Dawn of the Dead: Why Zack Snyder Insisted the Zombies Run in His Remake

In the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, the zombies suddenly run like professional athletes, and here’s why director Zack Snyder made that change. Considering just how divisive a filmmaker Snyder has ended up being – people either tend to love his work or hate it, with little in-between – it almost seems appropriate that his directorial debut came with a remake of such a horror classic. Director George A. Romero’s original 1978 Dawn of the Dead film is arguably the greatest zombie movie ever, from the man who essentially invented the sub-genre.

Naturally, lots of horror fans were quite against the idea of remaking Dawn of the Dead, especially with a director attached who at that point had only helmed music videos. Surprisingly enough though, Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead redux actually went on to earn widespread acclaim, and some would still cite it as his best film to date. It’s just another case of audiences making snap judgments before seeing the final product.

One reason Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake worked so well was that while it retained the central premise of zombie outbreak survivors coming together to seek shelter inside a shopping mall, the characters and scenarios presented beyond that were new. This helped differentiate Snyder’s film from Romero’s. Another big change came with the zombies themselves, who now sprinted like 28 Days Later‘s Rage Virus-infected humans. Here’s why Snyder went that route.

Dawn of the Dead: Why the Zombies Run in Zack Snyder’s Remake

In George Romero’s films, The Walking Dead, and the vast majority of zombie pop culture, the zombies shamble along moaning and are most dangerous in packs. They’re also slow enough that a healthy human can pretty easily outrun or outmaneuver one or two. The individual zombies in Dawn of the Dead 2004 are much more dangerous, since they can move fast enough to be on top of a victim before that person even sees them coming. According to Zack Snyder, he went with fast-moving zombies because he felt that slow zombies weren’t threatening enough, and also carried with them a somewhat comical style of movement. These same sentiments had previously been expressed by 28 Days Later director Danny Boyle.

Snyder isn’t really wrong on those counts, as even Romero’s films have used the slow, shuffling zombie for comedic purposes, and so did Edgar Wright’s zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead in the same year the Dawn of the Dead remake was released. The Walking Dead has also shown on many occasions just how easy it is for an armed, healthy human to waste standard zombies, to the point where some do it for fun or to kill time. Snyder’s fast zombies definitely aren’t beings to be trifled with, and are a clear and present danger to anyone who comes anywhere near them. Of course, as Romero himself has pointed out, rotting corpses being able to run makes zero logical sense. Then again, neither does the dead coming back to life at all, so that’s kind of a wash.

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