Tony Jopia’s Dawning of the Dead is just one of many new zombie movies to hit the small screen in the last few months. But in a market that is completely saturated with zombies, how can this new addition possibly compete and hope to stand out from the crowd? Well, grab your machete and gather around the campfire as I share my thoughts.
Imagine a world, much like our own, where immoral and unscrupulous government agencies develop an experimental drug to allow soldiers the ability to fight harder, faster and longer. However, an unexpected side effect of the drug begins to turn people into the undead, and things soon get very messy. The deadly zombie virus inevitably gets released around the world and chaos ensues. Information regarding the truth of the virus’s origin is leaked to a small news production company, and government agents are soon missioned to prevent the release of this highly incriminating evidence at any cost.
Cue a rampaging zombie outbreak. Expect blood, decapitation, giblets and gizzards galore, and more stomach sausages than a butcher’s shop window. We follow the action from Dawning of the Dead through a plethora of angles until everyone converges at the television studio for a gut-wrenching finale. It all sounds like bloody good fun, and for the most part, it is. You need to appreciate that this film was made on a shoestring and in that respect, a great job has been done. There are lots of location shots, tons of physical and CGI effects, loads of zombies, great atmospheric background sounds, and some really nice camera work with the cinematography being spot on.
A particularly nice scene in Dawning of the Dead occurs in a janitor’s cupboard where two characters create a zombie slaying weapon out of a floor buffer and some nails. This was a great little scene, it was fun and original. If only that kind of ingenuity had been present throughout the whole of the movie. Unfortunately, Dawning of the Dead is plagued with issues that hold it back, where it might have flourished. Even if you overlook the sometimes hammy acting, the noticeably choppy editing and the predictable action, this movie just doesn’t do enough to make it stand out from the hundreds of other zombie movies out there.
[Related: Dawning of the Dead is set to terrify you on DVD this March.]
Maybe it was far too ambitious to expect a film that was directed by 5 people, written by 6 and produced by 15, to ever be able to work as a cohesive, seamless and unified vision. Despite the multitude of heads around the table, Dawning of the Dead brings nothing new to the zombie genre, and in fact relies upon a lot of cliched, well-trodden material that has come before it. However, operating on a microbudget, Jopia has managed to squeeze pretty much everything you would expect into this zombie movie and tied it up with a nice little ending. Is it worth watching? If you like zombie movies, then definitely. The action is pretty relentless, and kudos to the lead zombie that’s built like a brick outhouse – even Rick Grimes would pee in his pants. However, for the rest of you there just might not be enough to satisfy.
Discover Dawning of the Dead yourself now from Amazon.
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