisly onscreen imagery; while I wince and recoil from violence and grossness in movies, it doesn't prevent me from keeping up with quality horror cinema.

When we put on Dawn of the Dead the other night, she was headed toward the door as fast as her feet could carry her -and then stopped. "Is this-?" she started to ask, already knowing the answer. "We were talking about zombies at the bar," she continued, recounting a conversation at her drinking haunt, "and I got no end of (poop) that I haven't seen this! It's some kind of classic, isn't it?"
This is the film that started it all for me. Seeing Dawn of the Dead made such a huge impression that I've sought out zombie movies ever since. Some are good, most are dreck, but Dawn remains the best.

In this age of CGI and digital canoodling, some may wonder how it holds up. Basically a tale of survival horror, we follow four regular folks as they flee from zombies who want to eat their brains. After being chased out of the city, they take refuge at... a shopping mall.

In 1975 shopping malls were nowhere near as pervasive as they are now. The mall at which the film was shot was one of the few in the US at that time. Having our heroes take refuge there, while being threatened by mindless hordes whose only desire is to consume, it's a small leap to connect shopping to eating and fashion a wry commentary on rampant capitalism. If you want to take it that way, the subtext is there. What makes Dawn a lasting film is not so much its political content as the fact that it is a great story.

Four people versus endless hordes of the undead, set against the backdrop of a shopping mall. Good stuff, but not until marauding bikers show up does the content of the film reveal itself. The bikers are humans who have survived by wits and horsepower; leatherclad daredevils who kill people who stand in their way as casually as they dispatch zombies. The horror turns out not to be from the monsters. Once the bikers show up, the zombies become sympathetic.

This is a classic upheaval of viewer expectations and stands Dawn of the Dead above the crowd of imitators.