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John and Andy begin their zombie journey with Zach Snyder’s DAWN OF THE DEAD (2004). John goes big with his choice for the ideal zombie movie. Fast zombie hordes with quick transmission rates forcing moral choices as the world ends is John’s zombie jam.
SHOW NOTES:
US Theatrical Release: March 19, 2004
Opening Weekend Box Office, March 19, 2014
TRANSCRIPT
You are listening to Zombie Strains. I'm John, and with me is my co-host Andy and our producer Brad. We're horror movie fans living in what appears to be a zombie world. According to Wikipedia, over 600 zombie films have been released since 1932. And of those 600, 400 of them have come out just this century. Why is that? To answer this question, we're going to follow the shambling zombie path from the beginning, one movie at a time. Welcome to Zombie Strains. Now, in our first two episodes, we're going to set sort of a baseline for the series and for our understanding of zombie movies. So Andy and I each picked one movie that we feel represents our view and our understanding of zombie movies. Then in future episodes, we're going to go back to the beginning of zombie movies and start working through them until we get to the modern day to see what we learn. So I got to pick first, and I chose Dawn of the Dead from 2004 by Zach Snyder. So did I steal your pick, Andy?
You did not, although this was on my list of things to consider. My pick will take the zombie genre in a slightly different direction. So I'm very glad we're doing this one.
Excellent. Excellent. I'm excited. So we're also joined by our producer, Brad, who is amazing. Brad, will you give us a rundown on this movie when it came out? Who's directed by all that good stuff?
Dawn of the Dead came out in 2004. It's directed by Zach Snyder, and it's his feature film debut. Prior to this, he directed music videos and commercials. Notably, Snyder directed the 9-11 tribute commercial with the Budweiser Clydesdales.
Oh, really?
Yes. James Gunn wrote the screenplay, which is based on the George Romero 1978 version of this film. This film stars many recognizable faces, including Sarah Polly, Ving Rhames, and Mackay Pfeiffer.
Yeah, I couldn't play, I knew, I'm like, I've seen Mackay Pfeiffer in a million things, and I couldn't, and I was like, there he is. Yep, I knew that guy. Yeah, yeah, he has a great part in this, actually.
The movie did fairly well. It made 59 million at the US box office. It was number one in its first week, and it was the second highest grossing horror film in 2004 after The Grudge, which made $110 million.
All right, and this is R rated, right? This is a hard R.
It's R, yes.
Yeah, okay, all right.
It's unrated if you watched like I did, the unrated director's cut.
Yeah, so this will be fun. I watched the theatrical release, and Andy watched the director's cut, and we're not going to do a side by side, like minute by minute comparison, but I think there's a couple of things. I think I saw the director's cut when the first time I watched it, and I know there's at least one thing that I thought was great, that wasn't in this cut, that I watched this time. So maybe when we get there, Andy, I'll ask you about it. Yeah, for sure. So what's going on in the world? So part of this journey, right, is that this movie is from 2004, and all zombie movies, to some extent or another, are reflections of the world and the time in which we're made. I mean, you could say that about any piece of art, but I think zombie movies are often really just stamped with their time. So this is 2004 release, so shot in 2003. What's going on in the, where are we, Andy, in the world 20 years ago?
Yeah, well, two things jump out to me about the year this came out. One is that we really are maybe kind of coming out of the shock of 9-11 and starting to produce art. I'm not necessarily saying this is an example of that art, but we're starting, I think, to produce art that consciously draws on 9-11 imagery and the experience of living through 9-11.
Yes.
I also, just looking at the producer, Brad, helpfully put together a list of some of the other movies that were trending this year. And this is a year when, like, not one, but at least two kind of other new branches of horror entered the American mainstream, I think, with The Grudge.
Yes.
Which is, I don't know, I don't know if it is the first J-horror movie to land here. I forget when The Ring came out, but.
The Ring came out in 2002.
Okay. So you have these two kind of exciting new horror genres, the J-horror and the torture horror genres. And then in the middle of that, you have this, in one sense, like just really boldly old school horror zombie movie land, Dawn of the Dead. So to me, that's what really stands out when you look at the timeline. What do you think about all that?
I think that's great. And just to highlight a couple of other movies that came out this year, Spider-Man 2, by many, still considered the best superhero movie ever made.
And with a strong horror component to it. Sam Raimi directed it, right? And there's that wonderful Doc Ock hospital scene.
Can we pivot here, Brad, and talk about the exquisite horror scene dumped into the middle of Spider-Man 2, where Doc Ock kills everybody? No, we're not going to do that. But also just other fun movies, The Incredibles, National Treasure, The Bourne Supremacy. I'm a big fan of The Bourne movie. So a lot of stuff that I think is great came out this year.
Yeah.
So let's get into this movie. So the first question I want to answer first is, because I felt a little guilty picking this movie, it is not one of the greats. If we're talking about zombie movies and I say Dawn of the Dead, your brain is going to the 1978 film directed by George Romero. It's not going to this movie. So I wanted to explain why I picked this movie. My rubric for picking it was not what is the best zombie movie, right? It is a movie that best encapsulates what I think are the important elements of a zombie movie. And I call them the sort of pillars of the zombie movie. And the other reason I picked it is, well, there's two other reasons. First of all, if you had this time stamp on your bingo card for when we started insulting Zach Snyder, like you just won the prize. And this is not a slam, but Zach Snyder does not have a ton of aesthetic opinions of his own.
That's a hot take. Yeah.
His movies are often picking up on somebody else's aesthetic. So if you watch 300 or Batman versus Superman, like Frank Miller is all over those movies. And it's less about what Zach wants to do and more about how Frank views the world. And I actually think there's some of that here, A, with George Romero, but also with James Gunn because we haven't talked about him yet, but he became the darling of the superhero universe about 15 years after this movie, right? He directed all three Guardians of the Galaxy movies, the good version of the Suicide Squad. I believe The Peacemaker is what it's called with John Cena, which was a big hit. So James Gunn is huge right now, and Zach Snyder is just coming off being huge with all the giant movies. So we've got two titans of the latter five years or so who are working together on making this movie.
Yeah, and they're each known at this point for a sort of signature approach. Zach Snyder has, it will be impossible for me not to let my opinions and some of his work bleed into my commentary here.
No, and we shouldn't either. I'm going to say something nice about him in about five or 10 minutes. So everybody who's worried, hang on.
Well, I'm going to try to stay polite and neutral here. But you know, so Zach Snyder is known now for sort of ponderous, very self-serious movies that are always looking for that iconic shot, you know. And James Gunn is very much known for, I guess, the sort of witty kind of Marvel quips style of dialogue.
Irreverent.
Yeah, light-hearted, irreverent sense of humor. So my big question coming into watching this movie was, what will we see traces of those things in this movie? We're rather remarkably these two iconic film-makers are working together. Or is this movie going to be a snapshot like before they developed what they're known for doing to movies, right?
Yeah, I'm curious too. So let's get into it. We're going to go through the movie. We're not going to go beat by beat. We're going to sort of go section by section. Our goal is to not have these be, if we talked about every single scene or moment, we'd be here for three hours, and nobody, including us, wants that. But I would like to start at the beginning. Now, at the risk of sounding like a bad researcher, is this set in Milwaukee or Minneapolis?
Milwaukee.
Milwaukee, okay. I know I said that, and then I doubted myself almost.
It's fleetingly communicated in the opening sequence when the main hero Anna is fleeing in her car, I think.
Okay, yes. Yeah, I knew it was a big Midwestern city. I knew that, and I just couldn't remember which one. So let's start at the beginning. Anna is our heroine, played by Sarah Pauli, and she is, it starts with a very sort of, I found Anna immediately relatable, right? Like she starts, she is a nurse, she is put upon by this insensitive doctor who's asked her to do a bunch of extra work at the end of her shift. She's just trying to talk to her friends so she can swap shifts with them. I think they set up Anna as a very much an every person, right? Like she is someone who's immediately relatable.
Yeah, she's not an expert. She's not like a doctor, right? Who would exist on a higher up on that spectrum of expertise. She's like a regular person who has a regular job. But my first impression before we even meet Anna is that, is this movie, one day historians are going to look back and you'll be able to tell that a movie was filmed in the 2000s or maybe early 2000 teens by the blue-orange color filter that's being applied to it.
Oh, I didn't pick that up.
So this movie doesn't have it as strong as you'll see in like Michael Bay transformer movies or whatever, for example, where it's like this crazy, I don't know what the terms are because I'm not a film person, but this crazy like hyper saturation of color. But this movie has some, you can tell they turned that knob a little ways up.
I made an offhand remark in our Discord that clearly that blazing sun is clearly not the Midwest, it's clearly California. And then producer Brad pointed out it was actually shot in Ontario. So I think what I was picking up on was that orange filter.
Yes, there's something about the colors that to me ground this in like in the early 2000s when we were all watching 24 and CSI and stuff. I don't know, there's just something about it. So carry on though, John, get us back to our heroine, Anna.
So what happened? Anna is able to swap shifts. She leaves work. She drives home in a 10-year-old Toyota Corolla that is that gold beige color that all Toyota Corollas were for about a decade. I bought one in 2003 that was exactly that color. She drives home. There's a great shot of her just driving through suburbia. And to me, this makes her relatable and is trying to make her relatable. I wonder if this is actually a statement from James Gunn, and we can get into this later about the original Dawn of the Dead, and we'll talk about this when they get to the mall, was really about consumerism and consumer culture. And this movie doesn't feel like it's about that, but it might feel like James Gunn, who kind of is a disdainful person of the normal person in a lot of ways, is disdainful of suburbia. So it comes off to me as relatable and connectable as a suburban person, but I'm not sure. So we can get into that as we go.
Yeah, there's a great shot at this point, where we're sequence of shots where you're looking down from like an airplane view on her driving through this, you know, very, this giant subdivision of identical looking thoughts. And it's, I don't know that that's really an original. It's not like a hyper original approach to be taking, but it works and we all connect with it, right?
Yeah.
I also want to connect to mention this, this movie is doing something that I love, which is as Anna is driving home from the hospital, which, by the way, iconic zombie movie location. The movie is like laying the groundwork for the zombie uprising that's happening through background stuff that the main character is mostly ignoring. So they're like they're flipping channels on the radio, and you're hearing headlines about increased stress on hospitals or riots in a part of the city. And on a meta level, we know that is how this movie is telling us it's started, right?
Yeah, and what I actually like about this is, and I don't know if this could happen today in our highly wired internet world, but again, this is pre-peak internet. Like, the apocalypse happens, and they just kind of miss it until it's on top of them. You know what I mean? For a variety of reasons. But yeah, so moving on. So she drives home, as she's just about to pull into her house, she runs into this very cute neighbor kid who's learning to roller skate, and they have a warm exchange. And she goes in and talks to her husband, who seems like a nice guy. He's wearing a work shirt, like maybe he's a mechanic or something, you're not sure. He makes a comment about what they're watching on TV, like the postman got kicked off, so it's an allusion to some sort of American Idol style show. She proudly proclaims like, hey, I managed to swap shifts, so I get a three-day weekend next weekend. It's date night, so they have a little romance in the shower. But as all of these things are going on, the world is falling apart and they're missing it completely, which I thought was actually great, is something I love.
This world collapses faster than in most zombie movies. Like it goes from zero to 60 in what seems like overnight, right?
So they fall asleep, they've had a nice night, they fall asleep, and they wake up. And the neighbor kid in her nightgown is walking down the hallway towards their bedroom. And the husband gets up and is like, sweetie, what's going on? And you see her face and she is the first zombie we see. Her face is all ruined and she's clearly been bitten. And she immediately attacks the husband. She leaps on him and bites his neck. And Anna is able to kick her out of the room. She tries to stop her husband's from bleeding to death. But the girl starts pounding on the door. She starts to call 911, which is busy. And then he dies on the bed and immediately rises as a zombie who tries to kill her.
Immediately turns. Yeah. There's no delay.
There's no delay.
Can we pause for a minute here, John? So like in this quick scene, a couple of things I feel have been communicated to us like zombie fans here. So first of all, this is going to be a gory movie, right? Because the neighbor kids attack on the husband is gross and bloody and visceral.
Yeah.
And she looked, the zombie looks very gross. She also moves really fast. So yes, I know that 28 days later has kind of already implanted the idea of past zombies. But this is this is like a big change, right? From the Romero movie, this is supposedly remaking. Right. So the zombies move terrifyingly fast. They lunge at you in this movie.
Yeah.
You combine it with the fact that this is a kid, which is just terrifying, uncomfortable thing to introduce into horror. And I thought this was a pretty strong opening hand to deal.
Well, let me finish summarizing the beginning, because I think that's my favorite part of the movie, and then we can sort of break it down. So, she escapes into the bathroom, her husband...
She escapes by flying backwards into the tub. It sounds so silly, but when I watched it, I was like, that was an impressive physical bit of acting. Like she goes flying back into the tub. It must have hurt really bad in real life.
Yeah, yes. And locks her husband. So she's locked in the bathroom. He breaks in, but she starts to escape through the window. And one of my favorite and most scariest sequences in the whole movie, she climbs down out of the window. She stands up and turns around and look at her suburban neighborhood, and it is absolute chaos. There are zombies chasing her neighbors around, and across the street, or in the street, is her neighbor. And he turns, and he's not a zombie, and he holds up a pistol, and he says, Anna, don't move, get away, back away. Meanwhile, her husband is coming out the window after her. And as he does that, he gets run over by an ambulance.
The neighbor does, yes.
Yes, the neighbor gets run over by the ambulance. She is completely freaking out. She hops in her car. Her husband leaps out the window and tries to get her. He punches the windshield. Like she drives away, barely escaping. She doesn't even have shoes, right? She is in her pajamas. She's covered in blood, and she's in her 10-year-old Corolla. So I wanted to pause there because I think this is the nicest thing I want to say about this whole movie. This sequence remains intense, and there's more intense action happening here. But we haven't even seen their credits yet. And I am in. Seven minutes in, we don't really know people's names, we don't know the details of the apocalypse. There hasn't been a lot of talking head news shots. But this seven or eight minutes of the movie is intense. It establishes the world perfectly, and it's just pulse-pounding. I found it genuinely scary.
Yeah. I feel like there's two choices you can make when doing a movie like this, right? You can do the slow build where you spend 20 to 25 minutes getting to know characters and then unleashing the apocalypse on them. But this movie is like, forget that. Opening before, like you say, before the credits fall, we're going to, you're going to be in the deep end before the credits even get here. Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah. It's really effective. I think these scenes where she's driving through her neighborhood are my favorite, is my favorite sequence in the whole movie. Because it just has this, even from a film perspective, it has this like kind of unscripted chaos vibe that they've managed to capture. You see neighbors sprinting around and you see some people that clearly don't know what's going on and the zombies swarm them.
Yeah, somebody tries to get her when she hits the freeway. Somebody like she gets stopped by a bus and she sees somebody being eaten in the bus. And meanwhile, this regular person, this delivery man or something tries to tear her out of her car so he can steal her car. Like, it's just really scary.
Yeah. And there's something terrifying about someone running after you. And there's that like shot where she's pulling off in her car and her husband is sprinting after the car. And for a minute, you don't know if she is going to be able to get up to speed before he can get to the car. And that just works really well, I think.
But this also introduces what I would call my first two pillars of the modern zombie movie or pillars of a zombie movie. And I've got four of these and I'm going to introduce them as we go. And what I hope is that we learn more about zombie movies and we see how these came to be. But one is calamity, right? This is a world ending apocalyptic event, right? It is that is part of the tableau of a zombie movie. Like, I think we'll run into some smaller, quieter zombie movies where the world maybe doesn't end. But all the big ones, it's at least suggested the world could end if something doesn't happen or has ended, or at least this part of the world has ended, if that makes any sense.
Right? Yeah. Yeah.
My other one is, and I think this is the one that I find the scariest is, and there's other ones like contagious, but we haven't figured that out yet. I mean, we know this as viewers, but the characters haven't figured it out. But the part that is terrifying, and that I think makes zombie movies more terrifying than other horror movies in their own way, is your loved ones turn against you. Like, this is the cute neighbor kid, and then her own husband suddenly become unrecognizable and want to kill her. And that is absolutely terrifying. And I think most of the zombie movies I'm familiar with feature those two kinds of things.
Yeah. I think it's a good way to put it. Yeah. So, she gets into a car crash trying to escape from this other guy, and then we get the credits, right? So, the credits are pretty interesting. Tell us how the credits happened.
So, the credits are great. The style is like drawn blood that gets blown or wiped away. But the great part about the credits is the music over the credits is Johnny Cash singing When a Man Comes Around, which is a song about the apocalypse. I thought it was like, I don't love all the music cues in this movie. Like, there's what I wrote in my notes later. Okay, that's one too many music jokes, right?
There is at least one that made me laugh out loud, but yes, go ahead.
Yeah, but this, playing over the credits. So, now we get our montage of the world falling apart to the sound of Johnny Cash singing to us about the apocalypse, about revelations. It's great. And we actually have a clip where the president, at the time of the United States, who is not given a name, who is not introduced, he just has a few lines. He is answering questions at a press conference about what's going on. And that is our first cue.
I'm not sure he's the president. It seems like behind him, it says like the CDC.
Oh, okay. All right.
I believe you. He's just not named.
Yeah. He is someone of authority who people would be asking questions of. So you could be right. I just assumed president for some reason, and I don't know why. He looked very presidential. He had a nice suit on and everything.
Yeah. It's a neat way. I mean, I think it's a pretty common way to do all of the rest. Showing the world collapsing in little news clips like this during the credits, it's a pretty neat way of saying, just welcoming you into the genre, I think. You know how this works. We're going to show you a few clips and stuff like that, but you know what's going on.
And I think they filmed some clips for this, but they also just took clips of like riots and stuff that actually happened, and inserted them. So, but here's a clip of the leader telling us what they know.
I'll take your questions.
Is it a virus?
We don't know.
How does it spread? Is it airborne? Airborne is a possibility.
We don't know.
Is this an international health hazard or a military concern?
Both.
Are these people alive or dead?
We don't know.
I love that. There is something very appealing to me about the fact that nobody knows what's going on, right? That increases the fear for me.
So we'll get into this a little bit later, but most zombie movies kind of expose the falseness of putting your faith in authority figures, right, in some way. This movie really never even establishes that it never even holds up even the pretense that the authorities know what's going on. I think that's a little bit different than other films.
Yep. Except for a sheriff we'll get to later.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And we'll get there now. I think we'll start to connect our characters. So Anna gets in a car crash. She luckily rolls like off the freeway down a hill, gets knocked out hitting a tree, and then wakes up later and is awakened by Ving Rames, who has a shotgun and is a police officer. And he immediately asks her to come with him. They go off together and very quickly run into some other survivors who actually shoot at them briefly. And this is a young couple. And basically like TV's every dad, right? So it's Peaky Pfeiffer, Andre is one of the characters here, his girlfriend who is pregnant, and this internet dad who is Michael, I believe.
Yes, you're struggling with the names because-
Because they don't introduce them.
Is terrible about telling you the names of the characters.
I wasn't sure. I'm very confidently saying, Anna, until Michael said that to her, used her name at the end of the movie, I was like, oh, it's Anna.
Well, I had to check IMDB and rely on subtitles to know. So this is going to play into one of my gripes about this movie later, that there are characters, like the Ving Rhames character, I don't know if he's named until at least an hour into the film. I mean, yeah. Anyway, carry on. So we have our core group of survivors here.
Yeah, these are our core group of survivors and the new people, the three pregnant couple and TV dad, tell them like, don't go the way we just came. There used to be eight of us, now there's only three of us, and they decide to head for the mall, right? That's the nearest thing. They climb a fence or cut through a fence, they get to the mall and inside the mall, they do run into a couple of zombies, right?
And when they get inside the mall, they're already kind of trapped in there, right? Because they are sort of chased into the mall. As they're trying to break in, zombies start heading their way. So, there's already the sense that they might be stuck here, I think.
Exactly. And they get attacked by a zombie. The pregnant woman is bitten. Vink Rames is injured, but not bitten. And that'll become important later.
Do we see the pregnant woman getting bitten?
I thought we did. I thought the zombie who was a security guard at the mall jumps out.
Well, this movie, I think, I mean, there's a couple of moments where it's a little... If you've seen a lot of these movies, you know how to tell from the visual language of the film that someone probably just got bit.
Yeah, and they actually make a show of having a visual cue where they show Ving Rhames cut his arm, but it's on a feature in the water fountain in the mall. It's not for a zombie bite. So they dispatch that zombie, they run away. There's also a zombie in the sporting goods store that Michael attacks. Now, I think, I'm trying to remember, that's around this time. I think he's doing this while they're... But again, we don't need to go beat by beat. The important thing is they...
They're splitting up and searching to make sure the mall doors are locked basically, and then they get attacked in the course of this. This is a good time to talk to us real quick about the director's cut version versus the normal version. I did look up, because the internet is what it is. There's frame by frame comparisons. Two versions you can look up. And this is one of the many scenes where the normal version is just a little less gross than the of a scene. It's a little less gross than the director's cut version of the screen. So I think Michael dramatically stabs a zombie through the head with a croquet mallet or something like that. Yes. In the director's cut, there's this spray of gore. I think in the regular one, it's still gross. It's just not, doesn't have that over the top.
It doesn't have a little extra oomph, right?
Yeah. As far as I could tell, with a couple of things that I'll mention when we get to them, mostly the director's cut is like they just invested some extra in the blood special effects.
Gotcha.
But yeah, they've kind of cleared out the, they've confirmed that the mall is secure, I guess.
But they flee those zombies. They take an elevator up to the second floor. And when the door opens, there's three mall security guards with guns. And this is not a happy meeting. Nobody's, they're not excited to see each other. And yeah, this is this is our second cue, the first encounter that our heroes so far have with these security guards.
And these security guards are gonna be this movie's version of the authority figures that you hate. And they are letting, in the moment of crisis, they're stepping up in the worst ways to take control, rather than in the heroic good ways, right? So they're communicated, they're racists, they're jerks, you hate these guys, and you know they're gonna come to a bad end, which they all do, eventually.
Yeah, well, yeah, let's hear them.
Find some place else. Look, we just need a place. Maybe you didn't hear me.
There is no place else.
It's tough shit, because this is our place, and you can't stay here.
Yeah.
And you already trashed Metropolis.
Look, dumbass, my wife is pregnant. We can't run anymore.
Those things are down there. Well, these are all your problems, not mine.
Now, they do negotiate a truce. Our heroes turn over their weapons and sort of become the... They get basically arrested and monitored by these security guards, led by CJ, who's the main guy. And there's three of them. There's CJ, who's like the lead jerk. There's, I think, Mark, who's like the dumb one. And then there's another guy.
Is it like Burt or something?
Burt or something, who is like the guy, the security guard with a heart of gold, who softens and eventually lets them out, or lets them, yeah. But it starts off not great, and they are watching the TV news, and they are finding out, now we sort of get a little bit more of like what's happening. The security guards are super excited to see this really scary looking sheriff with like mirrored shades and weird hair, talking about how to kill the zombies, you know? Like you gotta shoot them in the head. Yeah. Yeah.
Do you know who plays the sheriff?
No, who plays the sheriff?
Tom Savini. Tom Savini did the special effects in the original Romero films.
Oh, okay. He's very into it. I did not recognize him. That's awesome. Yeah. So and then they make the... And tell me if I'm skipping anything, Andy. I don't... This part of the movie is more sort of expositional.
Yeah.
They all agree that they can live together, but they lock our original five heroes, characters in one of the stores for the night.
Yeah. There's a couple neat things in this section. There's a good quote when they all kind of... They go up to the roof to paint, like, a help, help we're alive type message on the roof for, like, a passing...
I had forgotten about this. Yeah, I skipped this part.
And you see at this point that the zombie numbers outside the mall have grown. So there's now, like, what you would call a horde forming around the mall. And there's a neat line where someone asks, I think, Ving Rhames' character, why are they coming to the mall? And his answer is memory or instinct. Like, and while I don't think this movie really has the sort of commentary on consumerism that the original does, there's little traces of it in lines like that, I think.
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. So they spend the night in a separate place where the security guards have locked them. And the next day, they go back up to the roof, and they see a helicopter, they see a military helicopter. And they have painted SOS on the roof in large letters. And there are people alive in here on the wall and all this stuff. And the helicopter just flies away.
Yeah.
Is this the point where they discover Andy across the street?
Yes. And they noticed that across the way, kind of one of the characters says he might as well be on a different planet because of the horde separating them.
So first of all, his name is Andy. And how do we know his name is Andy, Andy?
Because he's on the roof of Andy's gun emporium or something like that. Yes.
So all the places you want to, like maybe a combo McDonald's gun emporium is where you want to be stuck for the.
Exactly. That is simultaneously very funny and obviously is there to suit the needs of the movie. But also there's gun stores a quarter of a mile from where I live. So it's very American at the same time.
It's very Midwestern.
At this time, we're also, by the way, learn they're communicating with him via signs. And later in the movie, kind of comically, they'll be playing like long distance chest with him. Holding up their moves. It's great. Yeah. But you learn that Michael, though, like the Internet dad that John mentioned earlier is, even though he's kind of risen to the sort of presumptive leader sort of the group of survivors, he used to be like a nobody. Like he was a TV salesman at Best Buy, which is like very on theme, I think, for these movies that like it's the regular Joes that will rise to the occasion. Yes. Not the authority figures who are supposedly trained to deal with this sort of stuff.
And I think at this point, like this is when our crew turns the tables on the security guards and disarms them and sort of, and they come to sort of a more equal understanding.
Yeah. There's a little confrontation on the roof. Yeah. Guns are drawn and they basically, yeah, like you say, they turn the tables on the guards that have been kind of holding them prisoner.
And the nice guard joins their team, joins the hero's team. Yeah.
There's a little clip in here where I think this might only be in the director's cut, but is it, in your version, John, was CJ watching TV and like a televangelist came on?
There was. And actually, I think, I think this is just homage to the original film, but yeah, we do have a clip of that TV preacher. Do you want to play that, Brad? Yeah. See? And so a couple of things about that, that also happens very close to the time they revealed that there's a coffee shop, one of the security guards is going to go get coffee. And do you remember the name of the coffee shop?
I don't. What is it?
It's Hollowed Grounds.
Okay.
So the reason I say Zach Snyder has no aesthetic opinions, I think he is throwing in some sort of biblical, spiritual fire and brimstone here because he thinks it's a zombie movie and it needs that. But thematically, he doesn't do anything else with it, I don't think.
So in the director's cut, I think this is not in the original, that preacher's talk goes on and he blames the crisis on a variety of left wing type bogeyman type things. He basically says God is punishing us for allowing these things.
No, that's not in my cut.
That cannot, that has to have been a reference to Pat Robertson's comments on 9-11, for example. So I wanted to, when you said hallowed grounds, that just makes me think like hallowed ground in my head goes to 9-11. So I wonder if he's trying to riff on that association or not. But anyway, so yeah, they've turned the tables on the guards though. So yeah, carry us on John.
So they start to, they'd lock a couple of the guards away. They keep the nice guard, but the next thing that happens, the next big thing that happens is a truck driven by two people and full of people in the back, which they don't know yet, is comes barreling through the parking lot. And they quickly try to help them. They use, they've got these whiteboards and they keep communicating with people on whiteboards. So they try to communicate them, hey, come in this way. You know, they direct them to the loading dock. The truck pulls in. There's a fight with some zombies. Suddenly the nobodies, suddenly Michael, our nobody dad, everybody is a crack shot with a nine millimeter.
And yes, well, they're just landing headshots like crazy. And that will continue through the rest of this movie.
Yeah, that was one thing that gave me pause. I'm like, you know, like not to be a Debbie Downer, but and I'm not an expert on handguns, but like a like a firearms experts will tell you like over 10 or 15 yards, like you'll be lucky to even hit a person with a handgun. Like they're just not accurate. They jump all over. Like these guys get either super lucky or they're, they're really all special forces and they got that out.
And they're taking these snapshots while they're running and stuff.
Exactly. So I think that's probably a common theme of a zombie movie.
Yeah.
And we've also, the movie is also telegraphed like so the jerks don't want to let the truck in. And the like people I think we're supposed to think are the heroes are the ones that are like, of course, let them in.
Yes.
And so they, but they do, they clear out space for them. And they, well, for the survivors to get into the mall.
Yes. And there's a number of survivors. I'm not going to go into all of them in detail because there's a couple that like, I don't even know why they're here.
Yeah. The movie itself does not seem to care very much about several of them. So you shouldn't. Yeah.
But the key ones are Steve. Steve is the rich jerk. He will become important later. A for just being another jerk that we dislike.
Do you know who plays him?
Oh, that guy's famous. Who is that played by?
Ty Burrell from Modern Family.
Yes. Oh, yeah. Right. That's right. I was like, where do I know him from? Yeah. Yeah.
He's very irritating. And the characters routinely call him a jerk.
Just to his face and he doesn't care. Yeah. So he is there. Also, there is an older couple, the wife of which is clearly has a bite on her shoulder, but she's not dead. So she's not a zombie.
Well, she looks like one by the time they wheel her in.
By the time they wheel her in.
We've got a zombie in our hands, people.
Yeah. Yeah. And then further, there's a couple other people who are helpful. But my favorite, I almost want to call it a cameo, that maybe he's not as famous as I think, but Max Headroom joins our party at this time. I was like, and I'm just sorry, I've lost his, what's Max Headroom's name? It's- Matt Fruer. Matt Fruer. Yeah. He comes in, and he is a father with a daughter, and he comes in, and he also has been bitten. So what proceeds to happen is everybody's sort of getting settled, right? And the nurse, Anna, our hero, checks in on the woman who was bitten. And while she's doing that, the woman dies. She notices that the woman is cold, unusually cold before her death. She dies and immediately wakes up as a zombie and attacks. She's Anna, and they have to dispatch her. And I think, and this is where they make the connection, that getting bit by a zombie is what turns you into a zombie. So if you could, producer Brad, play Clip 5.
I think it's the Bites. Frank said she was walking on her own when she got in the truck five hours ago. Bites killed her. Bites brought her back. How do you know? I watched it happen. I felt her pulse. She was gone. Then yesterday, I saw the same thing happen to somebody else.
And that somebody else would be her husband, which she does not mention. But so this leads, so this is actually my third pillar of zombie movies, right? Which is the zombification is infectious. And I think that's important. That sounds obvious. But I think we'll get into the earlier zombie movies. This won't actually be a pillar yet. I think I'm curious to see when this becomes one. But it's sort of like this is brought from werewolf lore, right? You get bitten by a werewolf, you become a werewolf. You get bitten by a vampire, eventually you turn into a vampire. And I think zombies borrow that.
Yeah. So this is like another classic zombie movie scene, right? Where a good character has been bit and they have to kind of have an emotional scene where they have to talk themselves into taking the necessary action, I guess.
So I actually found this to be a gripping scene. And it's also sort of my last super important pillar of zombie movies, right? So Michael, who has been a nice guy to this part, realizes that Max Hedrum, Matt Fruer, is going to turn into a zombie. He's been bitten and when he dies and they immediately have a debate while they're running towards him, are like, are they going to shoot this man in front of his daughter because they know now that he's going to turn into a zombie and threaten them all. And so this is my sort of fourth pillar, which is difficult moral choices by people, right? Like again, that sounds obvious, like a generic thing, but I think it's super important. I mean, this is the premise of the entire television show, The Walking Dead, right? But yes, it's about people and the choices they have to make to interact with each other to survive. So Anna talks him, talks Michael out of shooting him on the spot, and he lets Matt Fruer and his daughter have like an emotional goodbye and they'd let him turn into a zombie, and then they'd cut away before Ving Ring shoots him.
Yeah. So I like this scene too. This is, I mean, this is a type of scene you will always get me with. I will say I feel like this scene works better when you really are invested in the characters. We met this dad and his daughter 30 seconds before. Yes. Yes. Yes, it's an emotional scene, but there's a real ceiling placed on your emotions for this scene because you don't know who these people are. And I don't want to unfavorably contrast every movie with one I really like, like 28 Days Later. But think in that movie, like they have the same thing towards the end of the movie with a character you have gotten to love over the course of the movie.
I think we'll see this in a number of zombie movies because as we're talking about it, there's like many times where they deploy the same sort of moral calculus in different ways. So if we think of Zombieland for a second, right?
Yeah.
There's a moment where the two women are there and she's like, oh no, she's been bitten. Let's shoot her and then they're like, well, I'll do it. She takes the gun from him. Then they turn the tables and like, nope, she wasn't really bit. I just wanted your gun. This scene will occur in so many zombie movies. Yes.
I think this is where the casting comes in because you have so little time to get to know and like him. By casting that fruer who you recognize and like and respect, he can carry that weight in such a short amount of time and make you like it and make it more important.
I think that's right. And if it were any, I mean, there are other actors that could have been, but if it were somebody I didn't know as well, I think you're right. Andy's point is valid. Like we haven't known him that long, but fortunately, I know Matt Fruer, so that gives me a connection.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So that kind of, I'm not to step on your toes here, but that's kind of like the end of that act of the movie. Would you say so, John?
I would. And then we get a very brief period of peace. CJ, they've kind of let the security guards out. They're all working as a team. Everybody is sort of becoming friends. We do get the little glimpse of the consumer's excess here, where they're trying on clothes or having sex or whatever. But the big scene I remember from this sort of next sequence is they're all having dinner together by candlelight, because they're all, you know, and they're getting to know each other. We start to connect with each other. It's the first time anyone's talked about their backstories. Everyone's starting to connect, and it feels like maybe they're going to be okay, right, for at least a few minutes.
And on a meta level, like, so I think this is a neat little montage. Is this, I have to ask, is this, is this the montage that has the, like, soulful rendition of Down with the Sickness playing during it? Like, did you know that?
I can't remember when they did that. I love that version of it, but I don't know if it's this here or if it's, I think that montage, so part of the, so they have dinner together. The other thing they do is they play chess with Andy across the rooftops, and then they get bored of that game, and so the game they come up with is naming zombies. This is so, like, this is the, this feels 100% James Gunn disdain for humanity, right? Like, they'll name a zombie and they'll write it on the board like, this zombie looks like Rosie O'Donnell, and Andy has to guess which zombie they mean and shoot it in the head. Like, that is delightfully awful and funny. Like, I am ashamed of myself for laughing at it, but the scene does work.
And the other celebrity names they called out?
Yeah.
Jay Leno and Burt Reynolds.
Yes, Jay Leno and Burt Reynolds.
That's right.
So yeah, this is also the part of the movie, like on a meta level. Like, some version of this is in most zombie movies, right? Or at least a lot of them, they're like, hey, it might be okay sequence, right? And, but really we all know something is going to go wrong that's gonna start this cascade of disaster, right?
Yes, which is in this case, remember the pregnant couple and the woman who was bitten, right? So they have secreted themselves away in the maternity store?
I think they have concealed the fact that she got bit. That's my take.
Yes, nobody knows.
Yeah.
And, and Andre keeps coming over and getting supplies and, and it says, well, can I come check on her? And he's like, no, we're fine. You don't need to check on us. And, and as nobody knows she was bitten, nobody is suspicious, though I, you know, I feel like I would have been. But, but it's clear once, once Andre goes back and we see her, that she is going to turn into a zombie. And, and it is pretty terrifying that also her, the baby she is carrying is going to be a zombie.
He knows she's going to turn into a zombie because he has handcuffed her to the bed.
Yeah.
Right.
He has started to maybe become a little delusional. I kind of like this little thing.
Yeah. He has an exchange with Ving Rhames, just to jump back a little bit earlier in the movie, In The Bathroom, where he says to Ving Rhames, like, my parents weren't there for me, and the most important thing in the world for me is to bring my kid into the world.
Yeah.
And I don't know how I'm going to do that in the zombie apocalypse, but I'm going to do it. And I think this part of sets up his delusion, like clearly this is a horrible idea, but he is so committed to this personally that he makes bad choices here.
Yeah. And at the same time, is that like a problem has kicked off elsewhere, right?
Yes.
The power has gone out.
The power has gone out.
So we start flipping between this child birth scene and then trying to restore the power.
Yeah. So, trigger warning, this child birth scene is terrifying. And I don't really want to describe it in detail, as much as you want to, but the woman turns into a zombie. One of the older women who's come to check on them shoots her, which causes Andre to shoot back. All three of them get shot and die, and the zombie baby is born, which is in fact a disgusting little baby zombie. Fortunately, they do shoot it, but they cut away from that, thankfully. But it is just absolute mayhem. And at the same time, they have to go into the parking garage to find the generator. They discover a couple of things, a dog, chips. They think that means it's safe because zombies would have eaten him. But then they very quickly learn that zombies don't care about dogs because the zombie jumps from the rafters and lands on one of the security guards, Mark, I believe, bites him and they barely escape by starting a fire using the gas that's in the parking garage and barely make it back. And so the brief period of peace and the sort of almost utopia they've created has been shattered, right? Yes.
So I think the director's cut in this version has Andre and the old lady shooting each other 400 times.
Yeah, that was pretty brutal.
Yeah. Was this, did you truly, this was your vision of the movie that they had to be shot like eight times instead of one? But I want to say, so this is, I think this must be a Zach Snyder thing. But the one piece of future Zach Snyder that you see here and you see throughout the rest of the movie is there's a huge number of slow motion shots of people shooting a gun, and then you see a slow motion of the shell hitting the ground. Yeah. Again, it started to become funny about the sixth time. He just has a love, some aesthetic love for whatever is happening there.
I'm not quite sure. In the regular cut, it was just two or three times.
Okay. All right.
But after all this chaos, they are burying Andre, the older woman, Andre's wife or Andre's girlfriend. They never really clarify that, and the child, and Ving Rhames is eulogizing them. And they all agree, like, I don't want to die here, right? Like something like this is going to happen to all of us. This is not how I want to go out, right? Yeah. And so they hatch this plan, and Steve, the jerk, makes an offhand comment, and he's like, yeah, let's go to the marina and get on my yacht. And they're like, okay, let's do that. So there's a debate about what they're going to do. But anyway, CJ, who is the mean security guard from the beginning, has sort of turned around, and I think this is like CJ's redemption moment. So here, why don't you play that clip, producer and Brad?
Excuse me. Not to shit on anyone's riff here, but let me just see if I grasp this concept, okay? You're suggesting that we take some fucking parking shuttles and reinforce them with some aluminum siding, and then just head on over to the gun store, we watch our good friend Andy play some cowboy movie, jump on the covered wagon bullshit. Then we're going to drive across the ruined city through a welcome committee of a few hundred thousand dead cannibals, all so that we can sail off into the sunset on this fucking asshole's boat and head for some island that for all we know doesn't even exist?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So that's actually what I appreciate about that is that, is that they sort of had this long debate, but he's really summed up the rest of the movie, right? Like this is what they're going to do.
So I like thing Reims' speech here.
Yes.
It's like not a hopeful. It's a stirring speech, but it's not like a hopeful.
It's defiant.
And this is where he basically articulates like we're in hell. Like this is maybe surviving is worse than just getting killed.
And that's a great point. Like is it better to survive? You know, he says, I used to think that I was better off. I forget the example he uses, but he basically says, I used to think I was better off than they are. Now I'm not so sure.
Yep.
And that is a great speech. So anyway, we get the montage of montages, right? So the thing is CJ just outlined there is to reinforce the parking shuttles. So we reinforce the parking shuttles with a bunch of stuff that is never been in a mall and that's okay.
I don't care.
But there's like flood slides and chainsaw and razor wire and you name it. They've got it.
This is Mad Max territory, what they're doing to these two parking shuttle buses.
Yes. I'm sorry. What did you say, Brad?
They add a giant snowplow to the front of it.
Where do they get the snowplow?
And then they paint teeth on it.
So the people have come back together, right? So the Matt Fruer's daughter and the nice security guard have become a couple and you get the connection that maybe Anna and Michael are going to do a thing. So everybody's working together, except for Steve, who is just drinking coffee.
In the director's gut, Anna and Michael share a kiss.
Okay. They do not hear.
Inside one of the battle buses. Yes, it's very sweet.
So however, there's a complication. Andy, when they check on him to tell him the plan, he holds up a sign that says, hungry, right? So Andy has run out of food. He's got all the bullets in the world.
Andy's the guy across the way at the gun shop.
Yes, and he's run out of food. So they come up with a plan to send Chips the dog to Andy's for food, and to send him food. And it almost works, but they think a zombie gets in when the dog gets in, and then it's further complicated by Max Headroom's daughter, Nicole, going over there to save the dog.
She takes one of the battle buses to do it.
She takes one of the battle buses to do it. So this has made things a little extra complicated.
No, Nicole takes a cube truck, not a shuttle bus to Andy's.
That's right. She takes that truck, not the battle bus. That's right.
So what do you think about this, John? So this is a point in the movie where if you're the sort of person that yells at people for doing dumb stuff, you're yelling at the movie. It's a disastrous plan for her to take the truck through the horde of zombies over to rescue the dog. And I'm always torn between this is very dumb and just done to keep the movie going, but then part of me is like people do stupid stuff all the time.
I always struggle with this because when you're watching, you're like, that's dumb. I wouldn't do that. But I think part of enjoying a movie is saying, you know what, in panic moments, especially in like apocalypse, people are going to do things that are going to exercise poor judgment. And I think also there's a narrative need for them to go here because they had run out of ammo. And now they have to go to Andy's gun shop, Gun Emporium. Yeah.
You know, narratively, it's a way to force them into their plan, whether they were still, I think they were saying like they still had another week before they would be ready. But now they pretty much just have to press go on their plan.
Right. And we don't have to do a blow-by-blow of the rescue, but they've got to get over there and rescue her. They do it by going under the street through the sewer tunnels and popping out of the sewer and running in there and getting her and popping back in. And there's a lot of shooting. We lose some folks. Steve is supposed to stay and guard the door. Of course, Steve does not. Anna lets them in at the last minute. I don't know if there's anything in this sequence you want to highlight, but it's just a big action sequence where they shoot at the zombies.
I was a little annoyed that they introduced the sewers out of nowhere at this point as a way they could safely travel around the town. It's like, come on. Yeah.
Could we have gone to the grocery store? Sewers essentially follow streets, so if you have a map, you could...
Yeah. The person we lose here is, I think his name is Tucker, who has done, really contributed nothing. He's one of the obvious redshirts.
Yeah. But anyway, so the battle buses are done. They've recovered everybody they're going to recover, and they're ready to go. So everybody hops in, they take off, they highlight some of the features, like they've cut slats in the side of it, and they can stick a chainsaw through there and cut them. At this point, it becomes an action movie. It's not scary at all to me, it's just an action. And so they take the snow plow, they leave them all, they get stuck, and CJ has to throw a propane tank as a bomb.
This scene is great, this shot. There is a shot of the two buses, and they have become bogged down in a sea of zombies. And it's just great.
That is the picture on the place where I rented the movie. That's the picture of the floodlights at night with the floodlights on the buses highlighting the zombies that are all around the buses. Yeah. They continue, but they make it out. One of the buses flips, Steve gets turned, he gets shot.
Oh, you have to talk about how one of the buses flips though, because it's the grossest. The grossest, the most pointless, over the top thing in the movie.
So one of the guys who survived, who is nameless, is an old guy, and he tries to pick up the chainsaw, and the bus flips, and he spins around, and he cuts this other woman in half, like gratuitously, like, I'm like, release the trigger, dude. And so, yeah, so she does. So there's two sort of characters. So they die, they stop to pick up people, they succeed. Some other people die, Steve dies, and they're down to one bus. And I think the couple, the young woman, the nice security guard, Anna and Michael, Ving Rhames, and who else is left?
CJ is here.
CJ is still with them.
The originally the jerk guard, who was originally the jerk guard, who was, and he's going to redeem himself finally in the scene.
So the point is to drive to the marina. And there is a tense moment that I like where Anna hesitates to get in the bus when the zombies are coming down on them because she realizes she needs the keys to the yacht and Steve has the keys. So she shoots Steve in the head and is pawing his pockets. She has no remorse about this whatsoever.
Yeah, zombie Steve.
Zombie Steve. Yeah, and then they escape. And they make it to the marina. Of course, there's a ton of zombies there who are chasing them. And everybody makes it off the bus to the boat except for CJ, who is trying to hold off the zombies for them. And he eventually succumbs, but I think he explodes another propane tank, which halts the zombies long enough.
It's classic redemption, go out in a blaze of glory.
CJ is redeemed. Now, the problem is, and he realizes this at one point, but doesn't reveal it till now, Michael has been bitten.
Yeah.
Right.
I thought that the movie telegraphed that pretty strong, that he had been bitten. Did you realize that he had been?
He had been, because he encounters a zombie and then he's on the bus as they're driving away and he looks down at his arm, and then, but he doesn't say anything until this point. And then they all get on the boat, except him. And there is a farewell between Anna and Michael, where they realize it's again a tough moral choice. Michael can't go with them. Eventually this bite is going to overcome him. So could you play that clip, Brad?
I can't help you. It's okay. It's gonna be all right.
So, and that's Michael leaving, he shoves off the boat, he pulls out a gun. I don't think we see Michael shoot himself or shoot zombies.
In the director's cut, you do, yeah.
He does shoot himself?
Yeah.
Okay.
And the boat heads off to an island framed by the setting sun, or the rising sun, I'm not sure. And that's the end of the movie officially. Yeah. So then, in the regular cut, over the end credits, there's a montage of found footage. Apparently, Steve had a camera on his boat.
Yeah.
It's gratuitously, it's also Zach Snyder's opportunity to go gratuitously throw in some nudity because on the camera, they find footage of Steve frolicking with some young girls or something.
Yeah. The director's cut amps that up at different points earlier in the film too. Okay.
Yeah. But they show them getting to the island, trials, travails, they get there, and at the very last shot of the credit stuff, they are all overcome by zombies.
Or at least that's the really strong implication.
That's the strong implication.
It does not look like anyone could have survived.
Right. So I think it's an interesting choice in a way like he's like, if you want a hopeful ending and you don't watch credits, here's your hopeful ending. And if you are like me and don't want a hopeful ending, not me, like if you're like Zach Snyder and are a little bit more cynical, here's everybody getting killed. Yeah.
How did you feel specifically about that? I mean, when the credits start rolling, it has ended with a slightly hopeful note. When the credits are done rolling, you have been told that everybody died.
Yeah. I'm going to struggle with this throughout this series, I think, Andy. Maybe more in the modern movies because that is very nihilistic ending, right? Like everybody dies. And so I don't want to throw James Gunn under the bus, because we all think of James Gunn as the Guardian of the Galaxy guy. He's funny, the quips, the stuff. But he directed this movie called Super starring Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight Schrute in The Office. And he plays this superhero named the Crimson Bolt, who runs around clubbing people with a pipe wrench. And Slyther and some of his other movies, they are very sort of nihilistic and sort of disdainful of humanity. And I think a place I'm... So the point I'm making is the place I'm gonna struggle is, I have a suspicion that the type of person who makes horror movies often has that view of humanity, and I don't share it. So it is gonna be a struggle for me to end all these movies with this sort of nihilistic everybody dies thing. Like once it's cool, right? Like it's edgy and cool, but if it's every movie, I'm gonna struggle.
Yeah, I mean, when the credits start rolling, and the handful of survivors are out on their boat, I mean, you know that the odds against them are very long.
Right.
And I guess I'm not saying it doesn't always work, but in this case, I feel like this feels like a little bit of a middle finger to like the audience. Right. And so it's hard to separate out what is like kind of an thematically appropriate downer ending from a edgelord, like, oh, you thought it was going to be happy?
Well, you know, it's like the latter to me. If we could talk about a hard ending, like if you watch like The Mist, which a lot of people hate.
Yeah.
At the spoiler for The Mist, directed by Frank Darbaugh. It also ends with everybody but Thomas Jane dying. I actually found that much, I found that hard to watch and really unpleasant, but not emotionally nihilistic, right? It was like everybody dies and it's really hard, and I'm emotionally gutted by that, but it didn't feel cynical to me in the way that this feels, if that makes sense.
So, hey, let's kind of move on to sort of closing thoughts on this film. And I have a couple of questions. And so, I mean, just generally to the zombie fans listening, or the horror fans, is this a movie that a zombie fan should watch?
I think if you are a, I think it's sort of a must watch because of a number of things. So one of the other point I wanted to make is, I looked at our list of movies, this is 2004. We have a list of 634 zombie movies we're considering. There are approximately 230 before this movie, and approximately 400 after this movie. So this feels to me like the start of something, if that makes sense. I feel like there's a pivot, there's fast zombies, there's a bunch of stuff going on right now. Zombies are about to take off. I feel like, I'm not saying this is the movie that made zombies take off. I feel like between this, 28 Days Later, which is a couple of years earlier, and around this time, zombies are back in a big way. Does that make sense?
It does. I feel this movie, I don't want to sound elitist here at all, but this movie feels a little bit like, if you're casually or somewhat interested in zombies, this one will check off all the boxes.
Yes. And that's why I picked it, right? It's like the generic zombie movie. This is why I pointed out that Zach Snyder doesn't have a huge aesthetic opinion. It doesn't make super huge cultural criticisms, though it throws some in there to be a zombie movie. But it's really just like here is the form and structure of a zombie movie.
And I have a feeling as we discuss more films that we're going to often be based with the question of what do we want from a zombie movie, right? Like maybe this movie is all you want, and if so, that's a reasonable thing. And this movie is exactly what you want from a zombie movie, right? I think, though, we're going to get into some movies that try to do something different. But this is a movie that does not try to do anything different, and whether that's like a feature or a bug, I guess, is kind of up to you.
I don't love this movie. I am not going to go watch it again. It's a good entertaining movie, and I'll go back to the beginning. If every movie, you want to hear our favorables, we've been trashing Zach Snyder and James Gunn. I'll make the most favorable comparison of Zach Snyder ever going to make. The beginning of this movie is so taut and intense, it feels to me like the first 10 minutes of The Lost Pilot or the first 10 minutes of Chernobyl, if you saw that where the explosion happens and chaos is immediately, and you're immediately sucked into the story and stuck. I think it's really good, and I just don't think the rest of the movie is that good. I don't think you could keep up that intensity for a movie, but he nails that beginning and sucks you in, in a way that I wish more movies did.
So, last question, John. Would you, modern day John, survive in the world of this movie?
I don't think so. I think Fast Zombies, I'm going to go work out tomorrow, and we do this exercise where you sort of lay down on the ground, and then you have to get up, and my 50-year-old friends and I are all commenting about how we kind of have to roll on our side first and get on all fours, and then the Fast Zombies would get me, there's no question. Little Kid Zombies would get me, like I'm not that good a driver, like I think I'd die in a car wreck or get killed early by the zombies.
Same here. I would go out in the opening montage, I think. I would not even stick around long enough for the younger characters to have to put me down later when I get bitten, but inevitably. Yeah, I agree. I agree. John, that was great. Thank you so much for leading us through the discussion there. So the only thing that kind of remains is for us to announce the next movie that we're going to take a look at. In case you want to watch along with us, in this movie, like John, I chose a movie that I thought incorporates some important elements of what I think are in a good zombie movie, even though this movie is not necessarily one that is my favorite. And that movie is The Girl with All the Gifts.
Oh, I have not seen this movie. I'm excited.
It's recent, I think 2017, and I'm really excited to watch it and talk about it.
Okay, cool, cool. So, rest assured, everybody, we will be getting Tonight of the Living Dead and Return of the Living Dead and World War Z and all those zombie movies. But please stick with us while we explore some of our more sort of personally attached zombie movies. I'm excited about The Girl with All the Gifts, I think. What I hope is that real zombie fans who started listening to this podcast and saw me pick Dawn of the Dead by Zach Snyder are going to be like, okay, one of these two guys at least we know like zombie movies. So Andy clearly knows what he's talking about here, so hopefully people feel that way. You've been listening to Zombie Strains. We'll be back next episode to talk about another zombie movie. If you enjoyed our podcast, please take a moment to rate us in your podcast app of choice. Tell a friend, follow us on Instagram at Zombie Strains. All of this helps like-minded people find the show. See you next time.