Dawn of the Dead

A shopping mall is a sensible place to seek shelter, which is where George A. Romero starts making trouble. The people in Dawn of the Dead want to survive, and the shops offer plenty of reasons to settle down. We recommend it warmly: this is frightening, funny horror with a clear understanding of why its survivors might find the place hard to leave. Romero makes their attachment to consumer goods understandable before making it look ridiculous. That allowance for human weakness keeps the satire from becoming merely smug.

Michael Gornick’s cinematography gives the shopping mall the everyday familiarity the satire needs. The place remains recognisable as somewhere people would willingly spend time, even while the violence makes it intolerable. We can understand its attraction, which makes the survivors’ urge to claim its goods more uncomfortable. The comparison between zombies and shoppers is obvious enough; making the living seem equally susceptible to mindless appetite is the more troubling part of the joke.

Romero’s editing puts the comedy and the gore close enough together that neither provides much relief from the other. We were horrified by the violence; the extravagant bodily damage keeps interrupting the comfortable business of enjoying a clever zombie film. The effects are inventive, but the ingenuity does not make the injuries pleasant to look at. Anyone expecting the social commentary to make the bloodshed easier to stomach should adjust that expectation.

Ken Foree gives Peter Washington a steadiness that helps when the film threatens to become all gore. Gaylen Ross makes Francine “Fran” Parker worth attending to even when Romero’s script seems more interested in what the group represents. David Emge and Scott Reiniger, as Stephen “Flyboy” Andrews and Roger “Trooper” DeMarco, complete a quartet whose company matters to the survival story. Their performances give us sufficient reason to care about the people whose acquisitiveness Romero is criticising, though we sometimes wanted him to give them more room.

The music, credited to Massimo Morante, Claudio Simonetti, Agostino Marangolo, Fabio Pignatelli, Dario Argento and Don Harper, gives the horror an unruly energy. Its force suits a film prepared to be grotesquely funny without making its violence harmless. We are encouraged to enjoy ourselves in circumstances where that feels a little disreputable. That discomfort is useful in a film so interested in what people will happily consume.

The reservation is that the shopping-mall comparison does not become more interesting every time Romero returns to it. At 127 minutes, the film occasionally presses a point that the setting has already made, and the people have to compete with the message for our attention. Romero’s confidence is part of the pleasure, but he can be unwilling to leave a good joke alone. Within zombie horror, his achievement here is to make us worry about what the survivors want beyond simply surviving.

Choose it for the satire as well as the scares, and be prepared for neither to be subtle. The violence is a substantial part of the experience, not a brief hurdle before the interesting material. This is not the film to put on while deciding what to have for supper.