Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: Dawn of the Dead (2004) ::
by Forrest Grump
"When there is no room in hell, the
dead will walk the earth" That was the tagline for the 1978 movie, of which this
is a remake.
Interestingly enough, the tagline for the final film in Romero's trilogy was
"The darkest day of horror the world has ever known". I think that may have fit
better.
The thing that initially horrified me about this movie was that it was being
made. Finally, I got over my apprehension by rationalization. Tom Savini made
Night 90, and that was a damn good movie. Words alone cannot describe the
horror and shame I found out when I heard the Scooby Doo director was in
charge of this. I ranted at every opportunity the inherent unfairness of the
scene. Poor George Romero cannot make his final installment, and this Jackass
responsible for the sin that is Scooby Doo (!!!!) is being given license
to destroy one of the few untouchables of my formative years of movie watching.
I went afraid. But then something very interesting happened. The movie did not
suck. In fact, it was really good. What we have here is an honest to badness
horror movie. It is not really even a remake. It happens in a mall, there are
zombies. That's it. It isn't even set in Romero world, with Romero zombies.
These zombies are fast movers, like 28 Days Later, and they look good.
Another major difference is that the dead do not return, only the bitten. So
right there, you have very large differences in the movie. That is why it works,
it is just a takeoff on the same themes of Dawn, but with enough difference to
stand on its own.
Major bowing down to the director of
this movie for not butchering everything I loved, and taking it in a new
direction. Serious respect is, however given to the original with not less that
four cameos (possibly 5 I'm looking into) from the original cast, as well as
numerous script references.
I cannot ruin them if you, as I are a fan, and I won't. Suffice to say all the
bitching I did about this movie was misplaced.
The carnage was incredible, The world was falling apart around them simply
overnight. That was legitimately scary to watch, in no small part due to the
fact that it was done so well. Lots of wide angle shots of cities in ruin, and
people going absolutely wild in the streets.
A word of warning though. There is one theme missing from Romero's movies that
would have done well to make an appearance here. No matter what happened in that
world, no matter how badly the humans had it, there was always hope. Not so, in
this movie, you are seeing the end of the world, and there are no punches
pulled.
If you can let go of that uneasy feeling though, the human element shines in
this movie, the action was great, the scenes of terror delivered, and the gore
was over the top. Everything done right in a big budget horror movie was done
right here.
This was better than Chainsaw, and had better uses of a chainsaw than
Chainsaw. (See, William, three times I use chainsaw in one sentence, can I
get some sort of prize?)
A, solid A, would be a plus if they had given it a little rain of hope, but the
filmmakers left me with a bad feeling, I must lash out the only way I know how.
Ok how about a lower case T.
A t
