A ragtag group of survivors (including cool-headed cop Ving Rhames, nurse Polley, and arrogant and hostile security guard Michael Kelly) head for a suburban shopping mall to seek refuge from a rising horde of flesh-eating zombies who are very hungry…Look out for Ken Foree as a priest who gets to utter the immortal line ‘When There’s no more Room in Hell, the Dead will Walk the Earth’, Tom Savini (as a cop who tells us to shoot the zombies in the head), and Scott Reiniger in cameos.
Or better yet, don’t bother. The remake of ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ might’ve been unnecessary, different in style and tone, and rather pointless overall, but at least it had style and there was a lot of enjoyment to be had on a B-movie level. This remake, however, simply sets itself in a shopping mall just for the hell of it, has far too many (mostly uninteresting) characters to care about (what can you say about a film where Ving Rhames- in the Ken Foree part- fades into the background?), and a surprising lack of energy, despite ’28 Days Later’-like faster zombies.
There are fun moments to be sure, there’s an absolutely brilliant twist involving a pregnant character (loved the idea of shooting zombie celebrity look-alikes, too), scenes of the zombie mass are quite effective (and there should’ve been more of such scenes), and the gore level is thankfully quite high in these rather frustratingly conservative times (And I’m no gore-hound at all).
It’s not an awful film by any means (it’s reason for being, however, is deplorable), but it does feature grainy hand-held digital video stuff that I hate, sadly overdoses on those horrible colour filters (the bane of my existence), and has not a helluva lot of substance. If taken as mindless carnage, there is some fun to be had (it sure as heck ain’t no PG-13 flick), but like I say, the technical attributes (including a few annoying MTV-style gimmicks) hamper the fun quite a bit. With too many characters to have any real depth to any of them, it’s hard to care about them or their situation (even if they replaced some of the duller actors like Jake Weber and replaced them with livelier actors it still wouldn’t matter). And yet, we get a LOT of time spent with just the characters interacting, so there sure was ample opportunity for at least a little character development, but outside of Polley and maybe Weber we get none.
OVERALL SUMMARY
Why the hell doesn’t Hollywood remake something that didn’t quite work the first time? Why remake a great film that worked very well first time around? Money, money, money. I liked parts of this film (especially the premature end credits, the best idea in the film), but it’s a shameless attempt to make lots of money and rather muted.
