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Preview by: Jack Foley
DIRECTOR'S CUT DVD SPECIAL FEATURES: The Lost Tape: Andy's
Terrifying Last Days Revealed. Special Bulletin: We Interrupt
This Programme. Undead scenes with commentary by director Jack
Snyder. Surviving The Dead. Splitting Headaches: Anatomy of Exploding
Heads. Feature commentary with director Jack Snyder and producer
Eric Newman.
IT’S been 26 years since George Romero’s genre-defining
second zombie chiller terrorised cinema-goers, and despite many
imitations since, few have come close to recapturing the thrills
of those movies.
But hot off the back of last year’s horror remake, The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, director, Zack Snyder, will be raising
the dead once more, for his remake of Dawn of the Dead.
The re-imagining stars Sarah Polley and Ving Rhames, among others,
respectively, a nurse and a police officer, who are forced to
hole up in a shopping mall in a desperate fight for their lives,
along with several other survivors, when a plague-like event unleashes
armies of flesh-eating zombies.
Romero’s original was notable for mixing its gore and chills
with a none-too-subtle dig at American consumerism and while first-time
director, Snyder, promises that the remake will be drastically
changed, the same digs will be retained.
Polley, for her part, appears tremendously excited about the
prospect of appearing in a genre she has always dreamed of playing
in.
The actress may be more usually associated with quality independent
fare, such as The Sweet Hereafter and Go, but she insists she
simply couldn’t turn down the opportunity of appearing in
a zombie flick.
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Speaking at a recent press conference for last year’s weepie,
My Life Without Me,
she said: "I think that every movie should have at least
one zombie in it! I don't know if you've seen the original, but
I'm a huge fan of the George Romero films, particularly Dawn of
the Dead, and I think there's a very obvious political subtext
through Dawn of the Dead about consumer culture, and instead of
taking that out of the remake, they've actually put it more in,
which I sort of find universal.
"But I'm a really huge zombie fan, and I did think about
how much I wanted to do it, and I almost stopped myself, to tell
you the truth, because of this kind of question.
" I just couldn't see how I could explain this. But I just
wanted to do it, and I had to stop thinking about how I was going
to justify it in the future, and I had such a fun time doing it.
"I don't think I'm going to make a career out of doing big
Hollywood horror movies, to tell you the truth; I don't feel this
is the beginning of a new path for me, but I really wanted to
do it, and I think it's going to be really good, so it's completely
different, but it also fits completely into my criteria about
why I want to make films, so..."
In the meantime, for anyone who fears a zombie abomination as
bad as Resident Evil from this remake, Romero himself has pledged
to fight back with a fourth instalment of his own franchise.
In an article posted on his official website, he said that he
is currently working on the script, which is virtually finished,
and has apparently secured a $3-4 million budget, (although reports
suggest that the director is seeking to push this to $5-6 million,
in order to properly realise his vision).
Needless to say, details remain sketchy about what to expect,
suffice to say that the film will allegedly feature a ‘fortified
city’ and, in his own words, ‘is going to be fabulous’.
"It will be a great big bundle of shock and entertainment
that will make you sing and dance all the way to your grave site,"
he added.
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