Dawn of the Dead (2004) Image Analysis

In this scene from Dawn of the Dead (2004) (DOTD), the zombie infestation is being introduced and established. During the opening credits different images are shown of the Far East and Muslim prayers. This gives us the impression that the zombie ‘disease’ has come from Asia, which links to the current  fears of the war on terror and happenings in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. Once again, a horror movie is used the historical context to makes its content more terrifying. The handheld camera, and pixelated footage makes this seem like a real “satellite phone” news report making the threat of a zombie outbreak seem that more real. Janet Staiger ,the author of Interpreting Films from 1992, talks about how film directors have to adapt movies to meet their target audience. Having a zombie outbreak come from soviet Russia would not scare the target audience as much as coming from the middle east which – particularly in 2004 - was still fresh in the audience’s minds after 11/9/2001

In this scene from DOTD we see the results of what happens when someone is bit by a zombie. Ana (the final girl), our main protagonist, stabs the zombie in the eye which shows us that she is a strong independent woman who knows how to handle herself. This goes against the cultural dominant ideologies as a blonde attractive woman is fighting zombies and not screaming and dying. Ana also uses a fire poker, which resembles a phallic symbol and shows that a woman can easily “steal” male power. Throughout the film Ana shows that she is a strong female and a worthy, compassionate member of the group. She is a nurse so can work well under pressure and we never see her get over emotional. The one time we see her get upset, she hides away from the other survivors which connotes to us that she is professional and doesn’t want to seem weak. The zombie in this scene is a very large obese woman yet she is still very quick. This strongly contrasts to the slow, comic-like zombies of the old Romero films, and makes the zombies much more threatening and thus makes the film much more frightening.  

In this scene from DOTD a quick paced montage and canted angles are used. This gives the scene a really confused and panicky feel which links to the confusion of Monica being killed by the chainsaw. The chainsaw wound is very effective body horror and the detail of the chainsaw slicing through her shoulder is even more explicit that the violence in the 1979 version. This again shows how audiences become desensitised and need more and more to make them shudder. Monica, being blonde, attractive and has sex with a guy she’s just met, is the stereotypical screaming girl victim. Although she isn’t the first to do so, she dies in an embarrassing way, not sacrificing herself to save others or to kill loads of zombies. Arguably, this means the target audience are not too bothered that she’s died and almost been punished for being promiscuous, which is a concept in slasher movies like Friday the 13^th (1981).