Dawn of the dead analysis

 

Dawn of the Dead title sequence analysis.

The genre of the film is constructed by the red writing that is displayed in the beginning, when it changes to the next name, you find that the writing smudges like blood; this then gives people the impression that the genre of the film is horror/thriller because of the way the writing is set out. The first shot of the person we see, it looks like someone has been hung, or been tortured. This portrays that the film is going to be violent. This film touches upon the idea of Holy War as harbinger to the apocalypse. We are introduced to the cast names, to me the reason the names are placed in red and at the bottom of the screen because it indicates people dropping to the floor dying or keeping low to get out the sight of other people. 

The music is quite fast; on the odd occasion you hear screams that also gives the viewer an impression that this film is a thriller.  As we get into the sequence and we see the news reports the music becomes very country and western. Through out the sequence you can hear people talking, often news reports on people dying or odd occurrences that have been happening. Half way through the sequence a man speaks out as if he is talking to a news reporter; he says, “there is no hope”. This indicates people fear for their life.  We hear the song in the background mention that ‘ everybody is the same’ this indicates that people are not being picked on; they are all being wiped out.  The song could also give people an insight on to how the viewer could be feeling through out the film ‘ the hairs on your arms will stand up’. We also get the impressions a lot of people have died because of this disease as we hear in the song that the singer mentions ‘ 1 hundred million angels ‘. In the last scene we hear a news reporter say ‘god there here’ and we get a close up from the zombie and the shot goes black, so we don’t know what happens after, we are left wondering how it ends and that draws people to get the attraction to watch this film.

This film is associated with the war as we see a lot of soldiers throughout the sequence. This isn’t just a one-city disease it is based worldwide; we know this because the sequence is based on news reports from all over the world, they want to warn people who don’t know what’s happening. We get all source of our information from the news and information from other people, so the sequence being based on different news reports show that this could be serious. We get a close up of a man who behind him has ‘disease prevention’, and all he keeps mentioning is that he ‘doesn’t know’ how to prevent this happening, this gives people a worry because he is supposed to be able to help others and stop this happening, but he doesn’t know if he can.  We get the sense of religion, because of the first image we are shown shows people bowing down, we also see people helping each other even though they are trying to save their own life, this could also back up that religion could be a part of the film.

This film has Women, Men from young to old, and also children, this shows the viewer that what is happening in this film is affecting everybody. Through out this sequence we see people being violent and fighting and running away trying to flee their country.  This disease that is being spread has come from blood cells and blood from ‘zombies’, we know this because we are constantly being shown images of blood and blood cells.  We are also being shown to Zombies covered in blood and seeing blood dripping from various scenes. The viewer gets exposed to offices that have been fled from because they wish to get away from this disease.

The viewers will become instantly drawn to the film because they wish to know how or why this has happened. We see a scene of the president and the white house being invaded, they have men trying to protect both the president and the woman in the shot.