Originally written on 11/7/06, this post is for Film For The Soul's Counting Down The 00's, for the year 2004.
I'm gonna assure most of you right now that the only similarities between this supposed "remake" and the kickass original is the title, they're in a mall, and maybe one similar scene. Everything else is pretty much just the writers going "Hey, we wrote a zombie movie and it takes place in a mall...wait, that was done before? Shit. Well, let's just call it a remake." So with George A. Romero's blessing (I'm assuming), they slapped the title on this little zombie flick.
Let's be honest though, any zombie movie anyone will make is gonna basically just be a rip off of the Romero's films. Sure I've heard of the Italian version, but would it exist without "Night of The Living Dead"? Probably not. Even "28 Days Later" was "Night" with fast moving zombies.
We meet Ana, who is played by the one blonde chick from "Go", and she's a nurse. She's leaving her shift at the hospital and arrives home. Her and her boyfriend/husband (It wasn't really clear) Luis immediately start fucking in the shower. While they're boinking (I have my own thesaurus of words similar to "sex"), the news report that some serious shit is gonna go down.
The next day at (sigh) "DAWN" (Hey, at least they tried), the happy recently gotten laid couple wake up to a little girl busting down their bedroom down. Luis treats this has normal, even though the girl is the neighbor across the street. The girl looks like she was smacked across her face with a anvil, so Luis wakes Ana up. While doing so, the girl jumps across the bedroom and bits Luis in the throat.
Ana doesn't seem too confused that the girl across the street from her suddenly attacked her boyfriend/husband at 6:15 in the morning and instead locks the girl out of the room. Luis doesn't make it and he raises from the dead and starts attacking Ana. Yet again, she doesn't react to this and immediately escape. Honestly, I'm glad cause I'm sick of women in movies being stupid and going "Honey, what's wrong?" then getting chomped to death. But on the other hand, Ana has no idea there's a living dead epidemic going on, so to think nothing of her boyfriend/husband suddenly waking up is kinda off-putting.
Ana escapes through the bathroom (It's suppose to be "she came IN through the bathroom window) and about 10 minutes into this epidemic, it's fuckin' armageddon! Everything is on fire, people are being eaten left and right, and other people are shooting other people.
Fifteen minutes into the end of the world, Ana is attacked by a paramedic (I'm thinking she knew the guy, but the movie wasn't too clear), and this causes her to crash her car into a tree. Twenty minutes into the movie, we get the opening credits and shots of news reports and whatnot. None of this is important so I'm skipping it.
Sometime later, Ana is still in her car somehow still alive despite her car door being open and zombies like 15 feet away from her. This is where Officer Ving Rhames comes in. He goes half the movie nameless (even the captions called him "OFFICER"), so just for fun I'm gonna call him Officer Ving, also because he's pretty much just playing himself in a zombie movie.
Officer Ving finds Ana and she tags along. About 10 feet away we find Andre, his very pregnant girlfriend Luda, and Michael. After Andre and Officer Ving saying to each other "Wait, we're both black people in a horror film? How did that happen?" they decide to head to....
Ok you guy's saw the original, guess where they go to?
Yep. Disneyworld! A zombie Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck chase them around the Matterhorn for 2 hours. Ok, not really, but I plan on writing that movie soon.
No, they go to the mall. Everyone separates to check to see if any zombies are inside. Andre finds one at the door, Michael finds another in a sporting goods store. They head upstairs to see what's up there and to make this totally different than the original, upstairs are three asshole security guards. They steal Andre's and Ving's guns and pretty much treat everyone like shit. The main security guy, C.J, is possibly the biggest asshole and what's weird is he looks like Morgan Spurlock. Hm, that'd be an interesting episode of "30 Days", 30 days trapped in a mall full of zombies.
And actually one of the security guards aren't really assholes, and his name is Terry. C.J locked the gang into a store but Terry let them out. Outside they hear a truck squealing around in the parking lot. C.J refuses to help, so Terry becomes a traitor and knocks him and the other guy, Bart (really? Bart? Ok...) out and they lock them into a little holding cell.
After some drama with "how are we gonna get the people in the truck in the mall", they do and we get a whole new crew. Glad this "remake" is adding characters not seen in the original. Anyway, we meet Norma, a trucker, Glen, a gay organ player (wow, that was a subtle joke I didn't get until now), Steve and his girlfriend, who are the inspirations for SNL's "Two A-Holes" characters, Nicole and her father Frank, played by Matt Frewer, who you know as Max Headroom and the other father on "Honey, I Shrunk The Kids". Oh and a fat dying chick. Well, she dies and is now the worlds first overweight zombie.
Everyone finds out that Frank got bitten and since that's how this "virus" is transferred, they have to shoot him. After a drawn out "goodbye" from Nicole, Ving shoots him.
Andre and Luda, meanwhile, are locked in a toystore. Luda is a full blown zombie because she got bit before entering the mall, so Andre kept her chained down so she can give birth. Well, Luda does in fact give birth...holy shit I can't believe I'm gonna say this...it's a MOTHAFUCKIN' ZOMBIE BABY!! HOLY FUCK!!! Andre has gone mental and shoots Norma for trying to kill Luda and an odd Mexican standoff ensues with Norma and Andre shooting each other. Ana and the gang find them and the mothafuckin zombie baby and Ana shoots it. Damn, that would've been awesome for the rest of the movie. Just a zombie baby running around, biting people. Man, I need to get into the movie business.
Anyway, everyone decides it's time to get the fuck out of the mall, so they take two mall shuttle buses that are in the parking garage and reinforce them so the zombies don't attack.
I should point out a few things quickly. They let C.J and Bart out of the holding cell, but Bart gets eaten by some zombies in the parking garage. There's a montage of the gang doing shit in the mall, with Steve and his girlfriend boffing and filming it. Officer Ving has spotted a dude named Andy across the street from the mall and they communicate by holding up signs to each other. They all decide to save Andy since he lives in and owns a gun shop, so he'll have plenty of ammo and he's a good shot. Oh and there's a dog that Nicole calls "Chips". I dunno why.
Ok, we're caught up. Andy complains of being hungry, so Ving suggests they send the dog over since the zombies aren't interested in the dog (zombie dog! FUCK YEAH!) with food and a walkie talkie. When Andy lets the dog in, some zombies get in too and attack him. Nicole gets all worked up about the dog so she steals a truck and hightails it over there. Andy is a zombie and is attacking Nicole. The cameraman is scared of zombies too so we can't get a shot of any of this happening. Terry (who has been sporking Nicole) decides to plan a rescue mission...for the rescue mission.
Now, I don't know what happened next. Why? Because you fuckin' people don't know how to take care of DVD's!! Seriously, what the fuck do you people do with rental DVD's, give them to your kids to play with or something? JESUS!!
So I'm assuming they find Nicole alive and they climb onto the roof somehow and C.J throws a propane tank and blow up some zombies. This gives them plenty of opportunity to climb through the sewer to get back to the mall. One of the dudes, some guy named Tucker that I completely forgot about until now cause he wasn't important, gets bitten in the legs, so Ving drags him along while Tucker holds two guns and shoot at zombies. Sound familiar? This was in the original when the one dude is in the wheelbarrow and the other dude (I think it was the black guy) is pushing him. Yep, there's your remake. Well, anyway, Tucker Carlson is toast so they leave him behind.
They get back to the mall and get into the buses and hightail it out. They barely can get past the mob of zombies in the parking lot, so C.J climbs up, throws out another propane tank, and in one of the coolest scenes, blows it up, taking about 300 million zombies.
So they take a lovely tour of Zombiopolis when one of the buses, the one carrying Glen, Steve, his girlfriend, and Terry, gets attacked, so Glen pulls out the chainsaw, but when Terry makes a hard left, the chainsaw falls out of his hands and cuts Steve's girlfriend's arm off (another cool scene), then the bus crashes. Everyone inside dies except for Steve, who because he's another asshole, makes a run for it. But he doesn't last long, a zombie eats him. Ana takes great pleasure in shooting him. Then she steals the keys to his boat and they take off to the pier.
They arrive, but Michael has to stay behind cause he got bitten, and this is after he and Ana just cemented their relationship after farkin'. So Ana, Ving, Nicole (and the damn dog), and C.J get on the boat and leave. Michael shoots himself and the credits roll.
BUT! During the credits it turns into "The Blair Witch Project" when Nicole finds a camera on Steve's boat and films every little damn thing. They find an island but it too is full of zombies. Then the camera falls to the ground and the rest of it is the camera being past through the zombies. I dunno if this means they escaped or what. And there's an extra on the DVD that shows things from Andy's point of view but it's done in V-log style, so it's like watching a boring video on "youtube". Apparently we get from this is that the world eventually got returned to normal, so if Ving and his crew didn't get attacked on Zombie Island (another horror movie reference), they eventually survived. I guess.
Honestly, this movie isn't THAT bad, but I think they shouldn't have claimed it was a remake of "Dawn of the Dead", because in case anyone forgot, "Dawn" was a sequel. Why anyone would remake a sequel is beyond me. If you wanna make a zombie film, fine. Have it take place...at Disneyland! Like I said! And have zombie Mickey, Goofy, Minnie! OH! And zombie babies!! AND DOGS!! WOO!! Oh, right, this movie. Ok, this movie showed us some tits, so that gets some points, and the story was slightly interesting. I'll pretend this isn't called a remake and rate it like an original movie, cause it basically is.
Ok, back to my movie. DISNEY ZOMBIES!
-Jason
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