Zack Snyder – The Devil in His Details

Though Warner and Universal have come to a settlement that allows Zack Snyder to finally release Watchmen, his third film, I’d like to take two steps back for a closer look at his first movie, the remake of George Romero’s classic, Dawn of the Dead. Snyder’s visual panache, his sense of humor and his excellent attention to detail make this one of the rare remakes that is better than the source. Snyder has a whopping 7 movies on his “to-do” list through 2011. And of course there was that little thing called 300. Despite the fact that this was Snyder’s debut feature, I think it is so far still his best.

For those of you who haven’t seen either version of Dawn, itself part of a series of “Dead” films originated by Romero, one of the fathers of the genre still working today (the recent Diary of the Dead), here are the basics: something bad happens (probably the government’s fault); a lot of people turn into flesh-eating zombies (including your loved ones); survivors flee to the mall (as you would); with zombies amassing in the parking lot (they can smell your brain), the survivors play out their own little microcosmic societal struggle inside The Crossroads Mall. The naming of the mall and the stores inside (like the ‘Hallowed Grounds Coffee’ court) is typical of Snyder’s sensibility, a sly, ironic point-of-view he continues to enforce through great attention to detail.

When the survivors first reach the mall, there’s muzak playing. The song we hear is “Don’t Worry Be Happy,” and Snyder keeps it coming. There’s “All By Myself,” “You Light Up My Life,” and even “What The World Needs Now is Love.” Another example of Snyder’s delicious irony and thoughtful attention to detail can be glimpsed once or twice, for a moment, in display on some of the mall kiosks. Long before the survivors decide that their salvation lies in getting to the boat one of them has at a nearby marina, and taking it to an island, Ving Rhames stops in front of a travel ad framing a small island surrounded by blue sea. It’s a pivotal moment in the film; Rhames has stopped on his way out. He’s leaving. But one of the others convinces him to stay. The ad reads ‘Wild Planet Travel.’ With his upcoming slate of films more in the vein of 300 (including a sequel) and Watchmen, I think it’s a pity that Snyder’s interest seems to lie more in the epic and the unreal, in creating worlds and people from scratch, than in turning his talented eye onto our world, even if it is a world, at least momentarily, gone mad.