Land Of The Dead

In the Land Of The Dead, shiny happy people scamper to and fro, dancing and singing and just having the bestest time! Alright, so that's a bit of sarcasm, but Land Of The Dead just sounds too much like a fairy tale title for me not to think that every time I hear the name.

In fact, Land Of The Dead is George Romero's fourth zombie movie in the, up until now, Dead Trilogy, and it's not the strongest entry in the series, by far.

Now, before you zombie geeks out there begin screaming and eating brains, let me finish! Land isn't a horrible movie, it's just that I expected something more from our old Living Dead buddy George. In the original Night, Romero broke ground! That was horror of a completely different flavor. Then, with Dawn, he uped the stakes with gore beyond anything that had been seen at the time, in fact, the gore was so sudden and unexpected that I actually left the theatre breifly to catch my breath, and that doesn't happen too often. Then in Day, the stakes were changed slightly when the human became more monsterous than the zombies. But, with Land, things don't seem to have changed much.

In Land Of The Dead, the zombies now appear to be the dominant species on the planet, forcing the living to wall themselves into enclaves around the planet. The trouble here is that the enclaves are run by evil moguls who control everything to make money. Now, why we need money in a society that's pretty much contained in once city and teams are sent out to retrieve food and other supplies, isnt' really made clear, but I guess as long as there are living people, we'll want money!

The trouble here comes from two places. First, the zombies are starting to become more aware. They're thinking and they can be taught! Sort of the next generation of Bob the Zombie from Day Of The Dead. The second problem is that the city is run by Dennis Hopper, and Dennis is an evil CEO, as are all CEO's, I think on the job description for any corporate CEO, it says "Must have previous experience. Must have experience maintaining corporate status and stock prices. Must have delusions of grandeur and be a power hungry asshole!" I'm pretty sure that it's in the first CEO interview.

Anyhow, back to the movie. When Dennis Hopper refuses to pay John Leguizamo money that he's owed, John takes an armored, armed big rig, named Dead Reckoning and hold the city hostage. If he doesn't get his money, he's gonna start bombing Dennis' city. But, what John's unaware of is that the zombies have formed an army and are on the way to destroy the city.

This movie moves from between the evil empire and the evil zombies and the few good people who are trapped in the middle. I guess the allegory here is supposed to be that the middle class is sort of trapped between the rich assholes and the poor assholes...or I could be completely confused. But that's kind of what Land does to you, confuses you. Unlike, the previous three movies, I expected something shocking and horrific out of this movie and it just never appeared.

I guess once you've seen one zombie rip the guts out of someone, it loses some of it's potency. The effects here seem to be mostly generated by computers which also takes some of the bite out of them...pardon the zombie pun. While Land isn't up to par with the recent Dawn Of The Dead remake, and it's not even the best of the Romero zombie movies, it's still good to see George back in the Living Dead saddle that he created in the first place, let's just hope that he does a follow up that doesn't seem designed for a mass audience...George, go back to the unrated releases, we all liked those! So, just because I have fond memories of the past, I'll give this movie three cigars, it would've gotten all four if, just once, I would've found myself shocked or frightened.

And until the next time, when I'll rise from the couch to feast upon whatever's in the fridge, remember the best movies are bad movies!