REVIEW: Land of the Dead (2005)

I can honestly say that I write this review with a great deal of mixed feelings, since my entire perception of the movie has been so warped by my nigh-indecent love of the zombie genre, as well as the insanely high expectations that stemmed from Romero's older zombie films. I saw the movie on its opening weekend in the summer, but I waited to review it until I could watch it again and try to work out what was right and what was wrong.

To preface (for those of you who came in late), I'm a zombie movie fan. I'm a zombie nut. I love zombie movies, far more than any other kind of horror movies, because zombies are the only monsters that will genuinely frighten me. I can watch every Friday the 13th movie in a row, but I still won't feel anything other than the shock of the 'jump' scare. If I put Dawn of the Dead into my DVD player, it's with the understanding that I'm going to be filled with a palpable sense of dread, and it's almost a guaranteed night of bad dreams; I even had horrible zombie nightmares after I watched Return of the Living Dead 4 & 5 -- and those movies sucked.

I credit seeing Night of the Living Dead with one of the direct sources of my zombophobia; it was the first horror movie that I remember affecting me. I doubt that it was the first horror film that I ever saw, but when you throw it on the same platform with mindless schlockfests like 976-Evil or Trick or Treat, it's easy to see that one of these is not like the other. NOTLD works so well because it has a subtext that's actually stronger than the text; the terror didn't really come from the zombies (although they were scary, too), but because the humans just couldn't get their shit together. It was as horrifyingly bleak a film as I'd probably ever seen, and I'm not even counting the ending. After watching so many slasher films, Romero's universe hit me in the gut with a very real fear.

Years later, my brother rented Dawn of the Dead, and I vividly remember trying to watch it by myself in the basement of my house. I had to turn the lights on, just so I could make sure that there weren't any zombies slowly and quietly sneaking up behind me. That movie freaked me out in a huge way, because not only was it much gorier, but because it was slower; the world had begun to slip away and the bleakness of the first movie got mapped onto the entire country. The characters were real to me, and I can still see in my mind the baseball player zombie, sitting in front of Gaylen Ross and staring at her through the glass; even the zombies were real people. The heartbeat synth music still makes me tense up inside.

Eventually, I watched Day of the Dead, and I didn't really think too much of it. Thanks to cable and the adios-to-the-VHS-format sale at my local Blockbuster Video, I've probably seen Day more times than the first two, and it's grown on me more every time I watch it. (Romero himself says that it's the one that's grown on him the most.) It's certainly different than the first two, but it makes sense to me now in a way that it didn't when I first watched it; the way the characters act and the things that they do are all reasonable in their context. I'd be loony, too, if I had to face the fact that the world really was ending, and that my best hope for a future was making it to a remote island so that I could wait for a natural death. Plus, the opening scene in the dead city -- "Hellooo! Is anybody there?" -- is a real doozy. (And that Gorillaz song is unlistenable because of the way the sample makes me feel.)

After two decades of flirting with making the project and then watching it slink back into development hell, George Romero finally made Land of the Dead. I saw it on a Sunday afternoon, and I walked out of the theater feeling...

...unsatisfied.

And confused. I almost had no opinion about the movie at all, other than that it didn't feel quite like a Romero zombie movie. It was too slickly made; it had a larger budget, and it showed. Gone were the bland flourescent lights that made Day and Dawn feel real; gone were the ugly sets that looked like real ugly apartments and malls and stores. There was a full-blown score in place, and not the weird synth heartbeat that made my hair stand on end so many times. There were recognizable actors, so I instinctively knew that they were just playing a part, and that cut some of the scares.

Land of the Dead wasn't a Romero horror film.

At least, that's what I thought the first time through. I watched it again on DVD at night, just after I crawled into bed, and I came away with a different opinion. Now, I think of it as almost a Romero film, in pretty much the same way that I felt about Day of the Dead the first few times that I saw it. I liked it a lot more the second time through, and it worked better, perhaps because my expectations were different.



Land begins in a small town somewhere near Pittsburgh, long after the zombie outbreak began. The dead have taken over the world, and, continuing the evolution from Dawn, the zombies are showing signs of thinking. The townspeople (or their corpses, to be precise) are still showing signs that they're pretending to be alive: a zombie band noisily fiddles with their instruments in the park, and two dead lovers shuffle through the town hand-in-hand. A ringing bell at a gas station introduces us to Big Daddy, who comes out of the booth to service a car that isn't there -- a nice undead Pavlovian reaction. Even worse for the still-living scavengers that are hiding behind the bushes is that Big Daddy seems to be able to communicate with his zombie brethren, alerting them that there's food nearby -- it's very bad news when zombies form unions.

The scavengers, led by Riley and Cholo, are working for Dennis Hopper's Mr. Kaufman over in the human enclave of Fiddler's Green. The Green was a resort apartment complex for the wealthy, and then after the change Kaufman fortified its river-protected location and created one of the last havens of the living. Unfortunately, Kaufman is kind of an evil dictator, keeping the rich people in luxury, and keeping the poor oppressed, mostly ignoring the fact that the rest of the world is going under.

Anyway, it's Riley's last night out scavenging -- he knows that the world is going to hell, and he wants to make his way up north to Canada so he can get away from zombies and humans alike. It's Cholo's last night as well, since he's saved enough money to buy his own luxury place in the Green high-rise, and can live it up like Kaufman and his pals. Unfortunately, he's not white, and there's no place in the world of the affluent for the 'lower-class' people. Cholo barely escapes Kaufman's death sentence, and makes off with Dead Reckoning (a super military scavenging vehicle), threatening to launch its missiles at Fiddler's Green unless Mr. K ponies up many millions of dollars.

Oh, and Big Daddy is still pissed that the living came to his town and fucked shit up, so he gathers up his zombie brethren and starts a march to that bright, tall building that the humans drove towards.



Those are the basic conflicts in the story: Riley is enlisted to stop Cholo, and intends to steal Dead Reckoning himself for his trip north; Kaufman needs to stop Cholo, but is also preparing to abandon the Green and its people to the stenches if things go south; Big Daddy and his many, many friends want some warm snacks.

I think the plot works fine, although the super-political aspects of it might be a little bit overdone. Kaufman could not be more George W. Bush if he wore a nametage that said "Hi, I'm George W. Bush." When dealing with the Cholo situation, one of his board members suggests that they pay the money, but Kaufman "doesn't negotiate with terrorists." In turn, that prompts Cholo to remark that he'll "go jihad on his ass." Those are probably the most blatant connections, but there's a whole subtext to the film that, when applied to the USA's current political situation (or then-current), I don't fully understand. Maybe I'm dense, but since the various factions don't quite relate perfectly to real-world political counterparts, I think that some of the more over-the-top stuff was a mistake. The references are almost too literal, and it doesn't add up. I'm no friend of the Republican party, but some of the subtext feels like it was shoe-horned in; on the other hand, it does make sense in the context of the film's political world, and maybe I'm just trying to read too much into it. There was certainly a similar theme in Day of the Dead, but it was far more broad and general, and it was more interesting because it lent itself to interpretation; it was part of the movie, but it never came across as being the point of the movie. The political aspects of Land seem like they're trying to take precedence over the actual story, and they're really the weaker angle.

Speaking of the story, it's another thing that threw me by the end. Night had an ending that bordered on heart-breaking; Dawn's finale was messed-up, but a little hopeful, and Day's ending was about as close to a happy ending as Romero gets. Land finishes on such an odd note that it makes a little piece of me cringe inside. It's too upbeat, despite the fact that what's possibly the last remaining human outpost has been overrun by the undead, and thousands of people are being eaten in the streets. Riley and his gang giggle at each other and drive off hopefully to the north under a sky of fireworks -- while the few remaining people in the world are ostensibly being trapped and devoured a few blocks away. It's doubtful that they really could have done anything to help, but there was a large contrast with how they'd been painted as characters up until that point and how they acted at the end. Plus, there's the whole "they're just looking for a place to go" line that I've spent hours trying to rationalize.

For those that aren't concerned with plot or story, there's still plenty of gore and carnage this time around, supplied with gusto by Greg Nicotero and Co. There's a lot of very, very gory practical effects, enhanced by some CG blood splatter. Sometime in the third act, Riley and Manolete enter an ammo warehouse, and flit their flashlights over a zombie feast that echoes the very famous basement scene from Dawn. There's one particular effect in this scene that -- even as a desensitized horror buff -- made me do the "uuuuuughh" sound in the theater. Who knew that mouths could be stretched that far? It's disgusting. It's awesome. It's a nice gruesome scene, but it could have been much more effective if it weren't for the bland score; the whole movie could have used tense music, not jump music.

I get the feeling that I'm being too harsh on the movie, but that's what I expected because of my deep love and appreciation for the other movies in the series. This is still a good movie, and stands head and shoulders above all of the other recent genre entries -- I just don't love the movie as I love the others. Not yet, anyway, but I do think that will change with repeated viewings and a little time. It's always tough to look at something that you've been waiting for, especially if you've been waiting twenty years for it to come around. Right now, I think of it as the kid brother of the Dead series. It's a worthwhile movie on its own merits, but it doesn't kill me like Night and Dawn do.