Dawn Of The Dead

Looking lost in the grindhouse, an overqualified Sarah Polley stars as a suburban Milwaukee nurse who wakes to a virus that turns her boyfriend and a neighbor child into flesh-eating savages and converts her cul-de-sac into a zombie apocalypse. Banding together with a few survivors, including tough cop Ving Rhames, Mekhi Phifer and his pregnant wife (Inna Korobkina), and down-to-earth hunk Jake Weber, Polley and friends hole up at a local mall run by overzealous security guards. During the long standoff with the zombies outside, they devise an escape plan right out of the Clint Eastwood vehicle The Gauntlet while contending with infighting and new infections.

Tasteless and gratuitous enough on its own terms, this Dawn Of The Dead would still be much more palatable had the original never existed. As it stands, the remake is akin to an Animal House knockoff staged at a country retreat and called The Rules Of The Game. Gone are Romero's wickedly funny riffs on malls as consumer utopias; they're replaced by a pack of bickering ninnies, smugly ironic Muzak versions of songs like "Don't Worry, Be Happy" and "All By Myself," and, worst of all, product placements at every turn. With his background in commercials, Snyder was either inured to Romero's point or too concerned with nailing the important technical details, such as overhead shots of propane-tank explosions or the gooey sound of an unborn mutant sloshing around in amniotic fluid. Confusing body count with intensity, the new Dawn Of The Dead could be a metaphor for how little Hollywood values human life, if only it had a brain ripe enough to feast on.