Starring Sarah Polley and Ving Rhames. Rated 18A.

All that's missing from Dawn of the Dead is the one thing North Americans will be shuffling to the multiplex for: gore. Why drag thousands of corpses back from the grave if you're afraid to show them enjoying their food?

Like George A. Romero's 1978 cult classic, this winningly stylized remake finds the world overrun by zombies on a variation of the Atkins diet: no carbs but plenty of red meat. As in the original, the only way to kill the not-so-dearly departed is to destroy their brains. Mostly, though, it's a new world. In the '70s version, Americans had to wait for the 6 o'clock news to watch their neighbours eat each other; here they catch the action live on CNN.

Things start awesomely. Sarah Polley is Ana, a nurse who, after a long day at the hospital, returns to her suburban Wisconsin home. Although she lives in the kind of idyllic community where children roller-skate on the streets, the neighbourhood goes to hell overnight. By sunrise the kid next door has turned Ana's husband into a Happy Meal and the only homeowners who haven't become breakfast are members of the NRA. Bloodied but unbitten, Ana heads to the place that has everything a modern consumer needs: the cleverly titled Crossroads shopping mall. There she ends up with unlimited access to the Orange Julius stand, hunkering down with a crew that includes a no-bullshit police sergeant (a menacing Ving Rhames), an on-edge security guard (Michael Kelly), and a divorced Everyman (Jake Weber). Refreshingly, the characters rise above caricature. When's the last time a horror film let people sit around and talk honestly--and believably--about how they've messed up their lives?

What's coolest about Dawn of the Dead is that these aren't your parents' zombies. In the original, the reanimated corpses moved slower than an arthritic octogenarian. Tapping the same vein as the 2002 British import 28 Days Later (itself a rip-off of Romero's trilogy-closing Day of the Dead), this DoD calibrates its flesh eaters for hyperspeed.

Thanks to the zombies' increased mobility, the action sequences play out like a live version of the House of the Dead video game. During the outrageously adrenalized, rapid-edit climax, the ravenous corpses come in rotting waves, large-calibre bullets fly, and the living battle the most impossible odds this side of The Lord of the Rings.

Although this Dawn of the Dead is superior in most ways to the original (better acting, a big budget, high-tech FX, enough sugar-buzzed style to satiate MTV addicts), there's still that problematic lack of gore. Romero's version became a classic by going over the top with exploding heads, partial decapitations, and scenes of average people becoming human buffets. The most graphic effect first-time director Zack Snyder manages is a muumuu-clad, grimy housewife taking a poker in the eye. That's not entirely his fault; to avoid an NC-17 rating, buckets of blood and a dump truck's worth of chewed body parts reportedly hit the cutting-room floor.

Although those who enjoy piping-hot plasma on their popcorn will shamble away disappointed, there are still enough positives here to hope for a Day of the Dead ­type sequel. If these new and improved zombies end up reanimated, Snyder should make the censors their first meal.