Full Review

Twenty-five years after maverick horrormeister George A. Romero unleashed his hordes of flesh-famished freaks onto the screen in the original 1979 cult classic (itself a sequel to his earlier "Night of the Living Dead"), the zombies are back, only now they have a sizable special-effects budget to match their insatiable appetite. This time, director Zack Snyder rings the dinner bell for a five course smor-gore's-bord of unremitting carnage.

The film's ultraviolent tone is set by the opening credit sequence, underscored by Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes to Town." As if a plot really matters, a mysterious plague has swept through Wisconsin -- and, one would presume, most of the country -- which turns those infected into bloodthirsty berserkers of the not-quite-dead variety. The progression of symptoms is pretty cut-and-dried: You get bit, you die a slow painful death, you pop back up moments later with a bad case of the munchies.

As is usually the case in such apocalyptic scenarios, a handful of resilient humans survive, through luck, sheer will and the screenwriter's need to have people to kill off. The survivors barricade themselves in an abandoned shopping mall -- the modern suburban equivalent of the old Western fort or medieval castle. The group includes a cross section of political correctness: a gutsy nurse (Sarah Polley), a strong-but-sensitive cop (Ving Rhames), an alpha-male security guard (Michael Kelly), a street thug (Mekhi Phifer) and an electronics salesman (Jake Weber) with dormant leadership skills.

Beyond this basic framework the film is little more than a by-the-numbers survival story as the ragtag remnant struggles with internecine suspicions as they ward off the onslaught of decomposing diners who pile themselves in growing numbers against windows, doors and walls with a hankering for "hero" sandwiches. The zombies can only be killed by being shot through the head. The movie offers a few scary moments, but for the most part bows to the genre's crude brand of gratuitous gore, never taking full suspense advantage of the confined setting.

While dubbed a "horror" film, much of the movie's script is laced with campy, pitch-black humor with pretensions of social commentary. That the last stronghold of humanity is a shopping mall -- complete with cheesy Muzak -- is no coincidence, and, in a subversively sardonic way, seems to say much more about carnivorous consumerism than cannibalistic corps of corpses.

And while such materialistic metaphors packed a more prophetic punch in 1979 when "mall mania" was still a relatively new blip on America's collective radar, they still apply to our shopping-obsessed culture of today. Fans of the genre grasping at straws to defend such unmitigated butchery can argue that the film is a polemic against conformity (represented by the mindless herd of zombies) and its extinguishing effect on individuality (symbolized by the survivors' struggle not to join their automaton ranks).

But let's be real. Moviegoers buying tickets to this film are not interested in allegory or exegesis; they, like the zombies, are out for blood. And on that count, they will not be disappointed. Some viewers may honestly ask: What makes films of this ilk any different from equally graphic movies such as "Saving Private Ryan" or, more recently, "The Passion of the Christ"? Should we as Christians give certain films a pass, conveniently condoning their violence when it serves our purposes and theological tastes?

Well, without room for much elaboration, films like the two mentioned above, though intense in their depictions of brutality, do not treat violence as an end in itself, but use it to convey the horror of the events portrayed (war and crucifixion) in a realistic, undiluted fashion. In a nutshell, it is violence with a purpose. Conversely, the hardcore violence in films like "Dawn of the Dead" serves only to shock. It perversely pursues a pornographic kind of video-game violence, not to educate, but to entertain and exploit.

Why or where the zombie epidemic started is never explained, but the far more vexing question is how this "Dawn" ever saw the light of day.

Due to pervasive graphic violence, sexual encounters with shadowy nudity, and much rough and crude language, the USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is O -- morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted.

These movies have been evaluated for artistic merit and moral suitability by the media reviewing division of Catholic News Service. The reviews include the CNS rating, the Motion Picture Association of America rating, and a brief synopsis of the movie.

The classifications are as follows:

A-I -- general patronage;
A-II -- adults and adolescents;
A-III -- adults;
L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. L replaces the previous classification, A-IV.
O -- morally offensive.

Note: Some movies previously were designated A-IV. Older films with this classification should be regarded as classified L.