The idea of our borders being violently invaded by senseless killers has never seemed more relevant than in today’s world of heightened orange alerts and global paranoia. So why does the new remake of George Romero’s classic 1978 zombie epic, "Dawn of the Dead," about the apocalyptic rise of bloodthirsty zombies destroying human life as we know it, seem so…irrelevant?

For anyone under a rock for the last quarter century, the story concerns a group of rag-tag survivors locked in a suburban Milwaukee shopping mall as the world closes in on them—in this case, a demonic mob of vicious undead (or "dead-ish," as one character amusingly observes) zombies bent on tearing them to shreds. Time passes and the group dynamics ebb and flow, power shifts, alliances form and are broken.

In this updated version, the film opens with gusto and for its delirious, paranoid first ten minutes, you’re hooked. A nurse, who is a young wife and mother (Sarah Polley), is violently attacked by her loving husband and their daughter, and she hits the streets in a speeding car. She careens through the chaos and the film is alive with its fantastic score, editing, and a breathtaking helicopter shot of a car accident and explosion. Bang, we cut to the opening credits, exhilarated. This is high style. We’re happily surprised that we’re in for something exciting.

So why does the film fall apart once the opening credits finish? Pretty much because it’s a by-the-numbers retread with good actors—Polley, Ving Rhames, Mekhi Pfifer, Jake Weber—given nothing interesting to do but battle with bloody creatures every ten minutes. The shopping mall is an arbitrary setting, and the characters wear thin quickly. There’s no attempt to nudge the contemporary consumer fetishes we live with today, from Starbucks to fitness to fast food. Director Zack Snyder, not lacking for energy and keeping the film expertly paced, and writer James Gunn have kept the darkly comic setting intact, but jettisoned its irony.

Where the 1978 version touched on anesthetized consumerism, the new version ¾ while keeping the plot and location basically the same ¾ is content to flesh out its nightmare scenario with cardboard characters, who pile on the gore with gusto. Not that there’s anything wrong with that in a horror film, mind you. It’s just that this particular version of the story is lifeless (no pun intended) when compared to its source and even closer inspiration, Danny Boyle’s lurid and powerful "28 Days Later."

To be fair, the film contains some pretty funny bits, including ironic muzak selections, silly celebrity jokes (one sequence has survivors using the zombies as target practice and selecting them at the expense of their celebrity look-alikes, including Jay Leno, Burt Reynolds and Rosie O’Donnell). There are also cartoon rednecks and a priceless bit involving a chainsaw slicing.

The film comes alive again in its closing ten minutes, as the survivors hatch an escape, and all manner of bloody, limb-severing, head-chopping mayhem ensues. And there’s a nifty and frightening closing credits sequence worth sitting through.