Land of the Dead Review
Written by: TERRORWATCH
To define a good zombie the main three characteristics it must have are. One, a slow limb walk that anyone in the world could out run. Two, a passion to eat flesh and hunt down humans to keep there tummy's full. And three, be simple, no thought no direction just the urge to bite. Ive always saw zombies as a liquid source, i mean break down a barrier and the race of zombies just flood out with no direction they just float were they end up. So why the hell is our friend George A Romero trashing his zombie trilogy with Land Of The Dead? Not to say the movie is a bad one because its far from it but I've always thought that in order to keep a movie good never spoil the main feature because whatever hight explosives scenes try and make up for it, it wont. I don't particularly liked being scared by a movie but I'm afraid to say the old boy has done it to me on this one with a sad over the top zombie mess. But ill get back to that, i mean why wouldn't I...
The movie starts off with showing us the current position in social life, being the zombies really run the earth and us survivor's are trying to survive the best way possible. The rich stay in the high rise building drinking brandy ans smoking cigars while the common folk walk the barricaded miles what they call home now. The cast included, Simon Baker, Asia Argento, Dennis Hopper, John Leguizamo and Robert Joy. To be honest the cast really didn't do a bad job on the acting front but because there was no character building going on i really didn't care what happened to them. There was nothing there to give me a past to a face or a emotion to a cry so it just felt watching cows getting slaughtered, no effect on me what so ever. One scene is were a civilian says, were fucked when he realised that a zombie army is coming for him and he cant escape, now if that was happening, you would be in shocked and that cheesy ass no room line ain't needed. Its things like that really get to me and i know if i was directing id have more sense not to put it in. I think the most i felt for was for the main zombie of the movie, the black garage guy. He just looked so scary and did a real good job of acting like a fool trying to act like a zombie with a brain... Like that ain't already rotted? Overall with no character development or any emotion from the characters it was just a case of watching lambs to the slaughter against the raging zombie army.
OK a great point to the movie is that the great George hasn't spared any gore for the movie. The movie was full of flesh ripping action, blood splats, blood spurts, blood balls and blood baths. The movie was dripping after the first 10 minuets and you could really tell you was watching a part of the famous zombie trilogy addition. Great kill shots were the zombies are bitting ripping, tearing humans are great and the use of minimal CGI only to enhance big shots was excellent. Each scene was done by special effect make up and really did get my spine tingling with every great magic trick completed. All the scenes were very dark and gloomy and i thought begin a new 2005 movie wouldn't manage to give that feeling I've really wanted out of the movie but it did deliver. I have no complaints about what i saw in this aspect of the movie and if you did you needed to be fed to the ass zombies.Now for the official zombie complaints. For me the best way for a zombie movie to go is to be simple. A group of people trying to survive a zombie attack and right at the end the zombies break through a slowly eat up the whole cast. But Land of the dead has just made the mistake of making a zombie movie busy and too complicated. I got so lost in the small pointless storylines and small dramas that occurred in the movie and the zombie effect went out the window. I mean the whole idea of this movie was to create the same great feeling we all got when we watch Day and Dawn of the dead's but this high pointless action just like Resident Evil lost it totally. For me he went to far with the zombies, they seemed to have feelings and emotions to different things that went on. It seemed that the zombies now looked like cry babies and i like seeing zombies look evil and like they don't give two fucks because they actually cant but this time they were pussy's. I really did hate this and it scared the movie for me big time.
OK so after seeing this movie that I've waited two years for how do i feel about it all? Well i can say that the movie for me wasn't a total mind blowing thing for me, it was a bit of a disappointment considering George being the master of the zombies would of left alone stupid ideas of enhancing them. But he did and bang there goes a possible good movie. The sound effects were great as that of the title run up, good music and no lame ass action rock made the movie a little better and small tunes played in the background made the movie have more of a lovable Dawn feeling to it. I think the major problem this movie had was the lack of simplicity to it, it was overly complicated and considering the other early movies really did let them down because they were all so greatly simple. I never thought id say this but i preferred the high action Dawn of the dead remake to this movie and I've never wanted to say this but i think that Land of the dead should of stayed dead.