It takes guts to step into the shoes of a legendary horror director like George A. Romero. Blood and guts, actually. And brains … plenty of … BRAINS! And yet, that’s exactly what Zack Snyder attempted in 2004 with this remake of the George A. Romero classic, Dawn of the Dead, part of Romero’s classic Dead trilogy of zombie movies.

With a $28 million budget and gross receipts over $100 million worldwide, Snyder had a much larger palette to paint with, compared to Romero, who made his version in 1978 with a budget of $650,000 and yet went on to gross $55 million worldwide … at 1978 ticket prices. Despite the much larger budget and a cast featuring stars like Sarah Polley and Ving Rhames, it’s hard to say Snyder did a more effective job than Romero on about 1/50th of the budget.

Dawn of the Dead is set primarily in an American shopping mall, where a group of non-zombified survivors attempt to hold zombie hordes at bay, hoping that by dawn, help will arrive. In the intervening action, many fall and transform to zombies, many brains are eaten (resulting in a memory upgrade for the undead), and much blood and gore is displayed all ‘round.

In the bleak original, the help never came and in that sense, Snyder’s ending places a new twist on the film, seeming to offer a sense of hope, only to snatch it away in the closing seconds of the film. The gutsiness of taking on an intimidating project like this has defined Synder’s directing career, the most recent example of which – with the impending release of The Watchmen, the long-desired film version of the classic Alan Moore comic book – is due to be released in March 2009.

The Blu-Ray offers stark detail to ever scene, and there are plenty of extra features to satisfy the morbidly curious. The best feature is the commentary track, lifted directly from the four-disc DVD Ultimate Edition release, which included Romero talking with Snyder about the film. While the track is, by now, a bit dated, since Romero was still at the time trying to find financing for his fourth Dead film, it is nevertheless the jewel of the assemblage of special features.

Also nice is a home movie on the making of the film, made by a zombie extra; a tour of the Crossroads Mall, and several other mini-documentary features. With a decent, if not quite “better,” remake of the original film, the only major complaints here is the absence of the Romero original movie and several really nice special features that didn’t make it over from the four-disc Ultimate Edition DVD.