Land of the Dead

I don't think I need to explain the significance and excellence of George Romero's original three Living Dead movies if you're reading a review of the fourth movie in the series. You know. It should come as no surprise, too, that as a horror movie fan, I enjoy the original three. I'm one of the weirdos that thinks Day Of is the best one, but each has their own appeal for various reasons. It was, however, with some trepidation that I decided to kick off watching the rest of George Romero's filmography with the fourth movie in the series, Land Of The Dead. Romero's name may be synonymous with starting a genre, and he may have four absolute classic horror movies (the Dead trilogy and Creepshow), but beyond that, it gets rough. Besides that, the Dead series has a reputation for poignant and pointed social commentary and intelligent storytelling. Land had major studio backing, which meant a bigger canvas to paint on and a lot more colors with which to paint. Unfortunately, going bigger meant losing the smaller details that made Romero's Dead movies what they are. That's not to say Land is a bad movie. If you're looking for carnage, and almost all of it practical effects, boy howdy did you come to the right place. Land is, without a shadow of a doubt, gorier and nastier than the other three put together. If you want carnage, this will scratch that itch. The direction is well done, the set pieces are neat, it's all a perfectly fine zombie movie. But that's ALL it is. Oh, there's hints of social commentary, particularly class warfare. But where Night, Dawn, and Day either used the situation, dark satire, or tackled it head on, Land doesn't do much with at all. A rich guy takes over a tower, surrounds it with fortification and armed guards, lets whom he feels is worthy into it, and makes everybody else inside the walls fight for scraps. It's given the broadest of strokes, and truth be told, it's painfully unoriginal. There's a hundred "paradise in a zombie wasteland run by a tyrannical warlord" stories out there. Several seasons of The Walking Dead alone told variations of this story. The only thing that makes Land different is the scale, with the gilded paradise being a 40 story building and those in charge being not just privileged but rich and spoiled. It's not insightful or clever, it's not satirical, and it only exists to fuel the main conflict of the movie. Land doesn't need the building to be Biff's casino from Back To The Future II; it could've been just a well-protected warehouse, or a gated community. Without the social commentary being strong, this is just a routine zombie movie. The zombies evolving and learning to use tools and strategize is different, I'll give it that. It picks up on Bub from Day Of and expands on it, and I like that, but it doesn't really feel like it matters either. It's only there for the zombies to take down the tower. It would've been far more interesting to see humanity suddenly faced with the shambling hordes no longer being mindless omnivores. Further taking it down a notch is some of the acting. You can see in Simon Baker's eyes that he's thinking about the paycheck. John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper star as, respectively, John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper, which, depending on your taste, could be a good or bad thing. And while Asia Argento is listed as an actress in this movie, I'll be damned if anybody told her. Eugene Clark, who plays the main zombie Big Daddy, shows more depth and range than Argento, and all he does is bellow and stagger. I don't regret seeing Land, as it works as a turn-your-brain-off popcorn movie. Plenty of action, plenty of mayhem, and doesn't wear out its welcome. But if you come to this expecting what Romero did in the three previous Dead movies, that is where the disappointment will settle in. Perhaps it's expecting too much to hit the same bar twenty years removed from the last installment ... but perhaps it was foolish of Romero to try.