Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Remakes are tricky things, especially when the source material is held in a high regard. Such is the case with the remake of George Romero's 1978 zombie flick Dawn of the Dead. Considered one of horror's all-time classics, the idea of Hollywood remaking Dawn of the Dead really struck a nerve with fans of the original. But why? Remakes aren't always bad. David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly is far better than the original, John Carpenter made a great remake of The Thing From Another World, and the remakes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the first remake, anyway) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre were pretty darn good as well. So how did Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead pan out? Read on.

Our story begins with Ana (Sarah Polley), who is arriving at her suburban Wisconsin home after a long day of work at the local hospital. She's immediately greeted by Vivian (Hannah Lochner), the young girl who lives next door. Vivian proudly shows Ana a new trick she learned with her roller skates, and Ana heads inside to her husband Luis (Justin Louis). They two have an intimate evening, completely missing an urgent special report on TV. The next morning at dawn, Ana and Luis awaken to find a blood-soaked Vivian at their bedroom door. When Luis attempts to check on her, we discover that Vivian is no longer the cute little girl we saw earlier. Turns out she's now a blood-thirsty zombie!

She takes a hunk out of Luis's neck, which ends up killing and resurrecting him as a zombie as well. The freaked-out Ana leaps out the bathroom window and dashes for her car, but she discovers that something foul is afoot in suburbia. The chaos in her house has been multiplied by a million for the rest of the neighborhood, as zombies slowly start to take out their neighbors. Ana gets into her car and drives off with no real destination, but when a carjacker tries to pull her out of the car, she loses control and goes right into a tree. As the opening credits roll, we discover that the zombie attacks have become a worldwide epidemic, and nobody knows just how or why it happened.

What we assume is a few hours later, Ana wakes up and crawls out of her car, only to get a shotgun barrel pointed right into her face. The shotgun belongs to Kenneth (Ving Rhames), a local cop. She convinces him that she's still human, and Kenneth decides to bring her along with him. The pair soon runs into three more survivors: Best Buy employee Michael (Jake Weber), gangbanger Andre (Mekhi Phifer), and Andre's very pregnant Russian girlfriend Luda (Inna Korobkina). The five band together and head for the nearest shelter, a gigantic shopping mall. They're soon confronted by C.J. (Michael Kelly), Terry (Kevin Zegers), and Bart (Michael Barry), a trio of mall security guards who've claimed the place for their own. The guards don't trust their new visitors, but decide to let them stay.

The group heads to the roof to see what they're up against, and discover Andy (Bruce Bohne), the proprietor of the gun shop across the street, who communicates with those at the mall via a dry-erase board. The next day, the mall group expands by seven when a truck full of survivors arrives at the mall's loading dock. Joining our group are the sarcastic Steve (Ty Burrell), Frank (Matt Frewer) and his daughter Nicole (Lindy Booth), the gorgeous model Monica (Kim Poirier), truck driver Norma (Jayne Eastwood), gay church organist Glen (R.D. Reid), and a sick fat woman whose name we never learn (Ermes Blarasin). As the group thins out, those remaining inside the mall decide they need to escape if they plan on survival. But with the mob of zombies outside growing into the thousands, how will they?

Having seen both the original and the remake, I can't help but compare them. The original Dawn of the Dead serves as a satirical jab at consumerism, while the remake is just about a group of people in a mall surrounded by an army of zombies. George Romero used Dawn '78 to find resemblances in mindless zombies and mall shoppers, but the mall in Dawn '04 is simply a neat place for some zombie action. The remake is certainly more polished and better looking than the original, yet it has less to say when taken for deeper than face value.

There's also a big difference in the zombies seen in Dawn '78 and their counterparts in Dawn '04. The zombies in Dawn '78 are covered in blue-gray greasepaint, and stumble around like sleepwalkers. Their 2004 brethren are very different. It's like the zombie legion saw 28 Days Later and decided to do that, but forgot the "zombies" in 28 Days Later were still living people that were infected with a "rage" virus. While running zombies are much more exciting and scary, we have to forget about that whole thing about death. Usually, corpses have to worry about things like rigor mortis, but not these zombies. I guess being a zombie means rigor mortis is no problem.

The large cast was also a problem. Movies like Dawn '78 and 28 Days Later benefited from having only a handful of characters to follow. Yet with Dawn '04, the cast expands to the point where we just don't care about most of them (especially Kim Poirier's character, who barely has any screen time at all). Many of the characters might as well have "zombie food" stamped on their foreheads. However, we do have interest in some of the characters. While the subplot of Luda's pregnancy isn't properly fleshed out, it does give us a reason to care about her and Andre. And even though what looks to be a budding romance between Ana and Michael is a dumb subplot (if a gang of undead cannibals just ate your families and they're waiting outside to eat you, would you be playing the field?), it allows us to care about both characters. We even grow to enjoy the medium-distance friendship between Kenneth and Andy.

Another problem I have with Dawn '04 is how goofy some things in the flick are. One of the three security guards spends a lot of the movie doing his best impersonation of Captain Rhodes from Day of the Dead. He spends his time barking orders and waving his gun around, but by the end of the movie, he's one of the good guys. No explanation given, he just goes from being a jerk to being everybody's friend. I was also disappointed with the final payoff of the pregnancy subplot. It had the chance to be the creepiest, most unsettling part of the movie, but just before it got good, it's over. And let's not forget the idiot girl who jeopardizes everything because the stray dog she found the day before ran across the street.

However, not everything about the movie is bad. Ty Burrell and Ving Rhames are both great, while Sarah Polley did a good job with what she was given, and Mekhi Phifer turned in a good performance and gave his role some needed depth, despite his limited screen time. Director Zach Snyder did a great job behind the camera, and while his wild camera moves during action scenes could have gotten nauseating after so much, it proved to be effective. I also really enjoyed the scenes spliced into the end credits, which gave us a kind-of epilogue to the movie. The score by Tyler Bates is really fitting in its gloominess, and the music selections are out of this world. Two versions of "Down With The Sickness" (Disturbed's version and a "lounge" cover by Richard Cheese), the Johnny Cash song mentioned earlier, and Jim Carroll's punk-ish "People Who Died" make the non-score soundtrack a lot of fun.

I also really enjoyed the cameos from Dawn '78 cast members, with Tom Savini as a sheriff, Scott Reiniger as a soldier, and Ken Foree as a televangelist who reprises Dawn '78's most memorable line (which is also the tagline for both movies). I also got a chuckle out of the clothing store named "Gaylen Ross," an obvious reference to the original Dawn's lead actress. Overall, I'll give the Dawn of the Dead remake three and a half stars. Even though it was lacking in some places, I'm pleased with the effort.

Final Rating: ***½

House of the Dead (2003)

Along with the ideas of remakes and sequels, movies based on video games have become a Hollywood trend in recent years. From games like Resident Evil and Tomb Raider to Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, if it can be made into a movie, it probably will be. Why else would someone have done a movie version of Super Mario Bros.?

But if anything is certain, it's that cinematic adaptations of video games are very rarely good. While some can be fun to watch, others are so absolutely dreadful that you regret ever having heard its name. One of these movies is House of the Dead, based on the series of arcade games produced by Sega. Nearly offensive in its lack of quality, House of the Dead should be an example of how you shouldn't make a movie based on a video game. So let's get right to the review, and I'll tell you why they think that.

The movie begins with an introduction to five college students — Simon (Tyron Leitso), Alicia (Ona Grauer), Greg (Will Sanderson), Karma (Enuka Okuma), and Cynthia (Sonya Salomaa) — as they search for a boat to take them to a big party on a secluded island off the coast of Seattle. The island is conveniently named "Isla del Muerta," so of course, nothing bad could ever happen. Naming an island "the Island of the Dead" is good luck, right?

So anyway, the group stumbles across the cigar-loving boat captain Victor Kirk (Jürgen Prochnow) and his eccentric first mate Salish (Clint Howard), and offer him a handful of cash in exchange for a ride to the island. Despite Salish's protests that the island is evil, Kirk agrees, and they ship out. However, hot on their tail is Jordan Casper (Ellie Cornell), a cop that may or may not be a member of the Coast Guard who intends to arrest Captain Kirk for something. I guess because he's smuggling illegal cigars, I don't know.

Upon arriving at the island, they discover the island completely deserted, with the exception of a handful of survivors that include Liberty (Kira Clavell), Hugh (Michael Eklund), and Alicia's ex-boyfriend Rudy (Jonathan Cherry). Said survivors explain what exactly turned the party into a ghost town: a huge army of zombies crashed the party and began feasting on every living person in sight. At this point, everything begins going to Hell.

Stranded on the island thanks to zombies overrunning Captain Kirk's boat, those that aren't killed by the zombies take refuge in an abandoned house they discover in the woods. There, they make the discovery that their predicament was caused by a mad scientist named Castillo (David Palffy), who was exiled from Spain hundreds of years earlier for his experiments regarding the reanimation of the dead.

Luckily for these college students, Captain Kirk isn't just a cigar smuggler, but he's a gunrunner too, and he's packing enough weapons to make him chairman of the NRA for life. Now armed to the teeth, these ill-fated party-goers make their last stand against the swarm of undead threatening to overtake them.

Everyone involved with this movie should be ashamed of themselves (though I'll give Clint Howard a "get out of jail free" card, because I like him). One review I've seen calls House of the Dead "the Showgirls of horror," and I think that's a close description. It's a lot like Plan 9 from Outer Space or Howard the Duck, in that it sucks so bad, it nearly overdoes itself and sucks its way into being something worth watching. It's just too funny for words.

The script, written by Dave Parker and Mark Altman, has absolutely no character development at all, along with a severe lack of tension or drama. And would it have been so hard for them to think up a more creative name for Jürgen Prochnow's character than "Captain Kirk"? Why not just call Clint Howard's character "Spock" and refer to the zombies as "Klingons"? Parker and Altman's script also features dialogue so preposterous that it's insulting. Check out some examples...

• "You created it all so you could be immortal! Why?"
• "To live forever!" 

Well, duh. Thank you, Captain Obvious. Take a break, we wouldn't want you to pull a muscle answering any more of these brain busters. And I can't say for sure, but I think someone let Mojo Jojo from The Powerpuff Girls write some of the dialogue. "I became immortal to live forever and be immortal! Bwa ha ha ha ha!"

• "Guys, check out this book. Looks pretty old, maybe it'll help us."

Because God knows any random old book would contain the answer to every possible zombie-related question one could ask. Or did I miss the words "Encyclopedia Satannica" stamped on the side of the book?

(I wish I was making all that dialogue up. If you're not laughing at its inanity, you don't have a soul.)

There's also a plot hole or two that the movie never bothers to explain. Why is the so-called "rave of the century" being held in the middle of the afternoon with only fifteen or twenty people in attendance? (As an aside, why is the rave sponsored by Sega? Was the logo being in there part of the deal to get the film rights?) And just why are the characters so doggone stupid? Surrounded by flesh-eating corpses? Meh. Just saw your girlfriend get slaughtered? No big deal. Gonna die soon? Whatever.

Also, where did all the characters learn to become such good marksmen? These braindead excuses for party-goers, who probably have never even seen a gun in their lives, suddenly turn into John Rambo as soon as they get their hands on a weapon. Despite all evidence pointing towards the contrary, all of the characters are apparently highly trained sharpshooters and skilled martial artists on par with Bruce Lee.

And despite being "college students," they all look like they're over the age of 30. I know television and movie casting directors often cast twenty-somethings as teenagers and young adults, but the cast looked like they were way older than they should have been. The only way they could possibly be college students is if they were all going for their doctorates, which is incredibly doubtful. And not a single member of the cast is worth taking the time and effort to watch the movie, so I'm not going to bother about talking about their terrible, terrible performances. But then again, it's not like they had a decent script to work with or a decent director to motivate them.

And boy, was Uwe Boll's direction horrible. The first noticeable bad move was his decision to overuse the "bullet time" effect. Yeah, it was cool the two or three times it was used in the first Matrix movie, but seeing it multiple times for each character over the course of a twelve-minute shootout is absolute overkill. Is it too much to put the camera in one place and let the action go down? Let's not look past his editing, which was so choppy it made my head hurt. I think Boll went into the editing booth hopped up on a combination of speed and Jolt Cola while battling Attention Deficit Disorder.

But the killer was the video game footage edited into the movie for no reason. Let me repeat that: Boll spliced in footage from the House of the Dead games into the movie at the most insane moments. What's up with this crap? It wasn't even put to good use either. I wouldn't have minded it so much if they'd limited it to just the opening or closing credits, because that was at least a novel idea. But this footage just keeps showing up over and over. If I want video game footage, I'll play the game.

And the sad part is, Boll just keeps on directing horrible movies based on video games. Why any video game company would let him near the movie rights of their games, I'll never know. People crap on Paul W.S. Anderson for doing mediocre movie versions of Resident Evil and Alien vs. Predator, but Uwe Boll makes him look like the reincarnation of Orson Welles. Boll is like the 21st-century Ed Wood, only Wood's films were more charming.

The movie's only redeeming factor was the gore effects, and that's pretty much it. Well, that and being able to see a pre-Smallville Erica Durance (credited here as "Erica Parker") get topless as the movie's second victim. The whole thing is just one big crapshoot. I have no idea how bargain-basement direct-to-video garbage like this got even a limited theatrical release. House of the Dead is one of those movies where you need to watch it with a bunch of friends and spend the whole movie yelling at the screen. So if you and your buddies want to have fun watching an awful horror movie, rent House of the Dead. Otherwise, don't bother. 

Final Rating: *½

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001)

If you've seen Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, and Dogma, you might have noticed a recurring trend: the repeated appearances of Jay and Silent Bob. The dynamic duo of the "Askewniverse" movies, they always appeared in the background, supporting characters to the main action. But when Kevin Smith decided to retire the "Askewniverse," he decided to move his two most popular creations into the forefront. How does it hold up with its four predecessors?

Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith) have spent practically their entire lives hanging out in front of their beloved Quick Stop convenience store. But as the movie begins, they've finally worn out their welcome and are banned from being within 100 feet of the store for a year.

The upset duo soon discover, however, that Miramax Films will soon be beginning production of a movie based on the "Bluntman & Chronic" comic book seen in Chasing Amy. They're rightfully pissed, since the comic's characters were based on their likenesses and they haven't seen that first dime from the movie deal. And not only that, but the announcement of a Bluntman & Chronic movie has been met with a resoundingly negative reception online. Combining being stiffed from their fair share of the movie deal with being personally insulted by the movie's poor reception, Jay and Bob decide to hike to Hollywood to stop Bluntman & Chronic: The Movie from being made. (Or at the very least, they can hopefully get Miramax to cut them a check.)

They encounter a number of colorful characters on their trip across the country, most notably a quartet of women (Eliza Dushku, Ali Larter, Jennifer Schwalbach, and Shannon Elizabeth) posing as animal activists to cover up the fact that they're jewel thieves. Their latest heist, involving a pharmaceutical lab, leaves Jay and Bob as wanted fugitives with a federal wildlife marshal (Will Ferrell) hot on their tails. But Jay and Silent Bob remain undeterred in their plans to raise hell in Hollywood.

If any movie requires you to have some knowledge about its characters, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is it. The movie is basically one gigantic in-joke, where only Smith's fans or friends will get any of the winks and nods directed toward them (though some of the most inside of inside jokes were left on the cutting room floor). This flick was made for nobody but Jay and Bob's most hardcore fans, as it rightfully should have been.

Taking center stage for the first time, both Mewes and Smith are the most hilarious they've ever been. Smith's script isn't as strong as it could have been, but considering the two main characters, there's no real problem with it. It provides lots of funny quotable lines, so I definitely won't complain about the script. Will Ferrell and Chris Rock (who plays the the Bluntman & Chronic movie's director) are great, and many of the cameos (like Mark Hamill as Bluntman and Chronic's cinematic archenemy "Cock-Knocker," Affleck and Damon as themselves, and the live performance of "Jungle Love" by Morris Day and The Time at the end of the movie) were all very much enjoyable.

As a whole, I'm gonna give Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back three stars. It's not Kevin Smith's greatest, but it's definitely a great note for Jay and Silent Bob to walk out on.

Final Rating: ***

Dogma (1999)

If you watched Clerks all the way to the end of the credits you probably noticed the line, "Jay and Silent Bob will return in Dogma." Five years came and went, and despite Jay and Bob returning in both 1995's Mallrats and 1997's Chasing Amy, Kevin Smith's two follow-ups to Clerks were not the Dogma he promised at the end of his debut film. Smith finally got around to making the project he'd been working on for so long, and was it worth the five year wait? Read on.

Many years ago, the angels Bartleby (Ben Affleck) and Loki (Matt Damon) were cast out of Heaven and banished to Wisconsin for all eternity after angering God. When they hear about a New Jersey bishop (George Carlin) that is reintroducing a long-forgotten part of Catholic dogma known as the "plenary indulgence," Bartleby and Loki discover a loophole that would circumvent God's ban and allow them to return Heaven, and they go on a road trip to New Jersey.

Now while this may sound like a setup for a fun buddy comedy, there's a little snafu. The angel Metatron (Alan Rickman), who serves as God's messenger, appears to Bethany (Linda Fiorentino), a jaded Catholic and abortion clinic employee. After she sprays him with a fire extinguisher thanks to his arrival in a pillar of fire, Metatron explains that if Bartleby and Loki are able to get back into Heaven, God's infallible word will be overruled and existence itself will cease to be. He goes on to inform Bethany that she will meet two prophets, and that she must follow them to the New Jersey church and stop the angels from destroying the universe.

Along the way, we meet the "prophets" Jay Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith), a stripper/muse named Serendipity (Salma Hayek), and Rufus (Chris Rock), the lost thirteenth apostle that was written out of the Bible due to his skin color. However, trying to stop Bethany from succeeding is a rogue demon named Azrael (Jason Lee), who wants the angels to succeed and end the universe just so he won't be stuck in Hell anymore.

To be totally honest, I'm not too knowledgeable on the intricacies of Catholicism, so all the doctrine and whatnot went over my head. I didn't even know what a plenary indulgence was until I looked it up on the Internet. But as someone who holds his religious upbringing in a somewhat high esteem, I thought Dogma was a very enjoyable movie. I don't get why people protested this movie as blasphemous, because I think God would have liked it. Isn't it obvious that He (or as Dogma would lead you to believe, She) has a sense of humor? The duckbill platypus is proof enough of that. Besides, God probably likes to have the occasional laugh at humankind's expense. I would.

As usual, Smith's script is good. In this case, it's almost too good. Dogma's long dialogues about religion's place in life seem to be better suited for a novel, but that's not a complaint. The acting, as with Smith's three prior movies, is mostly good. Fiorentino's tough-as-nails portrayal of Bethany is perfect, and Mewes and Smith are once again hilarious as the "hetero life-mates" Jay and Bob. Rickman is also great as the sarcastic voice of God, but the standouts are Affleck and Damon. Their banter with each other and the other characters are some of my more favorite parts of the movie. However, I really disliked Salma Hayek. I'm not a big fan of hers, and she just didn't do anything for me here.

Approaching Dogma from a spiritual point of view is good, because the protagonists are a bunch of imperfect dummies out to do what they feel is right. Those who see religion as a bunch of supernatural mumbo-jumbo nonsense won't care too much for it. The same goes for those who don't have a sense of humor when it comes to religion. You know who I mean. The kind of people that thinks a joke that starts with "a priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar" is blasphemy. Dogma takes religion away from people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and entrusts it to the unwashed masses. It even suggests that God might actually want people to go to Heaven. Of course, it also suggests that God is a female rock singer from Canada, but that's a different story.

Final Rating: ****