DAWN OF THE DEAD (2004) – A 20th Anniversary Retrospective

Introduction

Some may say that Zack Snyder’s now classic action/horror film Dawn of the Dead (2004) was a success despite itself. Examining all of the elements in place during pre-production, that claim may be a fair assessment. Yet, despite both writer James Gunn and Snyder’s shaky and then inexperienced resumes, the film was a box-office hit. It also launched both of their careers. The film and Danny Boyles’s fantastic low-budget 28 Days Later (2002) helped to inject new life and ideas into the zombie subgenre. Twenty years later, the genre is as strong as ever on both the big, and small screens. Cinema Scholars celebrates the twentieth anniversary of Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead with this deep-dive retrospective.

Beginnings

Stepping into re-make territory can often be a dicey undertaking. Trying to remake a horror classic, doubly so. That’s exactly where producer Eric Newman found himself when he secured the rights to George Romero’s iconic sequel Dawn of the Dead (1978). The son of Oscar-winning composer Randy Newman, Eric broke into the industry working under Lorne Michaels at the legendary sketch comedy show, Saturday Night Live. After working as a producer on the David Spade/Chris Farley films Tommy Boy (1995) and Black Sheep (1996), Newman formed Strike Entertainment with producer/director Marc Abraham and producer Thomas Bliss.

Both unabashed fans of ‘zombie films,’ Newman and Abraham wanted to bring Romero’s classic back to the big screen. This time, in a modern telling, for a modern audience. Abraham would later state:

“I had always loved those movies, but Dawn of the Dead was my favorite. There were always other zombie movies around, but Dawn felt to me like the one movie that stood out from the rest…I would like to see this movie make the old fans happy and make a lot of new fans. Because that’s the only reason we are doing it”

Richard Rubenstein, who had produced the original 1979 Dawn of the Dead with George Romero, and held the rights to the film, was convinced that after twenty-five years, Newman and Abraham were the right people to to reinvent the franchise for a modern audience. Rubenbstein later reflected: 

“I believed that George’s film was successful critically and financially partially because it was written, directed, produced and distributed outside of the major studio system of moviemaking. I was concerned that somewhere along the way a studio would sanitize Newman’s vision for producing a version with `attitude.’ Ultimately, it was Marc Abraham’s long track record in keeping the creative integrity of the studio distributed films he has produced intact that gave me reason to say `yes’ and agree to turning the Strike team loose.”

Pre-Production

All parties realized that a new retelling of Dawn of the Dead needed both new ideas and a better budget than Romero’s original twenty-five years earlier. Team Strike would also be able to utilize the incredible advances in both technology and makeup fully. One important factor was to include Romero’s always-relevant social commentary in the remake. Consumerism, groupthink, police violence, race and class issues. All of these original elements were incorporated into the remake. Now they just needed to find a writer.

Strike Entertainment turned to another young zombie lover to pen the new screenplay. While many people were down on the choice of screenwriter James Gunn for writing the script (largely in part for his awful script for the live-action remake of Scooby-Doo), the writer/director had serious chops. The thirty-seven-year-old had risen through the ranks of the legendary low-budget studio Troma Entertainment and had written the cult hit Tromeo & Juliet. Gunn confessed:

“I was an enormous fan…I’ve seen the original many times. For me, it was the first time a horror movie addressed social concerns and still was a kickass horror movie. Aside from that, after having written comedies for the last few years, I wanted to shift from making people laugh to making them scream, cry and get queasy”

Gunn, in writing the script, had to tread a fine line between creating something new and fresh, while also not pissing off the hardcore Romero fans. He took an action-oriented approach while remaining faithful to Romero’s original vision. Gunn would also leave the origin of the zombie outbreak a mystery, thus giving credence to numerous fan theories in the early days of online chat forums. Michael Tolkin and Scott Frank both contributed uncredited rewrites, with Tolkin further developing the characters, and Frank providing some additional action scenes.

Zach Snyder

With a finished script, Newman, Abraham, and Gunn began drumming up studio interest with Universal Pictures leading the way. The studio suits liked Gunn’s action-oriented script and eagerly signed on. Now Abraham and Newman had to find a director who would best fit the vision that the trio had created. 

In the early 2000s, Zack Snyder was one of the commercial industry’s most acclaimed directors. Also an accomplished cinematographer, Snyder was looking for the right screenplay to leap into helming feature films. When his management team showed him the Dawn of the Dead script, the future Man of Steel director knew he had found his debut project. Snyder, steeped in geek culture and a Romero/horror fan discussed the importance of getting it just right:

“I’d been looking for a project to direct as my first feature film, and I wanted something that gave me a reason to care about every shot. Dawn did that…The most important aspect for me was that this movie had to be as serious as a heart attack. It needed to be played straight…I mean, we do have some dark humor and some veiled references to the original. Don’t get me wrong, this is a frightening film, but it also has some really funny stuff…some sick humor, if you will” 

Sarah Polley

Everyone involved agreed that with IP as cherished as Romero’s ‘Dead’ franchise, when it came to casting, it was critical to have talented and committed actors on the project. That’s why when word got around that the versatile and well-regarded indie film actor, Sarah Polley, was interested in the lead role of nurse Ana Clark, the entire production team took pause. Even Polley’s agent at the time was surprised by her interest in Dawn of the Dead.

It turns out that Polley, like just about everyone else involved in the production, was a big fan of Romero’s original film, and the horror genre as a whole. Polley was also impressed with Snyder and Eric Newman’s pitch that they were making something serious and wholly original. Two facets of filmmaking that were vitally important to the future Oscar winner. One thing that Polley was not prepared for was the physicality involved in filming Dawn of the Dead. Polley later stated:

“About one week into shooting, it occurred to me that I have never run in any of my other films, not once. And in this film it seems to me all I do is run…It’s really rare to have a film where the female character is anything more than somebody screaming and running away, so it’s great that Ana is someone who, despite what she goes through, takes charge and holds her own”

Rounding Out The Cast

As with the original film, the remake’s plot focuses on a group of survivors coming together (for the most part) to battle the undead – while holed up in a shopping mall. While Polley’s Ana grounds the film and is its moral compass, its supporting characters are also central to the film’s success. At the top of this list is Kenneth, a disillusioned, yet dutiful police officer who is trying to find his brother. The filmmakers, from day one, always wanted Ving Rhames to play the role. Rhames later joked “I want to be in this movie because the black guy lives.”

After reading Gunn’s script and watching Snyder’s ‘sizzle reel’ Rhames was in. Another key casting decision was Michael, a salesman with a kind heart and some serious zombie-killing skills. While most people who auditioned for the role came at the part with a harder edge, Jake Weber (Meet Joe Black, Medium) went in a different direction. He gave the character empathy that Snyder and team Strike were immediately drawn to. If Ana was the film’s moral center, then Michael was its conscience.

One of the more challenging roles to fill was Andre, a street-smart husband, and father-to-be who is trying to make things right and live up to the expectations of his very pregnant Russian wife, played by Inna Korobkina. Previously known for playing a doctor on the hit show ER, Mekhi Phifer gained notice after portraying the character ‘Future’ in the critically acclaimed film 8 Mile. He was also no stranger to horror, having co-starred in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Phifer, however, was not interested in the horror aspect of the film. He explained:

“…There are zombies in this movie-and freaky ones at that. Most of the time they really are a backdrop to the very human story of what goes on within the group of survivors. No offense to James Gunn or Zack or the producers, but you could replace the zombies with anything that people would be hiding from. But whatever it is, and in this case it is zombies, it forces the characters into a confined space and it forces them to deal with themselves and each other. That is what really drew me to the project…”

Filming

Filming on Dawn of the Dead began on June 9, 2003, in various parts of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The filmmakers and the special effects team realized that the FX from Romero’s original, while groundbreaking for its time, simply wasn’t going to cut it for a modern audience. Also, the days of slow-moving zombies were officially over. Zombies looked grosser and moved faster. Not wanting to go too heavy on CGI, the team turned to two-time Oscar-winning special effects makeup designer David LeRoy Anderson and his team at AFX Studio.

With Snyder, Gunn, and Team Strike all wanting a straight-on action/horror film steeped in reality – and practical effects, AFX had their work cut out for them. Anderson and his team tore through forensic books and crime scene photos to get the look they were looking for. They also incorporated the decaying aspects of nature as well as traditional zombie mythology. The result was something both exciting and horrifying.

Indeed, Anderson and AFX wanted to make their zombies as realistic as possible, right down to the color schemes. It was also agreed that throughout the extended period of the shopping mall siege, the deterioration of the undead would be noticeable with the running corpses becoming more and more decomposed over time. As a result, and for continuity, AFX broke down the decomposition process into three stages. Anderson explained:

 “The first stage looks like someone who was just in the ER, pale, with lots of fresh blood. The second stage has moist wounds but the skin is beginning to break down. There is a lot of discoloration and mottling, mostly blues and greens. The third stage is the most intense, with the skeletal form coming through. The wounds are dried-up, the skin is sloughing off and colors are oily blacks”

The Mall

Much like the original Dawn of the Dead, the majority of Snyder’s film takes place in a massive indoor shopping mall. In Romero’s original 1979 film, the director used a functioning Pittsburgh mall and was only able to film from midnight to 6 am. The Monroeville Mall is still around today and people from all over the world travel there to see where it all began. This writer can tell you based on personal experience that not much has changed and the mall looks very much like it did 45 years ago. There is also a museum there dedicated to the original film.

To duplicate the shooting schedule from 1979 and film in a modern-day functioning mall was just not possible. As a result, location scouts found the Thorn Hill Square shopping mall in Toronto Canada, which was scheduled to be demolished. Production designer Andrew Neskoromny had only eight weeks to turn this run-down structure into the beautiful suburban shopping mall known in the film as the Crossroads Mall.

To achieve this tall task, this massive 45,000-square-foot structure needed to be torn down to its steel support beams and remodeled from the ground up. The result was nothing short of astonishing. This new “mall” included fourteen fully functional stores, a common area, warehouse areas, an open-area coffee shop, and so much more. It is very much a character in the finished film. Neskoromny explained the process:

“In many instances, we merged a variety of aspects of different designs we saw to create one superb mall, a modern-day shoppers’ paradise…Zack and I worked closely together. He had very specific ideas and requirements about what he needed for shooting in the mall. So we talked about all the stores and went through all the sketches. We discussed materials that would work well for lighting and for the camera. It was a completely collaborative process”

Post-Production and Release

Once again, much like the original film, the soundtrack was a vital element to the remake’s success. While Romero had a longstanding working relationship with the Italian progressive rock band Goblin, Snyder and Team Strike decided to go in another direction. They contracted Tyler Bates (300, John Wick franchise, Halloween) to compose the score. While the studio was hesitant to use Bates due to his lack of experience, Snyder insisted. The result paid dividends as the soundtrack is top-notch and inventive.

Dawn of the Dead was heavily marketed before its release. This culminated with the ten-minute opening sequence being broadcast on cable TV four nights prior to its initial theatrical run. Its main competition on opening weekend was Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, which had been number one at the domestic box office for the previous three weeks. Writer James Gunn quipped shortly before the film’s release:

“You could see a movie with one guy rising from the dead or you can see one with thousands”

Dawn of the Dead, in its opening weekend, exceeded its initial box office projections. The film grossed an impressive $27.3 million in the U.S. This was the top spot at the box office, knocking Mel Gibson’s ‘passion project’ off its throne. It ended its theatrical run as a commercial hit, grossing $102 million worldwide on a $26 million budget. The unrated and extended ‘Snyder Cut’ also was a huge hit on DVD and Blu-ray as it was longer and gorier than the theatrical version. Critics, for the most part, also agreed that it was a worthy entry into the franchise.

Legacy

While Romero himself was not a fan, the years have been kind to the Dawn of the Dead remake. Indeed, in the ensuing twenty years, the film is widely considered one of the best zombie films ever made. Many also consider it to be Zach Snyder’s greatest achievement. Den of Geek, Bloody Disgusting, Rolling Stone, Collider, Empire, IndieWire, Dread Central, IGN, and many other publications have sung its praises over the years. It can also be said that, along with 28 Days Later, the film helped reestablish the zombie sub-genre as a proven money-maker. Two decades on, Dawn of the Dead remains one of the best horror remakes of all time.

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