Dawn of the Dead Unrated Director's Cut
November 2007 Reviewed by: Doug Blackburn Format: HD DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

With less of the 1978 original’s satire and more gore, Zack Snyder (300) turns in a freshman effort that’s only OK. A suburban mall becomes a survival center where uninfected humans protect themselves from their zombie-like neighbors who contract a virus that makes them stupid, mute (except for shrieking), and violently hungry for warm, uninfected human flesh. The details of the characters and action are new, but it still plays like a remake, mostly because the story itself is so simple. Stopping a zombie requires shooting or otherwise seriously maiming the head. So you can imagine where a fair bit of the gore comes from.

Video quality is, hmmm, how do you describe something intentionally ugly that succeeds at being ugly? Lots of grain, lots of contrast, highly saturated primary colors, and there’s an ugly green tint to everything except blues. There was no attempt to make the images crystal clear, natural, and grain-free, so applying those standards is perhaps a bit unfair. On the other hand, the filmmakers did what they did on purpose, so it has to stand on its own merits. If the movie looked like this unintentionally, I’d probably give it a 1. But I’ll cut some slack since you could argue that the appearance fits the story, but this is no image-quality demo disc. In spite of the look of the film, this is still clearly high-definition video with considerably more detail than you can get from DVD.

Sound quality is professional throughout. Dialogue is well recorded, but much of the rest of the sound is clanging, banging, booming, smashing, pounding, and gunfire: sort of a limited pallet to work with. Some might argue that the armored bus getaway sequence is demo quality, but there are many better choices on other high-def discs without the chainsaw and the zombie plow. Both the Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus soundtracks are nicely detailed and well recorded, as far as they go. There’s a fair bit of LFE activity, but it is rarely powerful or anything more interesting than rumble. Played back at reference level, the intentional sudden sounds (zombie throwing itself against a glass door or window, etc.) do shock you, but it gets old after a while.

Special features include: "Andy’s Last Days" (simulated home movie), "news coverage" of the zombie invasion, deleted scenes, "Exploding Heads" feature, close-up look at the selected zombie kills, zombie-makeup feature, director and producer commentary, director introduction of this director’s cut. If you’re a fan of the movie, the extras will be of interest, but I didn’t find any of them more than average. The "Andy’s Last Days" feature was a good idea with only average execution.

The studios must feel that zombie movies sell well on high-definition discs. The original 1978 Dawn of the Dead was just released by Starz-Anchor Bay on Blu-ray, which also has released Day of the Dead in the same format. And Shaun of the Dead can be found on Universal HD DVD. You just can’t keep a good zombie down.

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