A decade after making his 1968 seminal horror film "Night of the Living Dead," director George Romero, armed with a slightly bigger budget, revisited those flesh-eating zombies with "Dawn of the Dead," which was set extensively in a suburban shopping mall. While there was gore galore, Romero also had things to say about class distinction and society's escalating preoccupation with mass consumption -- to the point at which it had started to consume itself. Armed with visually assured, muscular direction (by feature first-timer Zack Snyder), a respectable cast and eardrum-blasting sound effects, the new "Dawn of the Dead" certainly makes its arrival known, but long before its departure, the empty onslaught has left the numbed viewer in a zombie-like stupor.

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