Land of the Dead Review
****NOTE**** Please post your reviews of LOTD in this thread, thanks!
Fans of every genre have had a movie made for them recently, that they are always extremely excited for. The one genre that always seems to be left out, is horror. Die hard horror fans have had very little lately to be excited for when it came to theatrical releases. In fact, a few years ago people were saying "Horror is dead, there will never be another horror genre film for the fans that gets a big release". For a while, it seemed as they were correct, while star wars fans got their new trilogy, horror fans got Wrong Turn, Sci Fi fans had the Matrix while horror fans got Cursed, fantasy fans got Lord of the Rings, we got the Dawn of the Dead remake made for a more mainstream audience, Comic book fans got Batman Begins and Spider man, while we got House of Wax. For a long time, it seemed the critics were correct, Horror seemed dead, all of the former big names had either seemingly given up their genre or simply lost their touch. Don't get me wrong, there have been some solid horror films lately, 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead and what not, have been quite solid, but we had nothing major, really, we had no equivalent of the big genre film that everyone who loves the genre is just dying to see. Finally, our prayers and hopes have been answered, A new zombie movie from the master, the creator of zombie movies. Horror fans, let me tell you now, THIS, Land of the Dead, is your Star Wars.
I just returned from the midnight showing of Land of the Dead, and I won't beat around the bush, it was excellent. It was gory, funny, interesting and was blistering with Romero's classic touch of social commentary.
The story of the film is a bit different from the other romero zombie films. This isn't about trying to maintain a settlement or start up a place to live. In this film, everythings set up, the settlement is set up,the living live comfortably in a walled off town, ignoring the hordes of undead that walk outside of the city. The story is basically this - Zombies are evolving, they are learning to think, in the most seemingly irrelevant and primitive ways, they are learning basic reasoning and beginning to use basic tools to get their objective completed. Much of the film concentrates on this aspect. In this, the zombies are the stars. The story involving the humans is a bit more linear then his other films. Basically, the town the humans occupy is held by rich, and poor. The rich live in a tall sky scraper, more or less, where they continue their rich lives, living in luxury. The poor live outside, in the slums. Doing the bidding of the man in charge, the "boss" rich man, so to speak, named Kaufman (played by Dennis Hopper). The other main players are all poor folk, living in the slums. There's Cholo (John Liguizamo), who's trying his damndest to become and upper class citizen, and he's willing to screw over other people to get there. Riley (Simon Baker) is more or less satisfied with his station of life, he's of sound heart and spirit, and is the "good guy" of the film. Then, there's slack (Asia Argento) a hooker who becomes one of Rileys team, a team of poor people who go about and raid the outside towns of supplies for the rich people. Anyways, the human story is this -Cholo is sucking up to Kaufman trying to get under his good graces, doing chores for him for money. Apparently Kaufman owes him a good chunk of change, but when he asks Kaufman for it, he refuses and kicks him out of the building. Cholo then hijacks "dead reckoning", a huge fortress on wheels that houses two extremely powerful missiles and uses it to threaten kaufman into giving him the money he's owed. Kaufman hires Riley to go get Dead reckoning back, though Riley is more concerned for the safety of the Innocent people in the city who's lives are in danger should the missiles of "dead reckoning" fire. He accepts and sets out after Cholo.
Now, to the gore. Let me tell you, right now, the gore was excellent, this is far and away the goriest "R" rated film I've ever seen. How this gore got into an R rated movie is beyond me, I've seen unrated films that have less gore then this. In fact, this is the goriest film in Romero's series of the dead. Plus, there is some extremely unique gore scenes, I won't spoil them here, but you'll know them when you see them. One of them involves a chicks belly button ring.
As should be expected this film had some great social commentary. Since Romero didn't make a zombie film for the 90's, he had to tackle two decades worth of social commentary. This is accomplished by the two extremely different types of people inhabiting the city. It has the 90's type yuppie who simply ignore all problems and only worry about money, of course, when confronted with a problem, they can't handle themselves because they're so used to other people doing it for them. It also tackles the post 9/11 fear based mentality. Relying of falsities and lies to make people feel safe, ignoring the threat outside of their walls, making the poor people in the slums feel safe through propaganda and lies.
All in all, this was an excellent film, it was funny, had some great cameos (keep an eye out for Tom Savini and Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright), good action, great social commentary and some of the best gore I've seen. I was giggling like an excited little child when the gore took place on screen. In fact, I felt more excited during this film then ever before. Through much of the film I noticed that I had a huge smile on my face.
If you're a horror fan, just go see this movie. It's true Romero through and through. This is your day in the sun, fellow horror fans, this is your Star Wars, this is the biggest horror release in the last 20 years for us hardcore horror fanatics. Enjoy it people, it truly delivers the goods.