I have long been wanting to write an appraisal (ha!ha!ha!) of the movie Land of the Dead, George Romero is one of the few directors that I love who’s works are far from the realism category that I much appreciate.
What I like about the film is that Romero splits his focus between the dead stalking humans and humans screwing each other.
This time around, the dead are starting to show signs of cooperation and low-level thought, which by the way some of my friends find really inconsistent (what do they know?!)
I have known George A. Romero to be the originator of the modern zombie movie, and with Land of the Dead, he hasn't done much to refine it.
In the movie the zombies are creepier than in the past, and the gore is more hard-core, but the story still boils down to the same old, same old: humans running away from hoards of slow-moving zombies.
In some way, the film feels like a hybrid of last year's Dawn of the Dead remake crossed with Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later (which i love...both!).
Also to some extent I believe that this movie has its own share of political undertone.
There are a couple of good, primitive scares, but the relentlessness of the previous films has been replaced by a series of "boo!" moments.
The movie has a straightforward feel, and you have a sense from the beginning who's going to live and who's going to die.
At least there's one iconic scene: the dead gradually rising from the river after they have discovered that water isn't a barrier (this is obviously my favorite
sequence! The Lighting was perfect, so complimentary with the texture!).
This is one of those scenes meant for posters and nightmares, and it's one of only a few instances when Land of the Dead strikes exactly the right chord.
