15: Dawn Of The Dead (2004)

15: Dawn Of The Dead (2004) - The gas bomb.
Zack Snyder's remake of the George Romero zombie classic has as many detractors as fans (I'm in the latter camp), but it's hard to deny the director's feeling for his characters. In Top 50 movie special effects shots I mentioned that Snyder's extraordinary Ariel sequence at the start of the film creditably re-uses Hitchcock's dispassionate eye for chaos from The Birds (1963). In this shot, the camera again draws back to show us a birds-eye view of the gas-canister explosion which clears a way for our heroes to escape.

Impact: This is not a 'cheer moment' really, but shares the sense of brooding isolation and desperation that threads the film. It's also the only real impact that our heroes ever have on the milling hordes of undead that have destroyed their lives, and the sole significant moment of 'payback'. Apart from anything else, it's an eerie and fascinating shot that reminds one of observing a culture in a microscope, divorced from its petty concerns and internal disputes.

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