Given that there was no need for a new DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978), first-time feature director Zack Snyder's "re-envisioning" could be much worse. A buzzed-up gloss on the original, it's entertaining — if fundamentally shallow — and owes as much to 28 DAYS LATER (2002) as it does to George Romero's cannibal-zombie classic. Ana (Sarah Polley) comes home from a 13-hour nursing shift to her home in a suburban Wisconsin development filled with neatly manicured lawns and friendly neighbors. She wakes up to a world turned upside-down: There's panic in the streets, fire in the sky and emergency services are too overwhelmed to respond. Ana narrowly escapes immediate danger, only to find herself adrift in a world in which sprinting packs of reanimated corpses chase and drag down the hapless living like dogs on a hart. She and four other survivors — street thug Andre (Mekhi Pfifer) and his hugely pregnant wife (Inna Korobkina), police officer Kenneth (Ving Rhames) and quietly pragmatic Michael (Jake Weber) — take refuge in a shopping mall, where they form an uneasy alliance with security guards CJ (Michael Kelly), Terry (Kevin Zegers) and Bart (Michael Barry). As the situation outside degenerates and it becomes increasingly apparent that there's no help coming, the survivors jockey for control. They take in additional survivors rescued by salt-of-the-earth trucker Norma (Jayne Eastwood) — most so peripheral to the plot you never even learn their names — and Kenneth strikes up a friendship with Andy (Bruce Bohne), who's camped out on a gun-shop roof a stone's throw from the mall. Snyder and screenwriter James Gunn strip away most of the original film's dark humor — including its pervasive sly riff on the notion of consumption — and relationships take a backseat to action sequences. That said, Snyder directs action skillfully and the zombie hoards are as nasty as they ought to be. The ending is suitably downbeat, and Snyder allocates respectful cameo appearances to original DAWN cast members Scott Reiniger, Ken Foree — who utters the immortal line, "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth — and Tom Savini (also creator of the original's groundbreaking gory effects), who plays a variation on the no-nonsense sheriff in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968). Gaylen Ross, the first film's female lead, lends her name to a mall store.