In Dawn of the Dead, a group of people are trying to escape the zombie apocalypse and see refuge in a mall. The Mist is a film that showcases what humans are capable of under extreme circumstances as people are shown to be attacked by mysterious monsters that emerge from a mist that surrounds the town.
Personally, I liked the idea that Dawn of the Dead’s
core theme was the idea that consumerism is essentially evil (Harper). In his
article, “Zombies, Malls, and the Consumerism
Debate:
George Romero's Dawn of the Dead,” Stephen Harper discusses that
paying into consumerism makes a person “zombie-like.” Within the movie this
seen pretty heavily as most of the movie takes place within a mall, which is arguably
the epitome of consumerism. After securing the mall from the zombies, the group
is in a “shopping utopia” and is able to take advantage of whatever the mall
has to offer (Harper). This ideal may play into the purchasing power of the group.
Now that they do not have anyone to compete with, they are able to garner all
the things that they desire. Moreover, the idea of class conflict can be seen by
the struggle between the group and the gang of bikers. In this scene, the bikers
represent the proletariat and they are rising against Peter and his group, the
bougeosisie. Having fallen to the lure of consumerism, only Peter and Fran are
able to survive and reach a consciousness which is seen by them leaving the
mall.
However, The Mist, is a movie that opens a dialogue of the fear of the unknown and the anxiety that comes along with not knowing the future of the right actions to take. Noel Carroll describes that horror movies not only show the actor’s reaction to these monsters but all the internal symptoms of fear that accompany it, such as “revulsion, nausea, and disgust” (53). Within The Mist, David Drayton reacts to both the seen monster, but also interacts with the monsters that exist within his mind as he has to decide what is the best action to ensure both his and his son’s survival. The horrors that David has experienced within the movie leads up to an internal distress caused by these monsters which leads him to make a rash decision to kill his group along with his son moments before they would have been rescued. Although the characters may have escaped the store and were making their way to safety, the never relenting threat of death created a shared helplessness within the group as the movie never turned them “into pseudo-heroes who conquered their fears” (Eggert). Instead, David becomes a monster himself, and after he kills his group, he then has to live with the biggest monster of all, guilt as he has just taken four lives that we about to be saved, including his son. For the rest of his life, he is left to wonder that if had just waited one minute longer, would everyone else still be alive?