Dawn of the Dead (2004) analysis- Monica and the chainsaw

In this scene Monica, the blonde female in the group, is carved up by Glen when he loses control of the chainsaw, a phallic weapon which also reinforces her character archetype. Monica follows genre convention to be the ‘female victim’ as throughout the film she drinks, smokes and has sex with Steve which all represent her to be impure. This archetype is always given this impure representation giving the horror genre an ideology that if you drink, smoke and have sex, which is going against the “innocent” norm, you’ll die. The female characters that follow the genre convention of being “good” is called the final girl, as coined by Carol Clover, and often survives plus is hardened by their experience to give them more masculine conventions.

Snyder uses a medium shot here to make you focus on the action on screen and show a little of the low key background so your eye is drawn to the much more brightly lit character in the foreground. This film also uses a mixture of practical and computer effects to create body horror but in this scene computer effects are predominantly used so we can see the chainsaw slice through Monica. This is completely different to the original Dawn of the Dead which has the practical effects of Tom Savini. The digital effects blend in to give a more modern feel to this version of Dawn of the Dead.

Looking at the institutional context of the film, we can see that censorship has become more lax since the days of ‘Psycho’ and the original ‘Dawn of the Dead’ meaning scenes like Monica’s death are allowed to be shown on screen. There’s no more Hays Code of other strict policy towards violence as audience members have become tougher and are able to handle the high levels of horror. The only form of censorship in the UK now is the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) which only censors a film if it contains intense violence against women and/or hardcore sex. One such film from the horror genre that was recently censored was A Serbian Film due to its representations of body horror and sexual content.