My final thoughts on Land Of The Dead

[Trin]

The whole expectations argument doesn't work for me. I didn't spend 20 years building expectations. I spent 19 years believing the series was done and over and less than 3 months looking forward to Land. I barely got back in the "Dead" mood enough to be excited about it before it hit theaters. If anything, Land was wham-bam for me. The expectations were simple. GAR put out 3 quality movies and people expected a fourth. Doesn't matter whether it's 2 years later or 20. People are fond of saying that all the polls agree that HPOTD member by and large liked Land. But the polls also consistently agree that Land was the worst of the 4 (until Diary, that is, which now seems to have deposed Land as the worst). Matrix was a great movie quickly followed up by two horrible sequels. Were built up expectations to blame for the two follow-ups sucking? No. It doesn't matter how much time passed. The original movie was stellar and the follow-ups sucked. No further analysis necessary. Alien was a great movie followed up by a stellar sequel 7 years later. No amount of time would make Aliens seem lame based on built expectations left over from Alien. The sequel was just great. Land suffers from being mediocre. It's not clearly stellar. It's not clearly awful. It's sitting on a fence whereby personal opinion and high or low expectations can sway it either direction.

[shootemindehead]

Hello, I must be knocking around this site for many years now (nearly 8 or 9 I think) and this is my first post. So be gentle! I found "Land of the Dead" to be quite entertaining to be honest and I just don't get the hate it attracts from some people. Yes, it's flawed (like everything Romero has done), but it does have strengths. I just look at it as another chapter in Romero's "real" dead series. What worries me though is not the direction "Land of the Dead" took, it's the fact that Romero has seemed to have abandoned his original take on the zombie outbreak and started again with pointless "Diary of the Dead". I didn't mind that film, but couldn't help thinking that George would have been better off adding another chapter to his original series. I'm unsure when or where the next "...of the Dead" film is going to be, but I don't hold any hope that it's going to be part of the series I grew up with. It sounds like another "Start" of the Living Dead and I don't want that to be honest. There are so many outbreak films, it's becoming like "Groundhog Day of the Dead". I understand that the new boy on the block is always going to get flak and be judged against it's predecessors and that's probably why "land of the Dead" has gotten some stick since it's release. As has been said, the far superior (and best of the series by a long shot) "Day of the Dead" also recieved massive criticism when it was released and now it's viewed with more fondness. The ire with which "Day of the Dead" was subjected to, though, had always baffled me. I never got it. To me "Day of the Dead" was/is the zombie movie to which all others should aspire to. There is a level of utter dread in that film that no other zombie movie (and few other horror movies) have managed to attain. Anyway, here's my review of "Land of the Dead"... While the fourth instalment of Romero's definitive "dead" saga is not really what fans were expecting, it does retain the essential element. Decent zombies. The door-opener for this film, the silly Zack Snyder remake of "Dawn of the Dead", just didn't cut it in that direction. To put it simply, if you can make zombies physically fit enough to run the hundred yard dash, but unable to break a window in a shopping mall to get to their food source.....you're asking a bit much. Snyder's movie, while it contained some good scenes and set pieces, just didn't come off as a proper zombie movie at the end of the day. It could/would have been a lot better, if it had stuck to the "rules", as it were. The "appeal' of the dead, is their sheer number and the relentlessness of the slow shuffling attack, coupled with simply not knowing where they will pop up next. Giving them the ability to race around the place somehow diluted their menace. The aforementioned "rules" are included in Romero's vision and that's one of the prime strengths of his particular take on the genre he practically created, even if this particular episode leaves the viewer somewhat wishing for a little more (personally I believe the 93 min running time was too short and the story as a whole, a little anaemic). Romero's episodic approach, serialised but not truly connected, gives us a glimpse into the lives of people who have survived the original zombie apocalypse and the small attempts at society which they have tried to establish. This particular section of the series deals with a full city of human characters or at least a partially filled city and is the largest group of humans Romero has dealt with so far. Previous films have simply dealt with small groups of people trying to cope with (and avoid) the phenomena that has engulfed them. But that is the engrossing thing about Romero's take on the world of the dead. His observations of separate groups of people and their separate methods of dealing with the undead biting at their heels and "Land of the Dead" is simply another look at another group. This is one of the reasons why "Land" is difficult to hate as much as some fans have declared. The story itself, is quite a low key affair, for the viewer that is. For the protagonists, it's an absolute bloody disaster. It concerns itself with the simple plot that the dead completely outnumber the living (even more so than "Day of the Dead" I presume) and "control" the majority of the...ahem...land outside the city in which the human characters have garrisoned themselves. As supplies run low in the city, people are hired to venture outside the protection of the city and gather more supplies (including booze, which is a highly sought after commodity for the richer echelons of this post-society society). They also take a large toll on the population of the dead. All part of the job, no doubt. They travel into the hordes of the dead in a various convoy of bikes, cars and trucks. The most powerful of the vehicles that these risk-takers use is the `Dead reckoning' (the original title, by the way), a huge mock-up truck with a multitude of wheels, armour, machine guns and rockets...Absolutely zombie proof. We are introduced to these post apocalyptic `hunter-gatherers' in the movie's very entertaining opening sequence. We are also introduced to the dead of the title. These pathetic (but terrifying) entities wander around their former stomping grounds, trying to play instruments and carrying out the former duties of the occupations they filled when they were "alive". One of the dead, `Big Daddy', thinks he should be filling people's cars with fuel, even though the only people driving cars these days are gun toting desperados that would be happy to put a bullet through his head. `Big Daddy' seems to have developed or retained some sort of intelligent function and awareness, an issue that was alluded to in the previous film, 1985's "Day of the Dead". He displays a fear and loathing of the people who rampage into his town, shooting up everyone and looting. This, in time, makes him the natural leader of the dead that inhabit the one-horse town that exists in the suburbs of 'Fiddler's Green', the city that the living people inhabit...and while not trying to give too much away, 'Big Daddy' leads them in a zombie assault on the Green with the obvious results ensuing. Anyone even remotely familiar with Romero's zombie flicks will be aware of what that means. The somewhat lacklustre story aside, "Land of the Dead" is, in fact a fitting entry to the series. "Night of the living Dead" dealt with the un-defined genesis of the phenomena, "Dawn" dealt with the final breakdown of society in the face of the phenomena and "Day" and "Land" both deal with groups of people surviving the phenomena. There are problems though. The major one being the timeframe of this particular episode. If we take it that "Night of the Living Dead" (1968), could have occurred in the 1970's and "Dawn of the Dead" (1978) at the turn of the decade, with "Day of the Dead" (1985) happening in the early 1980's, then logically "Land of the Dead" should be taking place in either the late 80's or early 90's. I say this because the main male and female characters, who can't be more than early/mid thirties "remember" what it was like before the dead started to make an appearance. This then means that the technology/weaponry of the piece should be of a 1980's standard at best. So, we shouldn't really be seeing laptops, with digital readouts of perimeter security for the city, mobile phones or modern style military/police helmets and machine guns. It would have been better if Romero had limited the human characters firepower to M-16's or UZI's, walkie talkies and 1980's style military equipment, a la "Day of the Dead". It's a flaw that many people wouldn't bother with, but it does let the movie down somewhat. The obvious reason for including such modern equipment in the movie is that it was probably cheaper than locating 1980's stock. But that aside, overall, "Land of the Dead" is an entertaining episode in a series that could keep on trucking along. Even after Romero joins his band of zombie hordes. The main thing is that any director, who will take up the drama, should be made to stick to Romero's established rules. The scope of the overall piece is huge and open to a multi-variation global vision. I do hope it's not the last time that we see Romero's dead walk.

[Thorn]

Solid review in my opinion, and glad you decided to post finally. Look forward to hearing from you in the future.