land of the dead
[[land_of_the_dead]] last edit on Mar 15, 2009 12:00 AM by Anonymous

First there was the trilogy of films 'of the dead'. Now there is another one. Of it. Well not a trilogy but a final part of the quadrilogy maybe? Who knows. It's the first George A Romero zombie flick since Day of the Dead anyway. I can't really remember what Night was light but I don't remember it that favourably. Probably because it's so old.

Anyway before I end up doing another review like Must Love Dogs, let's tell you what's going off here. Since Day of the Dead, it seems society has sort of managed to accustom to living with Zombies. Select groups of people go out on raids to Zombie infested towns to supply the 'clean' towns. But the clean town featured in this film is actually corrupt. Which is where your Romero element comes in. This isn't just a Zombie film, it's a social comment. Only not quite so much as with Dawn of the Dead. Or at least it isn't handled so well.

You have a corrupt guy in charge of the town where all the wealthy get to live apart from a starved public. He's also involved in all manner of vice and such like. Doesn't care about those who he can't profit from. Plus there's plenty of people who are now rather blaze about the zombies and treat them like playthings, have their photo taken in front of chained up ones and organise fights between them and humans who have crossed the boss of town. We also have the aspect that the Zombies learn to work together and yet the humans consistently fail to do so.

It's carried out reasonably well but can't help feeling cheap. Not that the previous films had ever really featured actors of such great quality anyway but this does feel like it was made for the sake of it without quite so much inspiration. The gore is just as strong as ever of course and there's quite a few good jokes in it but it just doesn't quite hit the mark it really should have done.

Enjoyable enough though really and a suitable way to pass 90 minutes. It's still the case that no one does Zombie movies as well as George Romero.

6/10

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