George A. Romero's Land Of The Dead Review

"LAND OF THE DEAD" reviews

Movie

LAND OF THE DEAD

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2005-10-25 21:09:37

Provider

Review

It's been 20 years since George A. Romero last dabbled with the aesthetically challenged living dead.

The man who practically invented the zombie genre with classic horrors Night, Dawn and Day Of The Dead, returns to cinema at an opportune time because flesh hungry corpses have set the box office alight again thanks to various updates (28 Days Later), remakes (Dawn Of The Dead) and comedy pastiches (Shaun Of The Dead). Perhaps Land... arrives a couple of decades too late to make a similarly striking socio-political comment as its predecessor's but there was always the possibility that it could cut it fright wise.

Some years on from the last movie, the dead have occupied most of the western world except for a small outpost in a US city surrounded by water. The wealthy, well-to-do pretend to live a normal life in the security of a high rise hotel/shopping centre complex run by would-be-president, Kaufman (Dennis Hopper). Those who can't afford such luxury live in relative squalor outside the hotel's walls in slums (The plot's OTT class divide begins to look vaguely plausible in the wake of hurricane Katrina's devastation).

A select group hired by Kaufman venture outside the city to fetch provisions (food, medicine but mainly booze) from nearby ghost-towns, but they inadvertently anger the all new graduate class of zombies into taking revenge.

What's most disappointing about the film is the look and feel. The nightmare-ish vision of a society aimlessly continuing in an apocalyptic future is about as original and well executed as the third Mad Max movie. If this is Land of The Dead then why are there only ever about 20 zombies on show at any one time? Romero has stated his dead are the sympathetic anti-heroes of his films, but a zombie with a conscious is a development we definitely don't need.

For real zombie shocks you'll have to revisit George's original trilogy for a grittier sense of foreboding.