I personally liked both movies in this topic. The Mist did an amazing job with making you feel as if you’re part of the crowd at the supermarket. Throughout most of it, I wished I was a part of it just so I could shut the preaching lady up. They characterized people so dramatically that it felt like a representation of people in a real disaster. Dawn of the Dead surprised me because even though the effects weren’t what they are today, I still enjoyed it. It alternates peace and action between each other to allow time to breathe and take in what’s going on, while still being on edge about what will happen next.
Both films have a theme of how people handle seemingly impossible situations. When these uncontrollable events occur, we see the true evil in humans. The fear of the unknown causes panic and when humans can’t rationalize the situation, we try to take control even if that leads to turning on other humans. In both movies, we see like-minded groups ban together. In The Mist, when the unknown approaches, we see them group into three different types of people: the people who refused to believe there was something supernatural, the people who believed it was supernatural even though they couldn’t explain it, and the people that bought into the religious hysteria. Throughout the film, we saw more humans versus humans than humans versus the unknown monsters. They couldn’t get past their differences to ban together. The fears caused hysteria and led to drastic decisions. In the end, one group was ready to take their chances in the unknown to escape the threat of the humans. In Dawn of the Dead, we don’t see the commonalities that bring the groups together but we still see separate groups that have banned together and don’t work together against the zombies - the main characters, the group they run into while refueling and the biker gang. The main group in this film ends up taking refuge in a mall and they avoid the unknown reality in the outside world for as long as they can. So much of this film was focused on materialism. They were excessive in taking things, even taking money when they didn’t have anywhere to spend it. They were dressing in fancy clothes and jewels and living a make-believe life. Greed even cost the pilot to lose his life in the end because he didn’t want the biker gang taking “his” things so he started shooting at the bikers when they probably would have ravaged the mall and taken valuables and moved on to the next town.
One of the things that stood out as similar between the two films was loyalty to their group of people. They were willing to put their own lives in danger to protect those within their group. Also, we saw difficult promises kept in both movies. In The Mist, David promised his son that he wouldn’t let the monsters get him and took his life when he thought that was the only option to avoid it. In Dawn of the Dead, Peter promised his friend that he wouldn’t let him walk around with the zombies if he came back as one and Peter did the dreadful task of shooting him.
The ending of both films felt hopeless but their final actions were different in how they responded to the hopelessness. In The Mist, they gave up and decided taking their own lives was their last resort. In Dawn, Peter seemed to have made that same choice but in that final moment, he decided to take his chances with the unknown.