The recent remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004) surprised many fans of the horror genre — myself included — by tweaking one of its oldest conventions: That of the slow moving zombie. The shuffling, shambling hordes of George Romero were suddenly yesterday’s news, replaced by flesh-eating sprinters courtesy of Zach Snyder, director of the remake of Dawn.

This surprising twist was more than many horror fans bargained for. Suddenly, hard-core zombie survivalists who prided themselves on their (theoretical) ability to run rings around slow-moving corpses in order to grab guns and food found their odds of survival (ahem) eaten away.

Snyder certainly deserves credit for attempting something new in his remake of Dawn. Although I’m a purist in some respects, I’ve never understood the purpose of frame-by-frame remakes of films (see Gus Van Sant’s 1998 soulless photocopy of Psycho). Refreshingly, Dawn of the Dead 2004 was not afraid to embrace change. Zombies are fast in Snyder’s universe, at least as fast as their fleeing prey (and what’s worse is that the pursuers presumably never get tired). It’s a pretty scary thought, and I was admittedly shocked at the high-speed carnage shortly after the credits of the new Dawn of the Dead began to roll. In fact, I think the opening 10-minute sequence of that film is an improvement on the original, which is high praise, given the esteem in which I hold Romero’s masterwork. The new Dawn also has a pretty great soundtrack going for it as well.

But after the initial shock of watching zombies chasing prey into their homes and launching themselves onto screaming victims, the effect became progressively less scary. Ultimately, I discovered that I prefer the creeping death of Romero’s shamblers over the high-speed cannibals of Snyder’s new Dawn. Here’s why.

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When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.

Zombies are scary on a number of levels. A world overrun by corpses that were once people we knew — and capable of transmitting an incurable, sickly death/undeath with one infected bite — is a terrifying concept. Arguably worse still is the prospect of being consumed alive by hordes of implacable creatures that aren’t trying to kill you, but to eat you, driven by some mindless instinct to consume.

Yet good zombie movies offer much more than cannibalism taboos and creative death scenes. These and other post-apocalyptic films provide us with an interesting look at society and people in extremis. As viewers we get to witness the effects of the collapse of institutions, the removal of the crutch of technology, and the dispensing of artificial social niceties. Political and religious affiliations are shorn away and true character is revealed in a primitive struggle for survival.

In addition, a zombie apocalypse provides all manner of interesting scenarios for cultural and societal exploration in the hands of a skilled author or director. George Romero for instance commented on our culture of consumerism by placing the action of his classic Dawn of the Dead in the real-world horror of a shopping mall. Max Brooks in his must-read World War Z knocks enough holes in the United States political system to nearly swamp the country, but then picks our collective souls up off the mat by demonstrating the unconquerable fighting spirit and resiliency that allows us to overcome our deficiencies and prevail against all odds.

Zombies are also monster metaphors. If we can accept vampires as symbols of our sexual desire, and werewolves as analogues for the beast lurking within us all, zombies are a reminder of our mortality. Fortunately most of us are not locked in a day-to-day struggle for life, and can cope with the grim realities of the grave by viewing it as an abstract concept. Death is that thing off in the distance, a lurking fear that you can outrun in your youth and middle age. Some choose to bury its reality beneath fine clothes and possessions and other material distractions. Others find the courage to mock and ridicule death, clapping a pie in its terrifying face like a Romero zombie.

But ultimately such laughter proves hollow. No one can escape death. It lurks at the boundaries of our lives, inexorable. It’s very much like a zombie, pressing against the safety glass, waiting with a dumb grin. Because in the end it knows that we all have to meet it.

In the original Dawn of the Dead a small group of survivors manages to clean out a mall of its zombie occupants and secure the entrances. They have all that they could want in this modern utopia — jewelry, appliances, designer clothing, heaps of money. Having climbed to the top of the consumer culture for a brief time they appear satisfied, since they have “everything,” in excess, at their fingertips.

But there is something troubling gnawing away beneath the finery. After panning over the excess within the mall, the camera cuts to massed zombies without, held at bay for the moment but always there, waiting. It’s a subversive reminder of remorseless, implacable death, a fate that renders the materialistic dream meaningless.

The original Dawn of the Dead also teaches us that life has something to offer, something beyond the material, even if we can’t express what it is. Peter, one of the survivors, is prepared at film’s end to commit a form of suicide and let the hordes consume him. Suddenly — and for reasons not immediately clear — he has a dramatic change of heart and rushes for the safety of a departing helicopter. Low on gas and with no food, he and the other survivor’s future looks grim. But the message is that we cannot give in to despair.

Such introspection might be possible in a film with fast zombies, but it’s certainly harder to accomplish, and it’s lacking in the 2004 Dawn. While it may not pack the same adrenaline-filled horror high of the remake, the slow, measured tread of the original Dawn of the Dead provides the perfect pace for an unsettling exploration of our mortality.

Slow and steady ultimately wins the zombie race.