I just watched the Unrated Director’s Cut of 2004’s remake of Dawn of the Dead, and I have to say, it was a mixed bag. The added gore was very welcome, except for in one instance where one of the characters turns from what he is doing to shoot a zombie in the head for no good reason other than we’ve only seen 999 head shots in the movie so far, and we need to dump it over the 1,000 mark. Most of the new scenes with character development were pretty good too, adding some much needed depth to a movie in which there are like 20 characters in a 90 minute movie.

At the same time there was a lot of pointless crap added, for I don’t really know what reason. Like in the theatrical cut where they climb the hill and look at the mall and the next shot is a still shot inside the mall, when suddenly a toilet flies through one of the windows and our main characters climb through. Great jump cut. Perfect, really. For some reason now we have to see them walk across the parking lot, shoot an Asian zombie with no arm, walk through a dark hallway, find the toilet and…wait for it…throw it through the window. So pointless. Why ruin such a great shot? Also, why do we have to see gun casings fall to someone’s feet EVERYTIME they fire their gun? Enough already.

So some great additions were left with a bad taste in my mouth because of some rather self indulgent crap from our “genius” director. Why not take a little advice from your excellent editor before making the director’s cut, huh? There was one major plus though that could not be tarnished: black cop as a preacher telling us how evil we are. Classic.