There's really no point anymore in railing against the cannibalization going on in Hollywood, the endless parade of remakes that's kicked into high gear in the last few years. It's going to happen, and all you can do is hope the results are respectful, or at least decent cinema. In the sub-trend of remakes of '70s horror flicks, the new Dawn of the Dead succeeds on both counts, showing the people who put together last year's Texas Chainsaw Massacre redux how to do things properly.
Dawn is a strange choice for a remake, since George Romero's 1979 original was itself a sequel to his 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead, and no remake of Night has been attempted lately. Whereas Romero's film started with the undead already having overrun the world, screenwriter James Gunn and director Zack Snyder stage the beginning of the epidemic in an effective pre-credits sequence. It also serves as an introduction to our main character, nurse Ana (Sarah Polley), one of the few survivors of the zombie plague that takes over the world, or at least the U.S., in less than a day.
She meets up with cop Kenneth (Ving Rhames) and salesman Michael (Jake Weber), and the three eventually take refuge in an abandoned shopping mall, where they're joined by a trio of security guards, and later, a truckload of other refugees, all while trying to fend off the flesh-eating zombies and figure out what's left of civilization.
Romero fans have been up in arms about this remake ever since it was announced, no doubt fearing a PG-13 film filled with WB stars and an emphasis on CGI effects over genuine scares. While Snyder's film may not approach Romero's, it handily avoids all those pitfalls, and deserves respect from fans of Romero and horror films in general. Snyder casts real actors, not magazine pinups, and Polley and Rhames both give powerful, serious performances. There's no skimping on gore, either; this is a film that earns its R rating. And though Snyder's background in advertising sometimes makes Dawn look more like a commercial for zombies than a zombie film, for the most part he dials back the showiness.
Ultimately, Dawn is not a necessary remake, and Romero's version is still the superior film. But Snyder clearly has a good eye for horror and a respect for the history of the genre, and that makes his film far better than you'd expect.