"Jake Weber's motives for signing on to a Dead remake were a little less obvious: "I wanted to make an art film." Weber was kidding, but he did go on to reveal that he, like Polley, was convinced by the picture's directing-producing team to take on a role that might not naturally receive; much less deserve; his attention. "I met these guys in New York, and they were talking about Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and I loved that movie. I loved the idea of making a smart horror movie, a movie that was a lot of fun and is punk rock and fierce and wild but also is about real people." Having completed the film, Weber set his sights high on the predecessors whose company this new Dawn of the Dead keeps. "I think the bar for this movie is Phil Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Halloween, I think 28 Days Later gets in there. I think Alien, which kind of a little more sci-fi, but still has elements of this, [or] The Shining." His comparisons, he clarified, were not so much qualitative as they were examples of effective approaches to a clich-laden genre: "I mean, those are the kinds of movies that are quality films that are in that genre that are terrifying.""