rottentomatoes.com

Michael Johnson wouldn’t be a good zombie.

Why?

Because zombies can’t run.

Webster’s Dictionary defines a zombie as “a willless, speechless human…who is held to have died and been supernaturally reanimated.”

Or “someone who behaves as though half-dead.”

“Dawn of the Dead”, which opened March 19, depicts zombies who run at full speed- hardly befitting behavior for someone who is “half-dead.”

Zack Snyder’s remake of George A. Romero’s classic 1978 film finds the country infested with undead creatures, which causes living beings (also known as people) to fight for survival and seek refuge.

In the movie, a group of survivors find shelter in a nearby shopping mall.

There they must safeguard themselves and fend off intruding zombies.

Time slowly passes and they make a plan of action.

They realize they can’t stay in the mall forever, yet they have no place else to go.

The only resemblances to the original film are zombies and a shopping mall.

With that in mind, the movie should be titled differently, something along the lines of “This movie is dead, literally and figuratively.”

There’s a Hollywood trend to recreate classics and cash in on previous successes.

It’s easy to make a movie with a similar theme, slap on the same title, and call it a remake, but it’s not easy to recreate that spark found in the original film.

Many things that gave the original a special spark and made it a great zombie movie were absent from this version.

The characterization was dismal – most of the supporting cast served no purpose, save to add to a mounting body count.

Most important, for those familiar with the original, there were no rampaging bikers.

The best addition to this version was the character Andy (Bruce Bohne), the proprietor of a weapons shop located across the mall parking lot.

Andy added the most life to the film by playing a game of shooting zombies that looked like celebrities.

Fans of zombie movies will be disappointed. It had plenty of gore, but felt rather empty: nothing like the original.

It’s like granddaddy used to tell us: When there’s no more room for fresh ideas, the crap will walk the Earth.