Dawn of the Dead: Review

I just saw this movie and here is what I have to say: Short version: Best fucking zombie movie ever. Period. Long, Detailed version: This part will be broken down into 5 parts; Plot, Dialog, Action, Music, and Special Effects, each with a rating of between 1 to 5 stars (*). Plot - ***** This is the third movie in the "Day of the Dead" series and it continues to hold it''s ground in the apocolyptic, zombie massacre en masse genre, probably because it created it. It''s basically a Resident Evil scenario, and, in fact, is where Capcom got it''s inspiration for Biohazard (Resident Evil). At it''s core it''s basically a virus, or mutanegen that attacks living cells turning human''s infected with it into the living-dead, aka living-flesh devouring, unstoppable zombies. They multiply so rapidly that there is no hope to contain it; that and no one really knows what causes the monsters (they are never actually called zombies, wonder why?). In this series, the zombie infestation has spread from a small scale isolated ''social unrest'' skirmish to the entire nation. There is nowhere left that is safe except for the few refuges found by survivors who have barricaded themselves into waiting for a rescue that will never come. This movie follows a group who find their refuge in a mall somewhere in Minnesota. This doesn''t seem very exciting but you have to learn more about it through the... Action - ***** Most movies, of any kind, even an action movie start off very slow, get hyped in the middle and then end rather slow. Not DotD. This movie starts with a bang that echos throughout the entire 100 minutes. There''s maybe 5 minutes where nothing happens at the beginning. This is also where the scary ''reality'' of the movie comes into play; one moment everything is fine and normal, then out of nowhere all Hell quite literally breaks loose. Now, I am not really scared of anything but the scope this movie shows scared me shitess. Unlike other zombie movies that start and end in an isolated environment, this movie shows the scope of the infestation. As the lead character fights out of her house from the zombified neighbor girl that kills and turns her boyfriend into one of the ''horde'' she finds herself in the midsts of a chaotic suburban area warzone. At this point you see the scope is large, but not until you get a very detailed overhead view as she drives away frantically; Tanks coming to try and quarantine the small ''revolts'' cars wrecking in their frantic escapes, people running around like headless chickens, and fires breaking out as cars crash into back yard propane tanks. Once inside the mall, the action does die down for short periods at a time, but it doesn''t get to the point where it is boring, but there has to be some transition material. One of the lighter action scenes is where the people in the mall and fellow survior on a roof across the street, Andy, play games by picking out zombies in the crowed at the gates of both building and giving them names for Andy to pick off with his sniper rifle. Dialog - **** The dialog is good, I mean... There''s not really much to say since most of the talking is done while on the move in actions scenes. The dialog in the downtime is pretty good but I felt that there could have been more of a connection with the characters. As always though, the one liners got me cracking up every time. But why the fuck doesn''t anyone ever know what they are fighting? Don''t they watch movies? Music - *** Can''t give them a whole lot of credit on the music as none of it was originally score for this move save for a remix of a Static X song, "Sickness" which is played like an old lounge song, which kinda funny hearing, "Get up, come on get down with the sickness, you mother come on get down with the sickness, you fucker get up come on get down with the sickness..." song in a slow, sing-song manner. Effects - ***** Blood, squibs, dummies, and CG make this the most detailed zombie effects to date. Everything looked as you would expect from torn ligaments to deep cuts, flesh wounds, explosions, bullet wounds, and the zombies'' physical appearance after several traumatic experiences with a blade, gun, fire, or car related injury. While they didn''t show many (There were 2, maybe 3 at the most) close ups of the zombies themselves like they did in RE, and the ones they did show could have been alot better, but the effects everywhere else more than make up for this. Overall - ***** Overall this is an excellent movie. The best zombie related movie and perhaps the best catastrpohic-horror flick in a long time. Go see it, and don''t forget to bring a date. Oh and like all new movies, the credits don''t neccisarily mean the movie is over...