DVD Releases September 30, 2008: Dawn of the Dead (Unrated Director's Cut) : New DVD Releases

Dawn of the Dead (Unrated Director's Cut) [Blu-ray]
From Universal Studios
Average customer review:

Product Details

* Amazon Sales Rank: #3061 in DVD
* Released on: 2008-09-30
* Rating: Unrated
* Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
* Formats: AC-3, Color, Director's Cut, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
* Original language: English
* Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
* Dubbed in: French, Spanish
* Number of discs: 1
* Running time: 60 minutes

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Are you ready to get down with the sickness? Movie logic dictates that you shouldn't remake a classic, but Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead defies that logic and comes up a winner. You could argue that George A. Romero's 1978 original was sacred ground for horror buffs, but it was a low-budget classic, and Snyder's action-packed upgrade benefits from the same manic pacing that energized Romero's continuing zombie saga. Romero's indictment of mega-mall commercialism is lost (it's arguably outmoded anyway), so Snyder and screenwriter James Gunn compensate with the same setting--in this case, a Milwaukee shopping mall under siege by cannibalistic zombies in the wake of a devastating viral outbreak--a well-chosen cast (led by Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, and Mekhi Phifer), some outrageously morbid humor, and a no-frills plot that keeps tension high and blood splattering by the bucketful. Horror buffs will catch plenty of tributes to Romero's film (including cameos by three of its cast members, including gore-makeup wizard Tom Savini), and shocking images are abundant enough to qualify this Dawn as an excellent zombie-flick double-feature with 28 Days Later, its de facto British counterpart. --Jeff Shannon

From The New Yorker
Some may have forgotten, and others may never have experienced, the hilarious shocks that George Romero, Sam Raimi, and their fellow horror-meisters offered audiences a decade or two ago. The audacity of films like "Evil Dead 2" and the original "Dawn of the Dead" surprised audiences with surreal images of graphic, unnatural violence. In this remake of Romero's zombiefest, the director Zack Snyder brings back the cringe-inducing gore of yore as his flesh-eating zombies attack a Wisconsin mall in search of fresh meat (Sarah Polley and Ving Rhames among a cast of tasty others). The story hacks away most of the original film's satirical subtext of a consumer society gone wild, but it has retained much of the suspenseful action sequences and the fabulously disgusting makeup effects. The movie may be as mindless as a swarm of the undead, but it's fun in its splatter-filled way. -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Movie: 3.5/5 Picture Quality: 4/5 Sound Quality: 4.5/5 Extras: 1.5/5
Version: U.S.A / Region Free
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
VC-1 BD-25 / Advanced Profile 3 / Advanced Profile 2 (U-Control)
Running time: 1:49:12
Movie size: 21,40 GB
Disc size: 21,96 GB
Average video bit rate: 17.10 Mbps

DTS-HD Master Audio English 4288 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz / 24-bit / 4288kbps (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48kHz / 24-bit / 1536kbps)
DTS Audio French 768 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz / 24-bit / 768kbps
DTS Audio Spanish 768 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz / 24-bit / 768kbps
Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48kHz / 192kbps
DTS English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48kHz / 192kbps

Subtitles: English SDH / French / Spanish

Number of chapters: 20

#Audio Commentary
#U-Control

Mediocre
Ok, so the 2004 Zack Snyder remake of George Romero's Dawn Of The Dead is better than his own fourth Dead movie, Land Of The Dead, but it's still not nearly as good as the original 1978 Dawn Of The Dead. The basic problem is that the film violates its own universe's rules so many times that the film falls apart narratively. One can get away with things that are illogical in real life, but not according to the film's own precepts. In contrast to the Romero canon, zombies in this film can run like Olympic sprinters. Why? No reason except the financial success of the British zombie film 28 Days. Also, in the Romero canon, anyone who dies becomes a zombie, whereas in this film you are zombified only by a bite. Yet, if so, how did the first zombie, Zombie Zero, come to be?
That said, this film is not bad, merely a solid action/horror flick that follows the same general pattern as the original Dawn Of The Dead, except that instead of four survivors in a mall there are a dozen or so. Illogic rules, as in all horror and sci fi films, and the plot is propelled by the characters doing the dumbest things possible, such as the climactic scene where they make a dash from the mall to a marina to head for an island they think will be safe haven.... For fans of the Romero canons there are a few cool cameos by Tom Savini (Romero's original makeup man), and Scott Reiniger and Ken Foree, from the original Dawn Of The Dead, with Reiniger as a military man interviewed on television, and Foree as a televangelist repeating his famed declamation from the original, `When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.' This, and a bevy of other little `moments', is enough for me to recommend the film as a solid reinterpretation of the superior original, despite its reliance on the `humans are their own worst enemies' mantra, although the DVD features make this a much stronger recommendation for those zombiephiles out there.