Logan Lerman (from the Percy Jackson movies) stars as Charlie in this coming-of-age drama/romance about a socially awkward high school boy who finds solace among the ‘freaks’ while overcoming a past trauma that left him hospitalized. Emma Watson (Hermione from Harry Potter) and Ezra Miller co-star as Sam and Patrick, Charlie’s newfound friends. Together, the trio bond over music and star in a production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show — very much the counter-culture sort of kids. Things go swimmingly until Charlie starts to fall for Sam, and Patrick’s secret relationship with a member of the football team is exposed to the whole school. As these and other dramatic entanglements threaten to destroy his new friendships, Charlie also begins having painful flashbacks surrounding the death of an aunt.
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.
