SUBMITTED BY Timbo

March 17, 2004 — Sarah Polley, former bratty sidekick to Baron Munchausen and ex-supermarket clerk ("Go"), has finally gone big-budget with the remake of "Dawn of the Dead".

In a blood-soaked T-shirt (her 'husband' turned zombie on her and was terminated), Polley sits down between scenes to chat in an upscale Toronto hardware store called Case Hardware, patterned on the U.S. chain Ace Hardware.

The shelves are stocked but the store is otherwise empty, as is the rest of the "mall" we're in. There are Hallowed Grounds and RPM, with fonts on the signage clearly modelled after Starbucks and HMV. There is also a Panasonic Store (a la the Sony Store), a Roots and a Nike. It's a fullscale mall hidden away within the remains of the now-defunct Thornhill Mall on Bayview.

A remake of the George Romero original, Dawn Of The Dead is the zombies-in-a-mall movie. The film with Polley, Ving Rhames and Mekhi Phifer retains the thinly-veiled anti-consumerist message of the original. It's a good fit, given Polley's past as a World Trade Organization protester (she's the only castmember who's ever been pepper-sprayed).

"I don't know if I could've justified it to myself if this film didn't have the anti-consumerist message," Polley says. "But in fact I'm just a huge zombie fan."

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