Categories: Movies

Dawn of the Dead 1978 and 2004: A Comparison

The original Dawn of the Dead (1978) created the sense of the world ending in an incredibly gruesome and personal way. With such a small budget, George A. Romero and Tom Savini (special effects master) produced not only a cult horror film, but a social commentary and satire on life that has been emulated but never duplicated.

The plot of the 1978 version follows like this: two SWAT team members, a traffic reporter, and his girlfriend seek refuge in an abandoned shopping mall after escaping the oncoming horde of undead attackers. It is an excellent horror film, complete with characters the audience cares for and the gore that transcended all horror films up to that time. The pace crawls along slowly, making it almost a lethargic film. One cannot turn away, though, knowing that the attack from the undead could occur at any moment. This seemingly lazy movie was a brilliant way of depicting just how the characters felt in the movie, having nothing more to do than eat, sleep, and worry. The zombies themselves also walk at a slow pace, in blissful accordance with the entire atmosphere of the movie.

Even though the zombies are scratching and clawing at the mall doors for a chance to feast on human flesh, there is an obvious human versus human element, as these four people will not only fight amongst themselves to survive, but they’ll have to fend off a biker gang as well. The fight becomes the focal point of the later part of the film, completely overshadowing the zombie invasion into the shopping center, a true testament to the American tendency to ignore the real problems that face the nation.

The 2004 adaptation of Dawn of the Dead was the 1978 version on steroids, fully equipped with extra vulgarity, sexual escapades between the survivors, and, of course, violence. The director, Zack Snyder, paid plenty of homage to Romero, using many characters similar to the ones in the original.

This plot varies a tad from ’78, mainly in the sense that more characters were created so more could be killed off. Other than the emergence of new victims, the plot largely remains the same. The new characters prove that this is more of a human versus monster conflict, one that is meant to provide plenty of shock throughout the entire movie. The pace is quicker and so are the zombies; their speed creates more of a sense that these people are in immediate danger if one zombie breaches the mall doors.

The excess gore and violence shows that American society in the 21st Century has become desensitized to any grim reproductions of horror a movie can dish out. No longer is this a “prude” society (although most would care to admit we are still more pure than other countries and that is, of course, not true), but one completely devoid of emotion. If one isn’t slightly sickened by witnessing a person’s intestines being torn from his body as easy as one would carry around sausage links, then it can easily be assumed that that person has a problem. The zombies are more advanced and prevalent in the film, perhaps meant to signify the apparent technological rise from the ’70s until now. Either way, both films, through their satirical emphasis and messages to the American public, demand to be taken seriously and manage to do so with great precision.