Having recently viewed both George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, and Zack Snyder’s 2004 remake, one of the most striking differences between the two (and there are many) was the divergent visual strategies employed by both Romero and Snyder. While Snyder’s film, which leans more heavily towards the thriller side of things than its predecessor, features hyperkinectic camerawork, busy environments, and sleek effects, Romero’s film is much more low-key. (Each is appropriate to the film’s tone, so don’t take this as criticism of Snyder’s work.) In fact, what’s most notable about the cinematography of the original film is how still everything is. Though there are a handful of sequences in Romero’s film that would qualify as action (and feature a quickened pace in the editing, as well as some handheld camerawork), the majority of the sequences within the mall’s interior are notable for their utter placidity.

There’s a novelty to the mall in Romero’s version lacking in Snyder’s – in 1978, malls weren’t so prevalent as in they would become in the 80s and 90s, and the main characters, upon sighting the mall from a helicopter, have to ask each other what the building is. They find the mall populated with dozens, if not hundreds, of zombies, who don’t do much of anything besides aimlessly wandering the halls (subtle, Romero). Favoring a montage editing style, Romero gives us plenty of wide shots that give us a distinct impression of the zombies within the environment. What’s strange about them to us at first is how utterly toothless they are – when the characters need to avoid them, they simply run past or knock them down, looking upon it as child’s play. The mall, despite being crowded with flesh-eating undead, is a safe haven, and one that’s fairly easy to manipulate and maneuver.

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Safety glass, indeed.

Eventually, they even manage to kill every zombie in the building while blocking the doors from the outside with tractor trailers. The mall, once bustling with zombies, is now occupied only by a handful of humans. And once the only threat has been eliminated, and has reduced the population of the mall substantially, it becomes clearer than ever how ominous and creepy the mall really is. Virtually devoid of life (though, technically, the zombies aren’t ever “alive”), the sheer emptiness and soullnessness of the mall – with its perfectly manicured tile floors, taupe walls, and inoffensive muzak – becomes oppressive. Those wide shots, at first amusing in their portrayal of the zombies’ mindless wanderings and comforting in their portrayal of the mall’s safety, become unnerving, making our principals feel more isolated than ever. We’re left to contemplate the utter emptiness of these wide open spaces, devoid of human life, meaning, or depth beyond the most material superficiality.

What Dawn of the Dead reveals, in a startling subversion of expectations, is that the presence of zombies, for whatever minor threat they may have posed, was actually reassuring instead of threatening. Romero further establishes the lack of comforts inherent in the characters’ newfound materialism and sterile safety, particularly in a lengthy montage of their increasing anxiety at the lack of contact with the outside world – but the point has already been made, and entirely through the film’s visuals. Without changing a thing about how he portrayed the space the characters occupied, Romero turned the mall from an image of comfort and stability to one that represents the shallowness of their material comforts, and, in turn, the meaningless of their safety. (What good is it to stay alive in such a culturally bankrupt environment?) By the end of the film, it’s clear that the film’s real horror isn’t the zombies – it’s the mall itself. And remember, as Romero’s film implicitly argues, it was the mall that produced those zombies in the first place. Without any zombies left, the mall goes to work on the film’s heroes, and nearly gets to them, before their final escape.

One reading of the film views the film’s heroes through the prism of royalty – safe inside their castle, indulging in material comforts – with the zombies representing the “unwashed masses,” as it were. The zombies, for whatever their faults – unclean, devoid of intellect, etc. – aren’t actually malicious. They eat humans because they need food, and they go about it in the most matter-of-fact manner possible (in Snyder’s version, by way of contrast, the zombies are snarling, running monsters, out to kill and maim as much as to eat). This interpretation dovetails rather nicely with the observation that the zombies’ presence actually makes the mall more unsettling, instead of less. Without life – human or otherwise – to sustain it, it becomes a vacuous void, suffocating in its sheer meaninglessness.

The mall, then, is Ozymandian in nature: look on my stores, ye Mighty, and despair!