Critics reviews

Night of the Living Dead" may be the more seminal achievement, but the second film in George Romero's incomparable zombie cycle has always been my personal favorite — scary, shrewd, exhilarating; in every respect a full meal.

Many have tried to claim Dawn as an anticonsumerist parable (as an undergraduate, I was one of them), but the movie's greatest quality may be its open-endedness. The mall is an idiot's paradise, sure, yet it also provides the heroes with everything they need to survive—food, clothes, lodging, weapons. In fact, Dawn often plays as a consumerist fantasy, with the four protagonists enjoying free reign over an entire mall's worth of goods.

The lack of slickness is what gives Romero's Dawn of the Dead its lasting, grungy brilliance; not only are the Tom Savini makeup effects tactile, so is the location itself. There's a seeming artlessness to Dawn, which makes it feel unlike any other horror movie (especially the sped-up, machine-tooled Zack Snyder remake). Just ignore the eviscerations, and it's clear Romero's made the inadvertent nonfiction portrait of seventies America.