A remake of the 70s George Romero classic, the Dawn of the Dead story itself hasn't changed much. Basically, all hell breaks loose when a typical U.S. town is turned upside-down by a mysterious plague-like event in which millions of corpses walk the earth as blood-thirsty zombies. A small group of survivors fight the good fight. They include Ana (Sarah Polley), Kenneth (Ving Rhames), and Andre (Mekhi Phifer) with his very pregnant girlfriend, Luda (Inna Korobkina).

They take refuge in the aptly-named Crossroads Mall, only to encounter armed mall guards who don't want to share their safe-house. In they come anyway (Kenneth is a burly cop, and Ana is scrappy as all get-out), where they are soon joined by more survivors of the plague (some cool character actors, including Matt Frewer and Jayne Eastwood, are in the mix). Meanwhile, hordes of hungry cannibalistic undead types are rioting outside the mall, blocking any hope of the group getting out and away to possible safety.

Unlike Romero's films, there aren't long, lingering shots of lumbering zombies. These zombies are lightning quick (think: 28 Days Later) and newcomer director Zack Snyder keeps his edits that way, too (good most of the time, bad when he cuts away much too quickly from long-anticipated reveals). The horror elements are handled with surgical precision. The bloody and rotting zombies are scary and truly menacing. There's even a fine and faithful pooch put into peril, and a zombie mistaken for a harmless old woman, not to mention countless narrow escapes.

The Unrated Director’s Cut is presented in widescreen, and adds more gore and character development than the theatrical version (9 minutes’ worth, to be exact). There are also several featurettes, including a rather unusual one called The Lost Tape: Andy's Terrifying Last Days Revealed – Andy (Bruce Bohne) was a favorite character for many fans, so it’s fun to see his “video diary” chronicling his last days. There’s also a mock doc called Special Bulletin: We Interrupt This Program! which, very much in the spirit of Romero, shows complete news coverage of the attacks.

More standard featurettes include deleted scenes, an overview of just the killing scenes, and a Making-Of doc showing how the zombie makeup was achieved. (The makeup is indeed exemplary – even shown in partial states in the makeup rooms sans movie lighting, it looks really scary). Splitting Headaches: Anatomy of Exploding Heads is also a fun featurette for the particularly bloodthirsty.

Commentary from the film’s director and producer, recorded before the movie was released in theatres, is relatively entertaining in that it’s spirited and fast-paced. Each of the men seem to have a lingual fixation on the term “rock star.” Everyone is a rock star. Sarah Polley? She’s a rock star! Ving Rhames? He’s a rock star! The stunt woman who fell in the bathtub? Rock star! That extra? He’s a rock star, too! It’s pretty silly; I didn’t count them up, but they use the phrase almost and often as Cheech & Chong said “man” in all their movies combined.

Dawn of the Dead is part of what I call “Universal’s triple threat for Halloween” – which includes the debut of Van Helsing, and a Special Edition of 1982’s The Thing (both of which are reviewed here on the site).

Check out Horror.com’s exclusive interviews with the director and the cast here [1].

Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson