Land of the Dead Review

Written by: Steve Oetjengerdes   

Any true horror fan knows that George Romero created the zombie genre.  Since that night in Pennsylvania when Romero and his buddies at Latent Image decided to make their ground-breaking horror movie, we as movie-goers have witnessed an ilk of zombie splatter and warm, gooey brains.  Are we complaining?  Certainly not.  Have they all been great?  Certainly not.  But the point that I'm trying to illustrate is that virtually every gorehoud, zombie-lover who has made a zombie movie has George Romero to thank for their inspiration.  Hands down.  Now that I've gotten that out of the way, onto the review.

I haven't read any of the other reviews about this movie, save one.  So I apologize in advance if I repeat any facts or share any common feelings.  It was nice to see Romero was getting back to his roots with Land, since we hadn't seen anything from him that was zombie related in the 90s.  However, I think I may have expected a bit too much.  Perhaps George did take too much time away from zombies.

The plot was, well, weak.  In the Dead trilogy, the zombies were scary because they were an actual threat to society.  They were primitive, mindless flesh-eaters.  In Land of the Dead it seemed as though they were another class; their existence was accepted, therefore making them not truly a threat.  Fear of the unkown is for more powerful than anything else.  The zombies in Land were more of a nuisance, and even a source of entertainment and generating revenue(the scene where Asia Argento is fighting in the cage).  And I have mixed feelings in regards to the fact that the undead were able to utilize tools, and in a way think and act as a group.

The social commentary was here as well, but I feel it was not as potent as in the other three.  In Land it's basically that the elite few have most of the money and they are the true evil, the real threat.  It's not realy that big of an eye opener, not like the idea of consumerism in Dawn of the Dead.

The acting in Land was strong, but I was a bit taken by the bigger names in this installment.  I was hoping to see a few more no-name actors playing the leads.  The trilogy had a very homegrown, DIY feel to it; a stone intent on smashing Hollywood windows.  Land seemed more Hollywood friendly, with the aforementioned bigger stars and even the use of CGI (gasp)!

The makeup FX were top notch, and Tom Savini's cameo was a nice perk.  I wish that Tom had a hand in the FX department (did you know that Tom was supposed to do the FX in Night, but he was serving in Vietnam as a combat photographer)?  I think the effects were done by Greg Nicotero and company, but I could be wrong.  Regardless, they were very well done and the zombies looked like very convincing cadavers.

And don't forget the gore.  I was really surprised at how far the blood-stained envelope was pushed in an R-rated theatrical release.  So I feel this was Romero's way of taking a head shot at Hollywood, no pun intended.

The atmosphere was creepy in Land.  It was probably up there with the overall spookiness of Night.  There was a sense of desolation, and the city almost seemed ravaged by war (perhaps this was another comparison to modern society, living in a post-9/11 world). 

Perhaps the biggest turd dropped by this movie was its ending.  So we the movie-goer are to believe that a small band of zombies will survive, and humanity will co-exist with the undead?  Are we supposed to feel sympathetic to these walking rot boxes and sigh to ourselves as the theatre lights come back up?  Screw that!  I'm off to my local gun shop and finding myself a nice shotgun.

All in all, I did enjoy this movie, enough to go out and purchase my own copy.  We can sit here all day and be meticulous vultures with just about anything if we want to.  There is, after all, this thing called "suspension of disbelief" that keeps me loving the movies, despite their little discrepancies.  But that doesn't mean I'm not getting a shotgun.  The living dead are out there...