I don’t watch many scary horror films. I can handle the lightweight, jump-out-of-your-seat stuff, like Scream<\/i><\/a>, Event Horizon<\/i><\/a>, or Cube<\/i><\/a>, but I’m not too good with the films that really set out to disturb and unsettle. It took me months<\/em> to recover from The Blair Witch Project<\/i><\/a>, and after seeing the 1978 version of Invasion of The Body Snatchers<\/i><\/a> as an impressionable teenager I still<\/em> can’t deal with having plants in the bedroom. People keep telling me how good Ring<\/i><\/a> and its Japanese original Ringu<\/i><\/a> are, but I have no intention of ever seeing either. Nuh-uh.<\/p>\n So I’m not really sure why I wanted to see Dawn Of The Dead<\/i>. Maybe I wanted to expose myself to a little zombie culture before catching Shaun Of The Dead<\/i><\/a>, which looks like a blast. Maybe my inner film fan wanted to compensate for never having seen the George Romero original. Maybe it was the only alternative to Starsky and Hutch<\/i><\/a> that Abi found palatable…. Whatever. We saw it last night.<\/p>\n The first fifteen minutes or so are intensely unsettling. Before it all gets really<\/em> hectic and bloody, there is a period of quiet and uncertainty that you know<\/em> can’t last. It’s just a question of when<\/em> the stillness will be punctured. When that moment comes, you’ve spent just enough time building up empathy with the characters that it is thoroughly shocking and disturbing. Especially if you’re a parent whose kids have a habit of getting up and scratching at your bedroom door in the middle of the night. Thanks, Alex. That was a 4am wake up call I could have done without.<\/p>\n Once the zombies break cover, though, the film turns into a more conventional spot-the-survivor thrill ride. A small gang of uninfected people barricade themselves in a mall, and try to figure out how to escape. They have to overcome their own bickering and paranoia, but apart from a few moving scenes, they don’t dwell on their personal losses. Their focus is on action and hope rather than on fear and despair–for which I’m glad, because I don’t think I could have coped with a whole film that was as scary as this one’s opening act. <\/p>\n