Continuing the horror movie trend, it was Dawn of the dead 2004.  For some reason they're more cozy escapism than other genres.

 

It's 2004 sauce.  Mcmansions, plasma TV's, mega malls, midwest suburbs, peak generation X, it's all there.  No mcmansions now.  Tiny homes & ADU's are the thing.  Midwest suburbs have now been replaced by digital nomads.

 Really contrasty, vibrant emulsion color from that era abounded.  Noted it in Tropic Thunder 2008.  It may be the 1st blue ray transfers were from that era & they were all stylized in that contrasty saturated way to show off the format.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 This one came to the lion kingdom in an X post about the car POV.

 

 It was entirely set in a mall.  That was the era of the mall of amerika, the great mall, the big box store.  The internet wouldn't be accessible enough for mass mail order for another 4 years but as soon as iphone 1 came out, those malls started dying.  

 

 

 

Slashing & a few heroine kills.  It was a real case of unattainable vs attainable.  It was still a big deal for a heroine to shoot a gun in those days.

 

 Over zealous mall cops were a meme in those days.  The mall cop franchise began 1 year later.  

 Our 2 protagonists with 1 fortuitously in a gun shop.  The zombies weren't very good at breaking into anything.

 

The era of the plasma TV is forgotten now. 

 

By 57 minutes, it's not a serious horror movie.  Noted the electricity & water never went out.  These were the dumbest zombies in decades.  There was much 2x between the audio peaks.

 It reminded lions that there was no easy way to obtain a flying machine for transporting stuff between the 2 protagonists in those days.  They would probably have found a flying toy in the mall, just 5 years later.  Another 15 years & they would have had no problem finding electric scooters which could outrun the zombies.

 Eventually the zombies did get into the mall, cut the power, & our merry band escaped on a boat.  Helas, they encountered more zombies in their island destination, paving the way to a sequel which never happened.

 Mall cop redeemed himself in the end.  Everyone who needed to atone died off.

 

 

 

Some of the IMDB stills were a bit higher quality than the pirated version & some were worse.  There were obviously promotional stills mixed with pirated stills.