Dawn of the Dead (2004) Analysis

In this scene from Dawn of the Dead (2004) we see Monica and the other characters falling about in the back of a truck. This scene is made up of a quick montage of shots showing the vehicle moving fast to avoid the zombies.
When the van swerves Monica is sliced down the shoulder with a chainsaw. Monica is pretty, blonde and screams a lot. This shows that she is a stereotypical female screaming victim. There is an excessive amount of gore (body horror) intended to makes the audience shudder. In different contexts this scene will be viewed in different ways by audiences. This being a high budget film the gore looks real and therefore disgust some audiences . On the other hand some audiences might get excited by the fast paced editing and find the gore (body horror) fascinating. This concept of different audiences interpreting a scene in different ways is the focus of Janet Staiger’s Interpreting Films, written in1992)


In this scene from DotD (2004) we can see Anna’s role as a powerful female survivor. We can see that she is in control because she has a gun and shoots Stephen. The scene is shot just before dawn when the atmosphere is still in the twilight. This connotes misery through use of pathetic fallacy. This also represents how many of the other characters have died, as the dull bluish scene emphasises sadness and death. Stephen’s personality also makes his death a lot more expected as he is rude to the group of survivors and behaves stupdily. Anna is also a stronger character than Stephen going against the idea of male roles and all men being tough. This feminism is typical of many modern horrors.


In this scene there are a lot of fast tracking shots of the zombies chasing Michael. The context of this film is based cinematography to make you fear the zombies. They are also fast and intelligent zombies speeding up the film compared to the slow blue (connotes depression) zombies in the original DotD (1979) The Montage in this scene relies more on quick editing and is less about slow creepy horror but more about action. The fast sequence of shots creates tension and adds speed to the scene. Quick, Loud parallel music also emphasises the speed of the scene and how fast the zombies move. The zombie virus seems to come from Iraq and the Middle East and this links to a fear of Al-Queda and the effect of terrorism the world around us.