Review of Land of the Dead (2005) by Ilhm — 01 Feb 2013

In an ever-vigilante attempt to stay socially-relevant, George Romero creates a class struggle between the rich and the poor which is also personified in the battle between the living and the dead in LAND OF THE DEAD. Both human and zombie are only looking for the basic rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which have been stripped away from them by a tyrannical overlord that has seized control from his ivory tower, Fiddler's Green (perhaps in reference to SOYLENT GREEN, which seems to have heavily influenced the plot).

Romero makes many poor decisions in LAND OF THE DEAD that fans are sure to disagree with, the first being the further humanization of the zombies. We saw in DAY OF THE DEAD that Romero's zombies had regained their basic motor skills. Here, they begin communicating, using tools, and strategizing, which is a huge stretch for creatures that are supposedly "dead,' and very difficult for audience members to accept. What is worse, Romero, whose films served as the pinnacle of special effects makeup throughout the 70's and 80's, has begun the downward slide into computerized imagery, particularly for the gore sequences. While it is less apparent in LAND OF THE DEAD, his subsequent films would be ruled by these cost-saving (but visually abhorrent) techniques. Only the practical makeup effects handled brilliantly by Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger call back to the greatness of the past three films.

LAND OF THE DEAD presents us with no compelling characters to carry the story, just a group of mismatched rogues for whom we care nothing. The closest that we have to a hero is Simon Baker playing Riley Denbo, but all of his whining and sniveling gets him nowhere. Instead, it seems that we are meant to align ourselves with the zombies, who are the only characters that are portrayed in a sympathetic light, but this group only serves to annoy as well. The lead zombie, aptly named "Big Daddy," looks and acts nothing like the zombies we have come to expect in a Horror film, and even without the benefit of conditioning (as with Bub in DAY), he has rebuilt his intellect to near-human levels. This breaks continuity within the series, and would have worked better if overwhelming hordes of mindless zombies were left to overthrow Fiddler's Green.

There seems to be an utter loss of direction in LAND OF THE DEAD that severely detracts from the film. The dead are left forgotten in the background as the living front their feeble uprising. Romero injects enough of his trademarked social commentary to credit the script with some intelligence, though LAND OF THE DEAD falls far behind NIGHT, DAWN, and DAY.