Retrospective: Dawn of the Dead (1978) (Patreon)

Screened on a 4K remaster DCP at the Little Theatre in Rochester, New York

Watch this with an audience if you get the chance. Mostly with people who've seen it before, with a couple rows of newcomers. You'll hear all the collective gasps and laughs. George Romero will smile upon you. I'm sure he was smiling at my screening.

I hadn't seen Dawn of the Dead in about 10 years. Rewatching it on 4K, having previously watched it on an iMac, was like watching it for the first time. I noticed all the obvious things about it -- Romero's vision of an America completely unprepared for a civilizational collapse rang startlingly true. All the inevitable Covid parallels were there. But I wasn't expecting it to be so politically real. Peter is agonized by having to kill zombies because it reminds him of what white America did to his people. A SWAT team raiding the projects at the outset of a zombie apocalypse is shockingly political and real. And Fran's pregnancy is used not to go "protect the vulnerable woman" but to explore the ways that being a pregnant woman in a post-apocalyptic yet still patriarchal landscape would suck. It's not only a smart but a wise movie, one that's rooting for the underdog all the way through, even correcting Night of the Living Dead in places. No other X-rated gory monster picture has loved human beings this much.

But the thing that struck me most is the editing. Romero directs and edits the film, and that clearly informs his storytelling. Dawn of the Dead is perhaps the single best-paced horror film ever made, deftly interweaving its laughs and its moment of horror. As it progresses, what was previously comical becomes horrible, and things that shocked early in the movie are genuinely funny. It is deliberate and rhythmic, positively musical in places, like Romero has timed audience reactions (laugh, laugh, laugh, scream). If America has produced five perfect movies, Dawn of the Dead is one of them.