Bloody blockbuster scores big
We all thought they were dead, didn’t we? Those zomboids. We thought the ’80s had seen the last of their smelly carcasses. With the unrequited fanfare of Romero’s “Day of the Dead” and the endless spoofs that have made them more Abbott and Costello than Steven King, how could any genre live? But they don’t live, do they? Not really. They aren’t as immortal as vampires or as savage as werewolves. They’re slow, shuffling shadows of what they used to be, a dismal reminder of our own mortality. They’re zombies, and no matter how dead we think they are, they always manage to creep back up on us. George Romero’s fourth film chronicling the zombie invasion he’s famous for, “Land of the Dead,” is ample proof that you can’t kill what’s already dead.
While little knowledge of his previous films (“Night of the Living Dead,” “Dawn of the Dead,” and “Day of Dead”) are required to follow the plot of “Land,” it does help to understand the typical Romero style of doing things. First of all, zombies are more sympathetic in Romero’s movies. They don’t run or leap or cry out for human brains like most incarnations. They just have a strange supernatural urge to feed on the living. And this uncontrollable desire, for some reason, conjures intolerance and hatred among us breathers. The opening of “Land” is perhaps the best opening to a zombie movie ever, since it depicts this reversal of roles quite candidly. The humans are invading zombie territory for supplies and massacring them effortlessly as they tramp through the infested town. Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later” and Zack Snyder’s “Dawn of the Dead Remake” each open the other way around, with the zombies invading and humans being slaughtered.
Although the opening of the film and its introduction to the main characters are excellent, the movie’s luster begins to fade once we’re introduced to the world of Fiddler’s Green, a lone human city guarded by posts and electronic fences. The supply runners do their running in a reinforced steel bus called the Dead Reckoning. The trouble begins for the humans when Cholo (John Leguizamo) steals the Dead Reckoning from Fiddler’s egotistic leader (Dennis Hopper), and a mercenary, Riley (Simon Baker), is charged with chasing him outside the city to steal it back. Meanwhile, the zombies are finally beginning to wise up. Big Daddy, a smart zombie, labors to show his zombie pals how they can break into the city. The characters and story present themselves well enough, but the real purpose of the movie is made quite clear even by the DVD’s front cover. It’s all about tearing off limbs, and a little about eating them. The rest is just exposition.
Gore doesn’t even describe what Romero has done here. This is the absolute filthiest, bloodiest, most disgusting movie of all time. It makes recent box office splatter films like “Saw” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” seem like Sunday morning church service. And it does not relent throughout the entire film. While I commend Romero’s use of blood and guts in a time where “less is more” is the Hollywood mantra, it is often used at the expense of the movie’s pacing. By the second hour, watching a person’s head being ripped off is about as exciting as watching someone clip their toenails.
With abominable pacing and only moderate character development, “Land of the Dead” gets two paws. It is little more than a nostalgic resurgence of all the blood-filled horror movies of the ’70s and ’80s. If you’re a fan of Dario Argento or Tobe Hooper then you’re bound to eat this movie limb for limb. But if you’re not, you’d better start running.
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Nov 4 2005. Filed under Other.
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