What to do with a zombie? Do we really have to wonder anymore? Is there anything we haven’t seen yet?
Well, I guess it doesn’t matter. When the zombie genre maker George A. Romero wants to make a zombie movie who is Universal to say no? Unfortunately, Land of the Dead may be the new film from Romero but it simply feels like the old thing released in a different year as zombies eat people and are ultimately shot in the head. Yah, didn’t you know? You kill a zombie by shooting it in the head!
With Land of the Dead we find just that, the Earth is now primarily inhabited by zombies and small groups of humans are forced to live in enclosed spaces to keep from becoming one of them. One such place is where our story is centered. This “city” has its classes as the rich inhabit a towering skyscraper in the center of the city and the rest of society is forced to live meager lives scurrying around the streets below, separated from the walking dead by only electric fences and rivers on two sides.
One other safety measure employed in this “land of the dead” is the use of zombie killing mercenaries, who go out occasionally in their armored tanks, aptly named “Dead Reckoning,” in search of supplies and head popping fun. What they don’t know is that the zombies are evolving. Yah, you heard me the walking dead people are getting smarter. I guess in a world where dead people come back to life we should be able to accept just about anything, but personally I have my limits, and zombies that can think and learn shit really doesn’t work for me. Nevertheless, it happens, and the zombies aren’t exactly happy with getting shot in the head. Who would be? So they take to the streets and make their way toward the city to do a little damage of their own.
Meanwhile, one of the leaders of the mercenary army goes rogue and a team of his peers are sent out to stop him before he goes and does something terrible, which is where the problem lies. In a world where zombies are gnawing on arms, gutting dead bodies and literally ripping the throats out of people through their dead mouths I would think a better storyline, and an altogether bigger problem, would be Darwin’s zombies as opposed to the silly little story of a cranky hit man. Granted this peeved employee is played by John Leguizamo, who happens to be one of my favorite actors, but it still doesn’t help the fact that it is all too simple and boring for a movie that could have had so much more tension.
Dennis Hopper plays the wealthy industrialist behind the fortified city and he is good enough as he gets in a few good one liners, but good acting isn’t going to save this plotline that spells “seen it” the entire time.
The gore is great, horror movies need more gore like this, but Romero just doesn’t tell the lives of his principal characters as well as he did in earlier greats such as Dawn of the Dead, which was great primarily because he told the story of the people versus the zombies, not the people versus the people versus the educated zombies versus the people. It all just gets too convoluted and where Romero is trying to be clever it just begins to feel as if he forgot what made his earlier films so great.
If you are a gore fan, check out Land of the Dead, but you aren’t going to get anymore than just that, gore. The story is stupid and even the gore gets boring, this is a Halloween rental at best, and even then I would much rather option for an earlier Romero flick than this title.
Oh, and on a final note, Asia Argento is HOT, give me more skin please!
