Dawn on the Dead (1979) Analysis

We enter this scene from Dawn of the Dead (1979) into a creepy enclosed location with low key lighting in the boiler room of the Mall. Romero uses creepy parallel music and slow montage of shots to add tension to the scene. When the zombie approaches Stephen being a male we would expect him to have large, phallic shotgun. We see he has a small gun and when the bullets keep falling out we can see he is useless and in trouble. The use of gore (body horror) on the zombie’s face is put there to enhance the fear and makes us shudder. The high angle makes Stephen look weak. This setting is also very unsettling for the audience.


In this scene from Dawn of the Dead (1979) it shows the two survivors Fran and Peter escaping from the mall in a helicopter. Fran is now experienced with piloting the helicopter and this emphasises her power and that she is tough female survivor. Peter also escapes from the Mall making him tougher and stronger than Stephen ‘fly boy’ and Roger who got attacked by zombies in the mall. George Romero’s auteur influence is key in this shot. It shows that Romero doesn’t agree with sexism or racism. As is typical in his films, Romero changes the characters around so the people that survive you expect to die. The film ends openly. Both characters escape but they don’t have much fuel, and the audience do not know whether they got away to safety or not.


In this scene from Dawn of the Dead (1979) we see Stephen get flung to the ground by a zombie. Stephen is without a weapon so this makes him look weak and helpless. The high angle emphasises Stephen’s weakness making the audience pity him. In this scene a zombie is approaching Fran. Being pretty, female and blonde we would expect her to run away screaming but she doesn’t scream. Her higher position connotes her power over Stephen and the zombie. This shows that she is a tough character and one you would expect to be a female survivor.
Romero brings these characters’ personalities across to the audience with the use of mise-en-scene and cinematography.