Dawn of the Dead (2004\1978)

In episode three of our Visionary Remakes season, we bite into Dawn of the Dead, the original by George Romero from 1978 and the kinetic remake by Zack Snyder from 2004.

Special Guest: Karl Delossantos, founder and film critic at Smash Cut, editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and member of the Online Film Critics Society.

George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978) was my favorite film through my 20s and 30s (Dan here). The horror film's intoxicating mixture of gonzo production, revolting gore, pitch black satire, and anti-consumerist musings were a perfect match for my young adult mind. My adoration hasn't faded at all since I first saw it in high school, some 25 years ago. Dawn of the Dead is often considered Romero's masterpiece and perhaps the greatest zombie film ever made.

The remake of Dawn of the Dead landed like an atom bomb in 2004. Running zombies! Zach Snyder's first, and inarguably his best, film helped launch a zombie cultural moment that peaked 10 years later when 22 million people watched the season five opener of The Walking Dead, a tv show heavily indebted to George Romero's dead universe. Zombies had become mass appeal. "What would you do in an zombie apocalypse" became a lamestream icebreaker question. While Snyder's Dawn was a catalyst for this popularity, it was really the ideas in Romero's Dead films that attracted people to this once very niche subgenre of horror.