If you are reading this article and visit Collider with any regularity, you almost certainly know who Zack Snyder and James Gunn are. Snyder is the former music-video director who successfully crossed over to features, where he made his name on a string of visually striking and overly serious comic-book adaptations, including 300, Watchmen, Man of Steel, and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Gunn got his start working on low-budget horror films before also making the jump to superheroes, solidifying his A-list status with Marvel's fun and heartfelt Guardians of the Galaxy saga (the final installment of which opens in a few months). Both directors have, shall we say, passionate fan bases behind them – fan bases that now find themselves often butting heads because Snyder used to be the lead creative force behind the DC Comics cinematic universe before being jettisoned in favor of a new direction, while Gunn was recently named co-CEO of DC Studios and is charge of charting a course away from Snyder's original vision.
Suffice to say, this has led to quit a bit of Twitter drama – of which, truthfully, I have no interest in talking about! Instead, let's discuss the delicious irony in the fact that both of these guys popped up on a lot of film buffs' radar back at the same time in 2004 when they worked on the same zombie movie. And not just any zombie movie: Snyder and Gunn insanely decided to tackle a remake of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, one of the most celebrated horror films of all time. Seems like a terrible idea, right? Turns out it wasn't! And long before their names were daily trending topics, the pair honed their chops on one of the most surprisingly effective remakes in horror-film history.
The Zombie Genre Rose From the Grave in the Early 2000s
In the early 2000s, the zombie genre was having a bit of a renaissance. Danny Boyle had introduced the world to zombies that could actually run in 28 Days Later in 2002. Edgar Wright proved you could mine humor from the shambling dead in 2004's Shaun of the Dead. And even Romero himself returned to his iconic zombie universe 20 years after Day of the Dead with 2005's Land of the Dead. Nestled within this run was Snyder and Gunn's Dawn of the Dead remake – henceforth identified in full as Dawn of the Dead '04. Dawn was Snyder's feature directorial debut and is the fourth full-length script of Gunn's that made it to the screen. (Gunn wouldn't make his own directorial debut until two years later with the excellent creature feature, Slither.)
Its plot follows the same basic setup as Romero's undisputed 1978 classic: A zombie apocalypse has thrown the world into chaos, and a small group of survivors barricades themselves inside a large shopping mall while they figure out how best to stay alive through the weeks ahead. Past that, the films largely go their separate ways. Each movie has a completely different cast of characters. Romero's original version, like most of the films in his Dead saga, has a strong satirical bent, with Dawn taking a harsh look at American consumerism in the late '70s. Snyder and Gunn's version pays some lip service to that theme but is more concerned with offering up gnarly action sequences that eschew Romero's slow-walkers in favor of twitchy, feral zombies that can run at almost absurd speeds.
Which, again, doesn't sound like the type of thing that should really work. Who wants a dumbed down Dawn of the Dead? But it turns out Dawn of the Dead '04 is not dumb – it's just different. And Snyder and Gunn made sure it was different in all the right ways. The movie opens with what is, to this day, one of the most breathtaking society-falling-apart sequences in the history of film. Overworked nurse Ana (Sarah Polley, back when she was still more known for acting rather than her work behind the camera) returns home from her shift for a night in with her boyfriend. But by the next morning, he's been bitten by the zombie girl from next door, quickly turning into a ferocious zombie himself, and Ana is forced to escape her house, her street, and her entire neighborhood in a desperate dash for safer harbors.
Dawn of the Dead '04 is surprisingly lacking many of the visual flourishes Snyder would later become know for. There's no speed ramping here at all! But he quickly establishes himself as someone who can effectively sell a sequence almost entirely based on the placement and movement of the camera. There's a great overhead shot from inside Ana's house where Polley, trying to elude her zombified boyfriend's grasp, clumsily stumbles backward through a door and collapses into a bathtub. And that's just the start. Within minutes, we're tracking Ana in her car while destruction rages all around her – zombies fill the streets, cars crash and explode, chaos fills the frame on all sides. It's 10 minutes of thrilling pandemonium and quickly establishes Snyder as a filmmaking force to be reckoned with.
Zack Snyder and James Gunn's 'Dawn of the Dead' Features Deft Character Work
Ana eventually meets up with gruff cop Kenneth (Ving Rhames), Best Buy salesman Michael (Jake Weber), street-level crook Andre (Mekhi Phifer), and his pregnant girlfriend Luda (Inna Korobkina). The foursome make their way to the Crossroads Shopping Mall, where they talk asshole security guard C.J. (Michael Kelly) and his two lackeys into letting them come in to shelter in place. Eventually, more survivors join the group, and the mall becomes their home for a while (with some losses and other close calls along the way) before they eventually formulate a plan to flee to a local marina and then a nearby island, which they hope is zombie-free. After that kinetic opening sequence, the film becomes more of a writer's piece for a while, giving Gunn his time to shine. (For the record, Michael Tolkin and Scott Frank also did uncredited rewrites on the movie, though Gunn is its sole credited screenwriter.)
Characters who are strictly stereotypes at first evolve in surprising ways. C.J., who in a lesser film would have been an antagonistic presence the whole way through, fairly quickly figures out that it's the zombies who are the problem and learns to work alongside and maybe even begrudgingly like Ana and her group. We find out that Michael, despite being such an effective leader after the zombie outbreak, was largely a failure in life in the before-times, and a sweet romantic bond forms between him and Ana. Perhaps an even more touching relationship develops between Kenneth and Andy (Bruce Bohne), a man who's trapped inside the gun store on the other side of the mall's parking lot. Kenneth and Andy are able to communicate and even play chess by heading to their respective roofs and using dry-erase boards and binoculars. Andy is a sharpshooter, and the whole group ends up playing a game where the mall squad will write a celebrity's name on their white board and Andy will find the zombie that looks like that celeb within the undead horde filling up the parking lot and snipe them in the head. Dawn of the Dead '04 might be at its strongest when showing the group whiling away the hours while waiting for help that may never arrive.
This is a Snyder movie though, so eventually the director takes the reins again, and it's back to the action. Mention Dawn of the Dead '04 to any self-respecting horror fan, and the two-word reply you're mostly like to get back is "zombie baby!" as the film's final act kicks off with a zombie-fied Luda giving birth to her zombie-fied baby girl – a truly disturbing bit of horror filmmaking that feels icky and taboo in all the right ways (and seems like an ideal blend of Snyder and Gunn's sensibilities). In fact, whereas the general reputation of Snyder's film in 2004 was that it was a slicker, more action-oriented version of Romero's Dawn of the Dead, watching it today really highlights the movie's grind-house vibes. I guess horror films have just gotten that much slicker since.
The group's escape from the mall is another tour-de-force sequence where the survivors load themselves into two jury-rigged, armor-platted buses to try to blast through the throngs of zombies surrounding the mall. Mass vehicle-on-zombie violence ensues, and someone ends up accidentally taking a chainsaw to their upper torso. It's all really good, really gory stuff, and Snyder even tacks on a bonus once the credits are rolling, giving the audience a little mini-sequel to the movie they literally just watched by showing short glimpses of what happened to the survivors once they reached the boat and then the island.
Long story short, Snyder and Gunn took a movie that didn't need to be remade and turned it into one of better zombie films of the last two decades, firmly establishing themselves in an industry that they now find themselves near the top of, even if some of their fans view them as diametrically opposed forces. And, to this day, Dawn of the Dead '04 continues to serve as a highlight on each man's filmography. Snyder went back to zombies with 2021's genre-mashing Army of the Dead, but that film feels like a significant step down from the tighter and more focused horror spectacle that Dawn offers. And Gunn, who also wrote and directed DC's The Suicide Squad before scoring the studio's CEO gig, is apparently happy devoting most of his creative life to bringing well-known comic-book heroes to the big screen in giant tent-pole productions, which is great for him but a bit of a bummer for those of us who enjoyed the odd little genre flicks he was banging out at the beginning of his career. Regardless, both filmmakers should still be proud of the seemingly ill-advised but ultimately warmly received horror remake that first brought them together nearly 20 years ago.