Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Dawn of the Dead (1978) review



(9/10)

This classic zombie film has enough gore, story, political undertone, and creeps to satisfy every horror film fan and most movie-goers in general. Romero knew what he was doing around the time this was made, but does it stand the test of time?

PLOT:Taking place not too long after "Night of the Living Dead", this film puts us into the chaos of the media and general public dealing with the zombie apocalypse. Our main characters here are two National Guard troops who were sent to clean out any infestation, Peter (Ken Foree) and Roger (Scott Reiniger), and two members of the crew at a local TV station, Stephen (Davide Emge) and girlfriend Frances (Gaylen Ross). These four snitch a helicopter and head for the country, but decide to not to after coming in contact with a few ghouls around that area. The eventually stumble upon a shopping mall infested with the creeps to hide out in, but life isn't easy living on the higher floor's deep recesses. Not to mention a biker gang find out about them and makes life even harder for the four of them. It's a good plot executed greatly.



ACTING:The acting in this film is really good. Ken Foree and Scott Reiniger are really great as the two National Guard officers, as are David Emge and Gaylen Ross as the "happy" couple. The four really added personality to their roles. There really wasn't a bad performance in the bunch. The zombies were pretty well played too.
SCORE:The soundtrack in here is brilliant and composed by one of the kings of horror score, Dario Argento and his band, Goblin. The score was very unique and pretty creepy at times. I really liked it.

EFFECTS:The effects in here were very gory and somewhat realistic for the time period. For the time period, the zombies looked fairly realistic and very creepy. The blood and gore effects are still very well done and rather brutal as ever.



OTHER CONTENT:This film was more than just your basic zombie film. There was enough action, drama, and comedy for it to have been generally accepted among more than just one audience. This film actually deserves a lot more respect than it gets by the general public. The film is also fairly realistic to how life might be and how the world might react if a zombie apocalypse really broke out. However, a lot of the scares and basic make-up effects don't stand the test of time; they aren't scary compared to today's standards. There are a good bit of scares that still leave a lasting impression on the audience, but for the most part, they're really dated. I was hardly scared by this film at all, but it is still a good film, especially for its time.

OVERALL,an awesome zombie film with a great plot, really good acting, brilliant score, very well done gore effects, more genre possibilities besides the horror label, and realistic situations pertaining to any possible zombie apocalypse, but some of the scares and general make-up effects don't seem to stand up to the test of time.

No comments:

Post a Comment