Land of the Dead

I am the rare George Romero fan who actually does not like his zombie films at all. I can appreciate them for their social subtext and the unique, unstoppable genre Romero was pivotal in spawning, but I personally find the slow-moving, witless, “slapstick zombies” — remember the pie-in-face in 1978’s Dawn of the Dead? Well, we get a couple of fright-wigged clowns in Land of the Dead — a bore. Give me Romero’s The Dark Half, Monkey Shines, or Creepshow any day.

Having said that, I am going to review Land of the Dead as if I did like the genre because I think that fans of the Romero zombies are going to love this long-awaited picture. It starts and ends just like the others in the series: Somewhere in the middle. Zombies are running (or lumbering, as the case may be) rampant, and small last bastions of human holdouts are fighting against them with all the firepower they can muster.

With the exception of the director, we’ve got everyone new — a different DP (Miroslaw Baszak), name actors (Dennis Hopper, Simon Baker, John Leguizamo, and a kick-ass, fishnet-clad Asia Argento), and the great makeup FX man Greg Nicotero, who’s never been in charge of a Romero zombie film before this. Although Land of the Dead does look much, much better and the acting is well above the mark set in the other Dead movies, it does still very much have Romero’s stamp on it and I believe his core fans will be thrilled with the result.

There are the elaborately rigged, very inventive death scenes we’ve all come to expect —the screening audience laughed out loud in these spots — and the comedy is coupled with a droll commentary on our current sociopolitical situation: While a bloody war rages on all around them, a microcosm of people live in their shopping-mall-perfect world, going about their days with their heads buried deep in the virtual sand.

Those who love Romero’s inventive undead characters will get a real kick out the circus zombies, priest zombie, desperate housewife zombie, and the leads: Big Daddy zombie (Eugene Clark) and toothy zombie (Jennifer Baxter). Gore hounds will be rewarded with plenty of viscera, blood, bites, decapitations, head-shots, and gallons of goo.

Land of the Dead has got everything Romero’s fans have been waiting for in the 20 years since Day of the Dead, and more.

Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson