Ten years after Night of the Living Dead, which pretty much invented zombies as we now know them, George Romero went back to the well and made a sequel that I like even better. Never content to make a zombie movie that is just a zombie movie, Romero infuses Dawn with a statement on the soul-numbing effects of crash commercialism. It’s excellent fodder for college essays, but the message isn’t too overbearing. Dawn functions first and foremost as escapist fare, a kind I particularly enjoy. I mean, how cool would it be to live in a giant mall, even if (especially if?) it was under siege by the living dead? Dawn also benefits from the same claustrophobia and documentary-style film making Romero employed in the first film.
