Zack Snyder: Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Zack Snyder is not known for working in a wide range of genres. So it is notable that Snyder’s first feature film, Dawn of the Dead, shows him leaving his mark on something other than comic book and superhero adaptations. In fact, Snyder’s remake of George A. Romero’s classic zombies-at-the-mall horror flick is arguably the finest zombie movie ever made. 

I revisited Snyder’s feature debut early in the COVID-19 pandemic last spring (and wrote briefly about the film then in 9 Films for a Pandemic). It had been over a decade and a half since I first saw Dawn of the Dead in theatres in spring 2004, and I was surprised by how effective the movie remained. I had remembered it as an exhilarating experience. It still is, but it also holds up as an expertly crafted film. 

The opening pre-credits sequence is as good as horror gets: it’s intense and terrifying, astoundingly compact, yet energetically propulsive. It carefully teases the terrible events to come, smartly playing on the fact that almost every viewer will go into this film waiting for the zombies to attack. Snyder concisely introduces us to Sarah Polley’s Ana Clark, a nurse at the end of a long shift in a Milwaukee hospital. She informs a doctor about a patient bitten in a bar fight and we know things are beginning to happen. However, Snyder also manipulates our doom-laden expectations, such as with the false surprise of what appears to be a corpse in the back of an ambulance turning out to be a napping EMT. 

Ana’s nice suburban neighbourhood is quickly established as she drives home, and her husband and their loving relationship is likewise conveyed in super-economical fashion. It’s amazing how Snyder, in less than five minutes, is able to flesh out a believable, lived-in ordinary world for Ana. But Dawn of the Dead never languishes in the calm before its storm. Each of the elements introduced, from the orderly suburban homes to a friendly neighbourhood child, will be reencountered the next morning in bloody, chaotic, and destroyed form when the zombies begin to take over. 

Having laid out the prepared ingredients for the viewer, like a TV chef, Snyder quickly brings things to a boil. Our alarm increases as the bubbles rush over the edge of the pot, producing clouds of steam and a burnt odour, before he cuts off the heat abruptly—with a hard cut to black for the opening credits sequence. It’s a tour-de-force of precise set-up and potent execution. 

The film’s “fast zombies” are often remarked on (and I’ll discuss the subject more below), but it’s also remarkable how fast things turn for the worse in Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, with Ana’s idyllic domestic life devolving into a struggle for life within the space of less than a minute, and with the apocalypse arriving overnight. The wide shot the next morning— a slow pan to the left as Ana looks on at zombies tearing across suburban lawns and helicopters and columns of smoke over the distant cityscape—is a virtual icon of the end of the world. 

The opening credits are significant as the first instance of Snyder’s famous penchant for fancy titles, a signature aspect of his formal program. With the opening credits of Dawn of the Dead, we can also see the influence of Snyder’s time as a music video and commercial director, not only in his mastery of combining visuals, text, sound effects, and music, but also in his ability to polish a few minutes of footage into a multifaceted segment. During the credits sequence, the viewer experiences an evocative mixed-media collage featuring archival and created footage depicting both microscopic reactions and the rapid breakdown in global order. Titles appear as if ripped into and then bloodily wiped off the screen. Johnny Cash’s haunting song about the apocalypse, “The Man Comes Around,” helps to convey the arrival of doomsday. The credits sequence creates a powerful emotional resonance in the viewer that shapes their feelings going into the rest of the film. 

The opening credits also expand the scope of the film rapidly outwards, before Snyder condenses things back inwards with Ving Rhames’ Kenneth discovering Ana in the wreckage of her crashed car. Following disaster movie conventions, Snyder uses TV news to convey larger events elsewhere in the film. But the main narrative focus is tight on Ana and the group of survivors who soon gather around her.

It needs to be pointed out here that Snyder wasn’t involved in the initial development of the film. The producers, having acquired the rights to remake Romero’s film, brought on James Gunn (who would go on to write and direct Guardians of the Galaxy) to adapt the original. Snyder, who had been working in music videos, was brought on to direct. Although Snyder’s directorial debut is therefore neither a passion project nor a work of conceptual originality, many of Snyder’s formal and thematic concerns are nevertheless present. It’s a superior first film and, in retrospect, highly revealing of Snyder’s approach to cinematic storytelling.

Dawn of the Dead exhibits formal manipulations of the audience’s sense of space and time intended to keep the audience unsettled. Particularly early on in the film but also near the end, Snyder shifts between visual and sonic extremes in order to disorient the viewer—from slow to fast, quiet to loud, and wide to close and back again. Snyder achieves the quickening and slowing down of how phenomena are perceived through his choice of shots, pace of editing, and use of sound effects. The modulation of visual and sonic elements, whether with music booming and then disappearing, or the cocking of a shotgun in a quiet setting, or, through editing, with fast cuts from stasis to action and from wide shots to extreme close-ups, keeps one’s nerves on edge. The film continually lulls the viewer into a state of anticipatory tension, taut with expectations of horror. The techniques of constant modulation anticipates Snyder’s further manipulations of speed and time through slow-mo, first in 300 and then in all his subsequent films (although we get a taste of it during the action climax of this film). Whether Snyder is one of the progenitors of these techniques is debatable, but what’s clear is that the film participated in the horror Renaissance of the 2000s and was an important step in the mainstreaming of zombie stories that peaked with AMC’s The Walking Dead (2010–). 

The film also helped cement the reliance on fast zombies in subsequent entries in the zombie subgenre. Romero invented zombies as monsters created by contagion, undead beings separate from voodoo or anything else magical. Fast zombies were popularized by 28 Days Later… (2002), and they tend to produce a non-Hitchcockian state of suspense. Alfred Hitchcock always clearly laid out what would happen for his audience, suspense, in his understanding, being distinct from surprise and reliant on the audience’s full awareness. The more information the better in Hitchcock’s approach. Slow zombies lend themselves to the generation of terror in the audience at seeing something about to happen. Instead, with fast zombies, Snyder cultivates the endless possibility and agonizing feeling that something might happen. This is certainly not an approach pioneered by Snyder, but the success of this remake likely contributed to the prevalence of jump-scares in horror movies.

Also unlike Romero, Gunn and Sndyer aren’t merely interested in setting up a zombie world and then letting the world play out. That was one of the main appeals of Romero’s zombie movies (along with their satirical elements). The prominence of world-building and imaginative speculation made Romeo’s films, especially Dawn of the Dead, the ultimate daydream about the zombie apocalypse, an experience akin to pondering how you might survive in a country house or a mall. You gather supplies and figure out ways to stay alive. It’s all about waiting, gathering, planning. Instead, Snyder’s focus is on using the tale to build a tough, constantly gear-shifting engine of suspense. People may prefer one approach to zombies or the other, but I don’t think you can deny the power of Snyder’s filmic engineering in Dawn of the Dead.

One of the film’s strengths, however, produces weakness in another dimension. The film’s lean running time and tight narration mean that I don’t fully feel the dreadful boredom that motivates the characters to eventually abandon their relatively safe mall abode. One reason is that the passing of time is conveyed through quick musical montages. Even this problem, however, is partially patched over with the clever addition of the gun store owner, Andy (Bruce Bohne), in his shop across the parking lot, who needs rescuing soon or he will die of starvation. 

Existential boredom in a mall was a key part of the social commentary of the 1978 Dawn of the Dead. Snyder’s version is not as critical of consumerism or modern complacency, and, in many ways, the fast zombies would seem to dictate this thematic reshaping. No one has time to languish in Snyder’s world. It’s like living in a jungle of stalking tigers ready to pounce, in contrast to the lumbering approach of Romero’s brainless undead. Thematically, 2004’s Dawn of the Dead seems less interested in the horrors of current society, and more about what horrors would be unleashed if society descended into chaos, which is perhaps the more dominant dystopian line of thought today. In any case, the feel of the film fits our current moment as much as the early 2000s, both 9/11 and the pandemic producing broad cultural feelings of dread and fear of the downward spiral of civilization.

Commenting on movies as much as society, Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead works as something of a horror anthology. Gunn’s screenplay includes dialogue echoing Romero’s film, and Snyder uses some of Romero’s key actors in cameos, such as Tom Savini as a sheriff seen on the TV news. But the homages extend beyond Romero’s zombie works. 

For example, our first view of the mall, revealed in a crane up, and then in a slow dolly towards the front entrance, recalls the haunted hotel in Kubrick’s The Shining, not only visually but also due to the ominous notes of Tyler Bates’s score that play beneath the shots. The suggestion is that the mall will offer no real sanctuary.   

In the opening sequence of Dawn of the Dead, Snyder shows Ana fleeing by car from a tracking aerial shot: the angle not only parallels the overhead view of her car’s return home the evening before, but it also echoes a distinctive shot in Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), one of the original apocalyptic disaster movies. As the camera slowly presses downward towards Ana’s car, an out-of-control truck races across the highway and smashes into a gas station, exploding in a fiery ball of flame and smoke. The Birds contains a famous similar shot depicting an exploded gas station in the small coastal town from a literal bird’s eye view high-up overhead. Such aerial shots are also part of the visual vocabulary that other zombie works, namely The Walking Dead, have picked up on.

Dawn of the Dead also contains elements of Rear Window, utilizing the distanced suspense of watching the gun store owner Andy’s struggle to survive from afar. We even watch Nicole (Lindy Booth) sneak into Andy’s place in a manner similar to Grace Kelly’s Lisa Freemont. Finally, there’s the incorporation of found-footage horror, which anticipates the REC movies, in the opening credits as well as for the horrible, haunting ending during the closing credits.

While I’ve talked a lot about Snyder’s technical achievements in Dawn of the Dead, the film is notable for containing strong acting and well-rounded characters, especially in comparison to the majority of horror movies. The casting is strong all around, and the film contains some excellent character performances. Each of the characters fits a type—for example, there’s a nurse, a cop, an everyman, an overprotective husband, a rich guy, etc.—but Gunn’s screenplay and the performances round out the character-types with more depth than many movies manage. For example, Matt Frewer’s pathetic father Frank is way more memorable than his few minutes on screen would predict.

Sarah Polley gives her best and most famous mainstream performance, managing to create a capable, strong woman without the fake “kick-ass” conventions that dominate (and flatten) so many female heroes today. She has true strength of character, not karate skills. Ana is also an early example of Snyder’s interest in strong women, which manifests itself later on more in warrior women, such as Wonder Woman. Jake Weber plays an ordinary guy, Michael, who’s living his second chance amidst the breakdown of society. Weber gives a surprisingly resonant performance for what could have easily been a forgettable character. At one point, he says his job had been selling TVs at Best Buy (a pure early 2000s job!), but he’s one of the few who take charge and show real courage and leadership after the apocalypse. Ana and Michael are great examples of quiet heroism in Snyder’s canon. 

Ving Rhames also delivers an excellent performance as the cop Kenneth, in one of his best roles outside Pulp Fiction. Snyder establishes a touching friendship between Kenneth and Andy, who communicate with each other by writing on and holding up signs on their respective rooftops; it’s a nice touch of visual storytelling and character development. Mekhi Phifer is good even if Andre frustrates the audience with his narrow-minded approach to survival. Ty Burrell (of later Modern Family fame) provides some comic relief as a smarmy rich asshole. Michael Kelly (who plays the creepy Stamper in House of Cards) is excellent as a small-minded security guard and petty tyrant who is graciously given an economical yet effective character arc, becoming a hero in the end. He earns his explosive moment of sacrifice late in the film. 

28 Days Later... was a shock to the world of movies, giving zombies indie prestige and marking a renewal and mainstreaming of the zombie horror subgenre, but that film’s last act, involving slasher conventions in a mansion, was weak compared to the poignant post-apocalyptic desolation that had come before. In comparison, Dawn of the Dead remains tight, compact, and firing on all cylinders until the very bleak end. It’s effective throughout, building on its elements and continually pushing them, rather than taking an unforeseen direction. The zombie rom-com, Shaun of the Dead, also came out the same spring of 2004. While I admire all three films, Dawn of the Dead, in my view, is the best because it never out-stays its welcome in any scene or in any way, its athletic leanness contributing to its lasting power. 

If zombie movies are often allegories, using typically broad and loud metaphors, what does this movie say about us? The first image in the opening credits sequence is of Muslims bending in prayer in unison. Does religious adherence make one a mindless zombie? At the end of the opening credits, we see Turkey’s Hagia Sophia in the background, as zombies rush the camera. The film came out in 2004, at the height of the global War on Terror, and so it’s hard not to read these images in light of that context. The imagery suggests the idea of jihadist Islam generating global chaos, but in the context of the whole film the political message is not so clear. Like many Hollywood films, it’s politically ambiguous, perhaps intentionally so. 

For example, in TV news snippets inserted in the credits sequence, the head of the CDC repeats the phrase, “We don’t know,” so many times it becomes a sad punchline, but it also underscores the film’s portrayal of the failure of all institutions. Clearly, no one was prepared and no one could adapt quickly enough, which strikes a grimly relevant note today, after a grim 2020. Later on in the film, the annoying security guard boss, watching Tom Savini as a tough sheriff talk about how to kill zombies on the TV, says “What did I tell ya boy? America always sorts this shit out.” But the events of the film demonstrate that the US government and even individual Americans don’t sort any of the shit out in the end. Whether purposefully or unconsciously ambiguous, the film activates a range of current event (and now historical) markers to enlarge the feeling of the stakes and scope of a tightly-focused film. It’s about the rise of fanatical jihadism, or the inability of America to respond rightly to chaotic events. Or both. Or neither. Take your pick.

Though it lacks the clear (and I would argue) all-caps allegorical and social commentary concerns of Romero’s films (which seem to me overly lauded by critics), there is meaning present in Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead. It’s neither superficial nor empty. In a sense, the film can be read as a series of scenarios and case studies outlining how much the drive to survive runs in each of us. Each character is a microcosm depicting one or a range of responses, and many of the characters comment on each other in parallel. In that sense, the film’s thematics are more akin to Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk (2017) than to the Romero trilogy and Romero’s later sequels. Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead may not be biting social commentary, but it’s thoughtfully constructed. It’s not a superficial work of vapid entertainment, as some have maintained in comparison to the original. 

Lastly, Snyder’s debut film presents heroism as necessarily involving sacrifice. The film also suggests that sacrifice can create order out of chaos. Sacrifice doesn’t just come in the form of heroic death, however, but also in the acceptance of risk and danger in building community. Each moral act comes with risk. Each new person or group of people Ana joins up with brings added danger, but the film argues that civilization—and not just the struggle for survival—necessitates bearing the burdens of others. This is perhaps best represented in the team’s sacrifices for Andy, who they never meet in person, but who many of them nevertheless die for. Such themes would come to dominate Snyder’s body of work, especially once he shifted to superhero narratives, but even in a lean zombie film, his preoccupation with the costs of heroism run strong and deep.

9 out of 10

Dawn of the Dead (2004, USA) 

Directed by Zack Snyder; written by James Gunn, based on the film by George A. Romero; starring Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, Mekhi Phifer, Ty Burrell, Michael Kelly, Kevin Zegers, Michael Barry, Lindy Booth.

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