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Whether it's a sacred sacrifice or schlock and horror, blood is big box office.

This week, Mel Gibson's The Passion of The Christ came to the end of its reign at the top of the weekly charts. Taking its place, Dawn of the Dead, an over-the-top horror remake directed by Zack Snyder, featured more bodies rising from the grave. But these bodies are not resurrected so much as they are reanimated — with a monstrous desire to slay and devour the living. Thus, the band of survivors in the spotlight, including a nurse (Sarah Polley of Go and Guinevere), a courageous cop (Ving Rhames of Pulp Fiction, Out of Sight), and a mall security guard (Michael Kelly) must do what they can to blast zombie heads from zombie shoulders in an attempt to save the world.

After pulling in $26.7 million in its first weekend, Dawn of the Dead is giving the entertainment media a field day with variations of the headline "Top-Grossing Zombies Scare Away Jesus." That's no surprise. The fact that The Passion held #1 for three full weeks will probably remain the film industry's most significant event this year.

But what are we to conclude from the fact that mainstream film critics are giving Dawn of the Dead much higher marks than The Passion? Sure, Gibson's work was flawed, but is it really inferior in terms of artmaking, meaning, and significance? What a sad, sad commentary on critical discernment in the mainstream. It seems their credibility crumbles when they prove incapable of appreciating the work of a principled artist motivated by faith.

But religious press film critics are not afraid of criticizing this horde of cannibalistic monsters.

David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) finds the movie "laced with campy, pitch-black humor with pretensions of social commentary. That the last stronghold of humanity is a shopping mall … is no coincidence, and, in a subversively sardonic way, seems to say much more about carnivorous consumerism than cannibalistic corps of corpses." But in his view, the film is still sorely lacking. He concludes that moviegoers, "like the zombies, are out for blood. [The film] perversely pursues a pornographic kind of video-game violence, not to educate, but to entertain and exploit."

Zachary Winn (Christian Spotlight), a fan of the original Living Dead trilogy, actually had high hopes for the film, but came away unsatisfied. "We are left with a standard and predictable action/horror movie, lacking anything that was remarkable or interesting about the original. Most notably missing are the enjoyable, fleshed-out characters and the witty social commentary."

Writer Charlie Kaufman and director Michel Gondry brought their formidable imaginations together for this year's most challenging and original comedy, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The film stars Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in excellent performances, and features an impressive supporting cast that includes Tom Wilkinson (In the Bedroom, The Patriot), Kirsten Dunst (Spider-Man), Mark Ruffalo (You Can Count On Me), and Elijah Wood in his first post-Frodo performance.

Carrey plays Joel, the ex-boyfriend of a flirtatious flibbertigibbet. Broken-hearted, Joel seeks help from a doctor who promises to delete all painful memories of the failed relationship from his mind. But during the process, Joel has second thoughts, and ends up fleeing through his own memories in an attempt to salvage what he can of his precious past before the deletion is complete.

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March (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48