New Zombie Order:
Why Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead Marks a New Era in American Horror Cinema
Michael C. Riedlinger
Through the last two decades of the twentieth century, horror filmmakers seemed to create only those works that fit a certain stereotype. These films justified the detractors of the genre who claimed that they consisted only of simple clichés, and audiences were treated to sequel after sequel and rip-offs of rip-offs. The former masters of the horror genre, like Wes Craven and John Carpenter, tried different strategies to cope with this decline in innovation and meaning to varying effects. Craven attempted to reinvigorate the genre by creating Wes Craven's New Nightmare and Scream; films that seemed to call attention to the predictability the genre had fallen into but still lacked the visceral impact or sociopolitical subtext of his earlier films. These, too, befell the same fate as the films within their genre that they attempted to address, spawning weak sequels, or in the case of New Nightmare, perpetuating them. Carpenter tried a different approach. He mined new territory (for himself at least) by first tackling one of cinema's earliest monsters and then looking to new frontiers in outer space for the screams of old. Both 1998's Vampires and 2001's Ghost of Mars failed to capture the cultural impact and box office success of his earlier films. In the face of the abject failure of these pioneers to innovate within the genre that they were famous for, cinemagoers in
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The most egregious mistake makers of modern horror cinema have made up until now is to presuppose that audiences want violence and gore of the gratuitous variety. Though critics of the genre loudly stated that this is the case, it simply is not true. Any critically thinking person can see, for example, the anti-consumerism message present in Romero's original Dawn of the Dead (1978). Though the elements of fear and shock are essential to the genre, without context and purpose, these become nothing more than meaningless images set to a bad soundtrack. Indeed, any photographer could take pictures of dead animals on the side of the road, but the blood and gore alone would not make them horror pictures. Audiences in the wake of the September 11 attacks understood this fact more than they ever had before, and so did Snyder. After years of dealing with real life horror, audiences where ready for the kind of catharsis only a horror film seems to be able to bring to a national, indeed international, tragedy.
Snyder's Dawn utilizes a cold open to plunge us into his main character's life of domesticity with immediacy. Though there are elements of foreshadowing present, Snyder works hard to defy our expectations. While his colleagues might use this type of opening to get a quick, cheap scare, Snyder shows us legs dangling from an ambulance but quickly reassures us that all is well when the paramedic sits up and wishes Anna well as he drives off to an emergency we will never see. We are given an overhead establishing shot of Anna's neighborhood that reminds us of typical suburban settings like our own, and her conversation with her husband before they begin "date night" is so mundane that we could almost participate in it ourselves. Snyder, in less than five minutes, brings us all back to September 10, 2001, when the world was "safe" and apocalypse was an old cold war nightmare the nation had woken from a decade before.
Like many Americans, Anna wakes up unaware that tragic atrocity has struck unannounced while she slept. Her average husband wakes to find the kind neighbor girl standing in their middle class bedroom, apparently injured. Though we expect this girl to attack, we do not see her quickness coming. Unlike the methodical villains of zombie films past, this monster moves as quickly as we do. From her initial pouncing bite to her sprint back down the hallway to the spot from which Anna has thrown her, this creature is Snyder's promise that the clichéd trappings of old will not apply to his film, and audiences take notice. Much like the world many of us found changed the morning the
Snyder has his audience relive all of the stress of our national tragedy over ten minutes, devoid of any emotion save apprehension. Left behind is all of the sentimentalism associated with the event as we begin the opening credit montage. Here the director blends reality with fiction. The montage includes news footage of real crisis edited together with created images of the zombie apocalypse that Anna has just slept through. This grounds us in events we can all reference and allows the filmmaker to proceed to create believable reactions in believable characters in a most unbelievable situation.
This aspect of believability extends beyond the characters' reactions to dire situations and includes their reactions to elements of a horror film. It is important to note that Snyder's innovations move beyond the opening sequences and overall theme of the film. In this horror film, the characters are dissimilar to their counterparts in comparable fare in that they are less likely to fall into the same ignorant behaviors that these counterparts would. For example, when Kenneth discovers Anna after the opening credits, he immediately shoves a shotgun in her face before attempting to ascertain whether she is one of the undead or not. In a typical film like this, he would have simply assumed she was okay, but this is something audiences have come to recognize as a fatal error. No one who has been exposed to even one horror film in the last twenty years would make this mistake. Snyder also sets his characters apart from similar protagonists by allowing them to be dynamic. Though this may be more the product of screenwriter James Gunn, Snyder utilizes it to show his audience a bit of respect, acknowledging that one-sided characters in horror films often infantilize an audience, and assume that we are incapable of comprehending such complexities.
Snyder gives us one of these complex, dynamic characters almost immediately. After Anna's group arrives at the mall and heads upstairs, they meet C.J., a security guard who wants them to leave the premises. Though his actions and attitudes lead us to initially dislike the character, C.J. is not the typical macho archetype we normally see in horror films. His actions, though negative, are practical, and Snyder and Gunn will allow him to redeem himself through selfless acts later in the film. For now, however, it is important that we see someone react in a careful, if overly selfish manner that acknowledges the common sense cat calls that might rise up from a typical horror audience. A generation of filmgoers has seen character after ignorant character go for walks alone in the presence of killers and open doors they have had no reason to open other than to allow themselves to become another victim. By not allowing characters to fall into the clichéd actions of their predecessors, the filmmakers free us to look at new situations and ask ourselves what we would do if we had made all the right choices and events still went horribly wrong.
While we will come to forgive the indifference we see in C.J. and ourselves, we will also see that compassion can turn selfish and bitter as is the case with Andre. One of Anna's original group, we initially like Andre because he exhibits much of the same practicality as C.J., but also shows that he cares for others, especially his wife and unborn child. Though Snyder has stripped any concept of innocence from the film early, we still find ourselves allied with Andre and his desire to provide for his child that which he has not had himself. It is with much trepidation then that we watch Andre slip into a downward spiral of secrecy and insanity. Still true to form, however, is Snyder, presenting us with a problem we have not encountered in the genre before. Yet this problem also acts as a perfect metaphor for more timely concerns. In our yearning for normalcy, and as we strive to provide a better world for our own children and grandchildren, Snyder seems to ask us how far will we be willing to allow ideology alone to steer our decisions?
There is, of course, no simple answer to this, and Snyder punctuates that fact by showing us one of the most brutally violent scenes yet. Two characters we have come to like, Andre and Norma, shoot each other in slow motion, ending each other's lives. Snyder may refrain from answering questions of ideology, but he does leave us with at least one clear lesson here. Attempting to solve disputes of an ideological nature with violence will lead only to the destruction of both sides. In a nation that had been at war for three years prior to this film's release, nothing could have rung more true. This honest examination of timely events is a major element of what sets Snyder's film apart from other genre films of its time.
Snyder moves us quickly through the events that occur to and around his characters and shows us the failings and successes of these people without passing judgment on them. The characters find ways of blocking out the disaster all around them. These coping mechanisms are important because it gives the audience a break from the doom and gloom as well and also allows us to further recognize ourselves in their behavior. Whether playing basketball or shooting zombies who look like celebrities, we see our own desperate attempts to return to a state of normalcy after the September 11 attacks. The cathartic nature of these events signal to us that our own behavior is normal while still allowing us to ponder better ways to handle the genre-specific problems the characters have yet to face.
Andy, for example, could have spent the days minimizing the zombie threat by utilizing the equipment in his gun shop, and C.J. might have thought to use the computer access available in the security office to gather more information once the television stations shut down. These are the new mistakes made by a new generation of horror characters. Snyder allows us the luxury of once again placing ourselves in dire situations to figure out solutions and escapes for ourselves. When one of his characters uses a chainsaw to dispatch a zombie that has clung to the side of their escape vehicle, it is something we might do ourselves, and Snyder is willing to show us that even these new solutions can turn out disastrously.
The final solution our characters come up with is to head out to the open waters of
For all their mistakes and victories, these characters have remained resolutely recognizable. Though they seem to have defied the odds at the end of the film, Snyder presents us with one more dose of reality to remind us of our humanity. It would have been enough to allow the film to end with the characters sailing away. This would have left us with a resolution of uncertainty that echoes the times, but it would not have been a horror ending, whether according to the old standards or the new ones Snyder is pioneering.
As the credits roll, we see video footage we can assume is recorded by the survivors. They arrive at an island that seems peaceful at first, but is soon overrun with the undead. The camera falls to the ground and we are left to imagine our protagonists' fate, understanding that they are likely to die. This ending, though dire, reminds us that even the best and brightest among us can never be in control of everything. Our failings on September 11 are like the grim fate of our four survivors in that they are human. Though Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978) condemned us for our failings, Snyder's redeems us, reminding us that bad things can happen to good people and that we can't always stop tragedy from occurring. In the process, Snyder also sets a new standard for filmmakers who might delve into the horror genre and condemns only those who would offer poorly developed stories with trite characters and a lack of substance. Snyder's Dawn of the Dead (2004) ushers in a new era for horror films, and that future is looking delightfully grim.
