What Drives Dawn?

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I recently saw the remake of Dawn of the Dead, which was a surprise hit among horror audience and was one of the few remakes done right with respects to the original ’78 classic. There are several things in this movie that made it good and several revisions that also gave it that modernized look and feel… but what I want to focus on, that also made this movie so good, is the emotional impact this movie had and emotion that drove the characters. Character development is always key when making a zombie movie because it really shows how people act when all the chips are down and it focuses in on our primitive instincts.

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The main characters were very well developed in this movie and the secondary characters, though not as developed, they were well acted and that made me feel for them when they eventually got killed. Lets look at Ana, she had a husband and a prominent job yet when everything started going wrong you felt for her and when she met Michael… you knew she liked him in a very special way. When he gets bit you feel for her loss considering she just lost her husband. Though their hidden, possible, love is never directly stated it’s easy to assume they had a small thing for each other. Two very developed characters that change through out the movie.

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Now lets look at Kenneth. He is a very complex character who acts like he is tough, who is tough but he has a weakness… a soft side of compassion and fear like anybody else. He develops a sort of bond with Andy from across the street and he really feels for this person even after he turns into a zombie. I think his major turning point is when he confesses that every time he says sorry to a wife or son about their fathers death, he never means it and that “it’s better him, than me,” but like a normal human he admits that he is scared of dying and that there is something worse then death; waiting for death to come.

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I think a very interesting character would be Andre. He is a very complex character with questionable motives and actions that make me believe the he could be considered an anti-hero. He is a savior in the sense that he loves his Russian wife or girlfriend and he is a petty thief and I think he really wants to do something right for a change and that is bringing and raising a kid of his own. Although, he becomes obsessed with writing the right that he is motive turns violent and very criminal. He’s a good person but his cause becomes lost when he delivers a living dead baby and kills Norma. A great example of human development in severe situations.

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What about Nicole? Not a very developed character, but nonetheless a person who shows the emotional side of this movie. The scene in which she spends her last time with her dad and when her dad, Frank, explains that he is the only person left of her family and that she has nobody left. It’s a really sad and very powerful moment… and I think it highlights the loss of the zombie outbreak. What thought was a very good edition to the movie was the bond that Nicole shares with the dog, so that she could fill up the hole were her family used to be. It’s just a great profile of people compensating after losses.  

There were many different things that made this remake far more superior then other remakes and one those reasons is the emotional and character part of the zombie movie. It’s very important to have complex characters in zombie movies since those kinds of films are usually character studies. This film, is no exception.